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James Patterson's new book: "The House of Kennedy"


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Patterson's not a writer any more, he's a corporation with other writers subcontracted to turn out his books under his name.  So it should be interesting to see what the conglomerate that controls the corporation wants to put out to the sheep-like audience for Patterson's mysteries.  At least when you read James Ellroy on the Kennedys, the bigoted misinterpretations are his own.

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Yes, I read an interview of Patterson in Writer's Digest about nine months ago in which he volunteered that he assigned parts of his books to writers under contract. In his Kennedy book, the cover lists in smaller print the name of his "co-author."

Edited by Douglas Caddy
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35 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Yes, I read an interview of Patterson in Writer's Digest about nine month ago in which he volunteered that he assigned parts of his books to writers under contract. In his Kennedy book, the cover lists in smaller print the name of his "co-author."

My sources tell me that his self-estimate is greatly euphemistic, and the situation is as reported above.  Everything now comes from the atelier de James Patterson, as it was in the world of the late Lady Barbara Cartland.  A hideous fate for a "writer," but lucrative.  So, highly likely the Kennedy book will be a conglomerate's view and a committee effort, as I highly suspect of Bill O'Reilly's books.

Edited by David Andrews
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'The Curse of the Kennedys'  appears in U.K.'s Sunday Times magazine April 19th 2020 by James Patterson.

Re RFK:- 'As he exited through the hotel kitchen afterwards, with news cameras still rolling, a 24 year old Christian Palestinian named Sirhan Bishara Sirhan pulled a .22-calibre pistol from a rolled-up Kennedy poster and shot the candidate in the head, back and shoulder.'

IMG_20200420_092602.jpg

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The book is a complete piece of garbage.

I am at about page 125: its an out and out hatchet job, that no one should be reading. Or posting about.

What Little Brown did is it collected all the previous hatchet jobs they could find--Kessler, Hersh, Thomas Reeves etc.--and bandied them together to make the most current hatchet job.  They then placed it under Patterson's name to give it high visibility.

I am familiar with the practice, as I reported on it when Hersh's book came out.  

Patterson's book has exactly one reference to a declassified memo made public by the ARRB:  Horne's two brain memo and then they screw that up.  Which is quite an achievement.  But the point is that they have an agenda and its to trash the Kennedys, and then say that there was no plot involved in either assassination.  In other words, America was fortunate to get rid of the them anyway. 

Example:  today, how can anyone write a book that spends chapter after chapter on JFK and write not one single word about Vietnam?  Well, this book does.

It then trots out, if you can believe it, Howard Brennan as a witness to Oswald killing Kennedy.  Today, after the ARRB.  Please.

Its much more interesting I think to speculate as to why Patterson went along with this hoax than to reflect about this trash compactor of a book.

Edited by James DiEugenio
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Patterson's questionable decisions can be traced back even further. He does the Jeffrey Epstein book Filthy Rich in 2016 and then teams with Bill Clinton in 2018 for The President is Missing. No author with any tie to Clinton (or yes, Trump) can do an honest job on Epstein and no author doing an honest job on Epstein can then perpetuate a tie or friendship with Clinton (or yes, Trump). We can always take morsels from books we despise or discount. It's rare that every page is a waste, but with so many books yet to read, I wouldn't spend one precious evening on Patterson's work. There is a point with an author like Dan Brown where you may not believe his linkage or what he says in literal word-by-word form (not his history, at least), but Brown will give you what I call "thinking points," points where you can say "Okay, I don't believe it's that specific thing, but I'm going to think about this and look into this some more. I'll read more non-fiction writers on this topic." I put Brad Meltzer and similar writers in similar but lesser categories. Meltzer is "History Channel conspiracy," meaning, to me, that the History Channel is notorious for spending 50 minutes on why an alternative theory is true. Then, in the last ten minutes of the program, they bring a "real expert" on to dismantle the last 50 minutes and tell you its just paranoia. I never believe that Meltzer believes it. But Patterson? Too many trees die for Patterson to have such a comfortable lifestyle.   

Edited by S.T. Patrick
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I keep telling you: he's not an author anymore, he's a conglomerate-controlled brand, and the books are now created by subcontractors.  I have that from someone in the industry.  If the conglomerate wants to spread disinfo about public figures, they'll pay a brand author to slap his/her name on it. 

And who influences conglomerates and the spread of disinfo?...

Time also to start looking at Bill O'Reilly in this sense.

Edited by David Andrews
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David:

How high up is your source in the book publishing trade?

Because I can see you trust him implicitly.

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19 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Thank you, Pete, for this. Please continue to post relevant  U.K. articles as non-U.K. forum members are at a natural disadvantage in doing so.

 

19 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Seconded, thank you. Pete.

My pleasure gents.  You also have Bart Kamp on this forum, we're both with Dealey Plaza U.K.

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Dave:

Here is an interview with Patterson about the book he didn't write, USA Today:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2020/04/15/james-patterson-kennedy-family-book-jfk-robert-bobby-joe-ted/5138400002/

 

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3 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Dave:

Here is an interview with Patterson about the book he didn't write, USA Today:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2020/04/15/james-patterson-kennedy-family-book-jfk-robert-bobby-joe-ted/5138400002/

 

Good luck with that, Jim.

He answered three questions.  This is hardly a Paris Review interview.  I didn't say that he didn't read the book that came out under his name.  Then he was surprised upon learning something interesting, so he could answer the third question.

If you look through his catalog on Amazon or elsewhere, you will notice many co-authors credited.  This has been a years-long dodge, a fence-walk to disguise the communal authorship of the Patterson brand.

Quote: "[TV producer] Barbara Hall wants to turn this into one of those five-year series like 'The Crown,' so this would be like the American 'Crown.' " This is the fingerprint of the conglomerate: the TV deal was proposed or set up before the book deal, and then the book was written from facts and interpretations designed for TV dramatization.  Slap Patterson's name on it, and you have saleable product that's "new."  The conglomerate that distributes the show may well be the one that publishes the book.

Do you really suppose Bill O'Reilly wrote his series of books?  What about Bugliosi's tome?

When Oliver Stone talks about how hard it would be now to make a film like JFK, he's speaking of conglomerate control of the industry.  Why don't you take the Patterson question to him and see if he thinks this is out of the scope of reality, given the facts?  Ask his opinion on O'Reilly too.

Edited by David Andrews
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16 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

David:

How high up is your source in the book publishing trade?

Because I can see you trust him implicitly.

*Not getting baited into ruining someone's career.*

Empires fall on the gossip of servants.

Edited by David Andrews
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