Althouse: "Here’s something Milo Yiannopoulos probably wasn’t expecting when he filed a lawsuit against Simon & Schuster for breach of contract for canceling the publication of his controversial book...."

December 29, 2017

"Here’s something Milo Yiannopoulos probably wasn’t expecting when he filed a lawsuit against Simon & Schuster for breach of contract for canceling the publication of his controversial book...."

"Public mockery of his manuscript and its edits.... On Wednesday, writer Jason Pinter tweeted a screenshot of Simon & Schuster’s rebuttal. And on Thursday, software engineer Sarah Mei, after realizing that the documents filed in the case were now publicly available, paid a visit to the New York county clerk’s website for herself and shared even more scathingly choice editorial nuggets online, to the delight of Twitter....."

So begins "The Most Scathing Editor Comments From Milo Yiannopoulos’ Manuscript" at Slate.

This is a excellent setup for a comic/serious exercise. Instead of hating on Milo (if you hate him) or (more tediously) defending him (if you like him), imagine editorial comments on some other book, some book you think is great.

Many of these editorial comments are more normal than you may realize. For example: "This is definitely not the place for more of your narcissism." I'm certain that the greatest books ever written could have elicited this comment from an editor (and I mean a serious editor who was trying to make the book as good as it could be).

It's too bad Milo didn't stay with his publisher and try to meet the challenges presented by these comments. I have tried to read the rushed-out book he self-published. It's a brainstorm of a rough draft. I scanned it with some thought of blogging it. I don't think I got one blog post out of it, and I tried.

It needed way more work, and I assume he knows that, but he needed to cash in early, and he got his payday. I don't really care, and I think it is indeed funny when a lawsuit lays bare things you'd rather keep hidden. When this phenomenon besets lefties, righties like to say "Streisand effect."

20 comments:

MikeR said...: "It's too bad Milo didn't stay with his publisher and try to meet the challenges presented by these comments." Did he have that option?; 12/29/17, 7:49 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Did he have that option?" No. I'm merely saying that it's too bad the relationship didn't survive.; 12/29/17, 7:51 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: I am sure Milo is wilting over publicity, something he does NOT desire above all else.

I heard Milo inspired (basically wrote) the Tupac lyric "all I want is money fuck the fame I'm a simple man."

Boy is he gonna get zinged!!!!; 12/29/17, 7:53 AM
MikeR said...: '"Did he have that option?" No. I'm merely saying that it's too bad the relationship didn't survive.' Yeah. Well, everyone needs a good editor. I remain despondent that no one could control J.K. Rowlings after her first couple of successful Harry Potter books. They just got longer and longer, and made less and less sense. I enjoyed them, of course...; 12/29/17, 7:58 AM
Leslie Graves said...: "Sarah Mei...paid a visit to the New York county clerk’s website for herself."

How intrepid?; 12/29/17, 8:07 AM
Eleanor said...: Milo is Milo. You either get a kick out of him, or you don't. I don't think even his strongest supporters think his book is going to be a "classic". He's a troll. He's proud of being a troll. Getting people talking about his book again, in any light, must tickle him.; 12/29/17, 8:30 AM
Wince said...: Not convinced those editorial comments were intended to improve the book.; 12/29/17, 8:58 AM
Jaq said...: I write in the margins of books all of the time. It’s kind of surprising the kinds of idiocies that get published. There was a while there where an editor could have made a rubber stamp of the comment “Do we really want to hear how much you hate George W Bush again in this book that has nothing to do with him?” Probably would need a snappy acronym for that one.

Another widely used editors comment might be “Maybe you should head to the bathroom and masturbate every time you think of writing a sentence like this, because there you go, talking about Obama again in a book that has nothing to do with him!”; 12/29/17, 9:03 AM
narciso said...: We don't see what they were referring to, know the context if the statements.

Consider I think it was the same publisher that published Terry Anderson's crazy daughter, who absolved hezbollah of her fathers kidnapping and instead blamed mossad.; 12/29/17, 9:08 AM
max said...: All manuscripts need work. So the fact that Milo's had comments from an editor is not surprising or newsworthy. What's newsworthy is how partisan the editor is. It's too bad Milo didn't have a different editor. The guy whose comments are being published doesn't seems more interested in attacking Milo than improving the book -- At least he does in the comments that have been published.; 12/29/17, 9:23 AM
max said...: There's a superfluous "doesn't" in my comment, proving my first sentence. ("All manuscripts need work.") I meant, "The guy whose comments are being published seems more interested in attack Milo than improving the book."; 12/29/17, 9:25 AM
Gordon Scott said...: I didn't read the book, but I listened to Milo read his book via Audible. It sounded pretty good there; after all, it's the author reading his own thoughts, so he can add the emphases when he wants. There are some moments that are a bit overdone, but geez, it's Milo, so you're going to get a fair amount of that.

There's a whole lot of authors out there who are self-publishing and skipping the cost of an editor. It shows. I had started to read a sci-fi novel with an interesting premise, and what I had read had real promise. But on about page 28 I ran into the third noun/verb disagreement, and that was it. A mistake like that kicks me right out of the narrative, and I didn't feel like spending the mental effort to reenter, knowing I would happen again and again.

And these days one cannot expect an English major to even get basic grammar correct.; 12/29/17, 9:29 AM
Ray - SoCal said...: Discovery by Milo would be interesting...

It will be settled before this. The only question is how much.

But going to trial would be huge publicity for Milo...

The book was dumped due to politics. The amount of tripe published by major publishers shows the bias. The hit job in Milo with underage sex, when he was being provocative with the mob baying for his blood killed the deal.; 12/29/17, 10:09 AM
Jason said...: Milo's released his editor's fawning and flirtatious texts to him.; 12/29/17, 10:25 AM
Shawn Levasseur said...: "When this phenomenon besets lefties, righties like to say 'Streisand effect.'"

Maybe you've only encountered righties referring to the Streisand Effect, but it's a term that has quite a bit of use all around the internet, regardless of politics.; 12/29/17, 11:02 AM
Shawn Levasseur said...: That said, this really isn't the "Streisand Effect". That's more about legal actions meant to suppress certain information, leading to that information getting more widely known via the coverage of the lawsuit. This is just embarrassing facts made public as evidence in a lawsuit.; 12/29/17, 11:10 AM
rcocean said...: Actually, this sounds like the same kind of comments Coulter got, when she tried to publish her first book with Main-stream publishers. She's already been a best selling author with Regency but wanted to move into the "Big Time" so she sought out a NY Publisher.

How many of these comments did TNC get? Or Al Franken? "Where's the support for that"? Or "Gee, that seems an exaggeration"?

Extreme Left is OK to go. But Extreme Right needs to be fact checked before being published.; 12/29/17, 12:30 PM
Ralph L said...: I've seen him speak twice on TV. He's all about him. Must be a terrible book.; 12/29/17, 1:21 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: I lost track of Milo after Twitter bannished him.; 12/29/17, 2:59 PM
MountainJohn said...: I found the book enjoyable, largely because Milo's voice came through loud and clear, but several chapters were a bit disjointed. The chapter on Gamergate alone is worth the price, though of course, he had written about that subject at some length before.; 12/29/17, 3:51 PM