JOE McGINNISS

Author Spotlight: Joe McGinniss on “The Rogue”
by Kindle Editors on 09/22/2011

Once more unto the breach, dear friends.

Or at least into the maelstrom.

My twelfth book, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, is now out from Crown.

Not for the first time, I’m expecting the publication process to be eventful.

Actually, “eventful,” is a euphemism. What I’m expecting are vitriolic attacks from Palin supporters on my character, ethics, reporting and writing skills, wardrobe, haircut, and even the brand of dog food I feed my twelve-year old Norwegian elkhound.

For some reason, my books seem to generate controversy. It started with my first, The Selling of The President 1968, continued through my 1980 book about Alaska, Going to Extremes, intensified with Fatal Vision, reached tragicomic proportions with The Last Brother, my book about the mythic arc of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s career in the 1960’s (as I recall, both Russell Baker and Art Buchwald published attacks on me the same day), and took on international proportions when criminal charges were filed against me in Italy because of The Miracle of Castel di Sangro.

This pattern—and when a phenomenon has continued for more than forty years, it’s hard not to call it a pattern–has occasionally caused me to ask myself: “What is it with you, McGinniss? Why do you keep writing books that you know will make people angry?”

My therapist has suggested that I have a higher than average need for invigoration, and that taking risks in my professional life provides it. I’ve learned not to argue with my therapist (she’s always right), but I’d like to offer an alternative theory: when I set out to write a book, I do so not knowing what the story will turn out to be.

I didn’t know whether Richard Nixon would win or lose the 1968 presidential election. I didn’t know what I’d find in Alaska when I traveled there for the first time in 1975. I didn’t know whether Jeffrey MacDonald was innocent or guilty of the murders of his pregnant wife and two little girls. I didn’t know how I’d wind up feeling about Teddy Kennedy and the carefully constructed Kennedy myth. I had no idea what would happen over the next nine months when I arrived in Italy, speaking not a word of Italian, in late summer of 1996.

Nor did I know how Sarah Palin would react to my moving in next door to her last summer.

My books are shaped by events that haven’t occurred when I start my work. Nothing is predictable, thus everything is volatile. I’ve never started a book with my mind already made up about my subject.

As Flannery O’Connor once said, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”

Often what I say is not what my subject was hoping to hear.

Thus, the sound and fury that often accompanies the publication of a new Joe McGinniss book.

I don’t expect it to be any different with The Rogue.

But as Samuel Johnson once said, “I would rather be attacked than unnoticed.”

So buckle up tight and take a ride on The Rogue roller coaster with me.