Lest you think the Magic Negro is a self-made man:
A 28-year-old law student gets written up in the newspapers, then gets a call from a literary agent? She calls him? The agent then signs this 28-year-old nobody — whose only credential as an author is student law journal stuff — with Simon & Schuster. Hello? In what alternative universe does this happen? He misses his deadline, but that’s OK, because he then gets another big contract with a $40,000 advance. At this point, Obama’s story is reminding me of another popular book, The Peter Principle.
But the real killer is how, having gotten a contract based on a proposal for a book about race relations, Obama pulls a bait-and-switch, and instead delivers … a memoir….
First-time author. $40,000. Memoir. Reviewed in the New York Times.
I found this particularly interesting, since all three of my books published by Simon & Schuster sold more than Obama’s did, but I don’t recall many reviews, much less reviews in the New York Times. I wouldn’t blame any author who loathed Obama for the way in which he was literally handed an astonishingly lucrative literary career. You’ll note that Bill and Hillary Clinton are similarly successful “authors”.