This month’s Crisis Averted shows how a terrific campaign for a lucrative product can go awry quickly. The story touches on a bevy of things: crisis readiness, immediate and more measured reaction to crisis, #MeToo, cancel culture, media, social media, tremendous irony and a large cast of characters.
We begin in March 2021, when excitement is growing for a long-awaited biography of Philip Roth, one of the most acclaimed American novelists of the 20th century. The book, “Philip Roth: The Biography,” was set for an early April 2021 debut.
Hopefully this 880-page biography would offer fans a look inside the somewhat reclusive novelist’s head.
How many of the racy exploits in “Portnoy’s Complaint,” “Letting Go” or “Goodbye, Columbus” did Roth embody? Was the novelist as misogynistic in life as some of his fictional characters?
Ever the writer, Roth controlled the project. In 2012, Roth revealed he’d chosen Blake Bailey, winner of the 2009 National Book Critics Circle award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for a book about John Cheever, to write the biography.
Raising the stakes, Bailey and his publisher, W.W. Norton, made it known that for years he enjoyed tremendous access to Roth, his family, friends and papers before the novelist’s death in 2018.
On The Circuit
In preparation for the biography’s April 6, 2021, debut, the telegenic and erudite
Bailey was profiled in mass-media publications and appeared on network TV interviews.
Things were going great. The highly awaited book generated buzz with reviews, including some very good ones, in advance of its release.
Shortly after publication, though, the 57-year-old Bailey’s sexual proclivities, not those of Roth or fictional characters in his novels, became the story.
Sexual Misconduct and More
Allegations surfaced about Bailey’s misconduct with 8th graders while he taught in New Orleans in the late 1990s.
One former student, Jessie Wightkin Gelini, said discussions about the writer’s conduct began recently in a private Facebook group.
Those sessions led her to add a comment about them on the April 16 blog post of literary gadfly Ed Champion.
Wightkin Gelini admitted she’d only skimmed Champion’s post: “Blake Bailey: Casual Misogynist and Eager Rube.”
A second comment on Champion’s blog, from another former student, Eve Peyton, also blasts Bailey’s conduct.
“To be fair, he never did anything then, not in eighth grade,” Peyton wrote. But with his “dirty jokes, sly comments [and] hugs that went on slightly too long…” he was laying the groundwork.
Peyton admitted she and her fellow students admired Bailey on some level.
His misconduct, though, was “something of an open secret, and it absolutely followed a pattern and was textbook grooming, but no one ever said anything…”
At this point, of course, you must wonder how much Norton and Roth knew about Bailey’s behavior.
Note, Bailey was not unknown to Norton. In 2014, the company published Bailey’s memoir, “The Splendid Things We Did: A Family Portrait.”
The LA Times verified the identities of Wightkin Gelini and Peyton before publishing a story April 20. The newspaper’s story included the nugget that the Story Factory, Bailey’s literary agent, dropped him just two days later, April 19, after learning of the blog comments.
“We are baffled that the Story Factory would have acted on such unreliable, demonstrably false information without bothering to consult Mr. Bailey,” the writer’s lawyer said in a statement. “We are considering all of Mr. Bailey’s legal options related to these defamatory comments,” the lawyer added.
Other news outlets picked up the story. In one, Peyton alleged that Bailey raped her in 2003.
Moreover, he apologized to her in an email days later. Bailey told her he was suffering from mental illness.
The NY Times reviewed that email.
Another allegation came from Valentina Rice, a publishing executive, who met Bailey in 2015 at the home of Dwight Garner, a former NY Times book critic. She alleges Bailey raped her at Garner’s home in Frenchtown, N.J.
#MeToo Prompts An email
In 2018, as the #MeToo movement gained momentum, Rice, under a pseudonym, emailed Norton’s president Julia Reidhead and the NY Times. She informed them of the incident.
The Times says it responded to Rice, but Reidhead did not. In the end, Rice decided not to pursue the matter.
Rice claims, though, a week after sending the email, Bailey emailed her. He’d seen her email to Norton.
In Bailey’s email, he told Ms. Rice, “I can assure you I have never had non-consensual sex of any kind, with anybody, ever…”
That statement, of course, contradicts his apology to Ms. Petyon, in 2003.
He added in the 2018 email to Rice: “I appeal to your decency: I have a wife and young daughter…such a rumor, even untrue, would destroy them.”
Again, the Times reviewed the email.
In the paper’s April 21, 2021, story, Norton acknowledged receiving Ms. Rice’s email. The company claims it took the email seriously. It asked Bailey about its allegation of rape, “which he categorically denied, and we were mindful of the sender’s request for a guarantee of anonymity.”
The same day, April 21, Norton halted shipments and publicity for the Roth biography, pending “any further information that may emerge.”
Six days later, Norton said it was halting publication of the Roth bio and Bailey’s 2014 memoir.
The company will donate money “in the amount of the book advance” for the Roth biography “to organizations that fight against sexual assault or harassment and work to protect survivors.”
As we do each month in this feature, we ask: ‘Was a crisis averted?’ Did Norton’s actions suffice?
PR practitioner and scholar LaShonda Eaddy, who’ll teach at Penn State in the fall, says, “Yes and no.”
Evan Nierman, founder and leader of Red Banyan, says, “Maybe.”
So much for the fabled divide between academia and industry.
Substantial Evidence
For Nierman, Rice’s 2018 allegation against Bailey that Norton knew about it isn’t at the crux of the issue. The recent allegations are, he says. Norton “did what they had to do…and thought was right.” It was “an unprecedented move to pull a book” that was “a guaranteed moneymaker…they decided they needed to do this” based on evidence.
Eaddy agrees. “We all know there’s a climate in entertainment. There’s a great awareness to expose” past inappropriate actions. That forced [Norton’s] hand; if they didn’t do anything, it would have turned into a real crisis.”
Adds Nierman, the “safe play for organizations now is to cut and run when there are allegations of sexual misconduct...businesses are erring on the side of caution…If there’s even a whiff of impropriety, they bolt.”
It’s dangerous, he says, when the media conflates allegations and evidence. “The mere mention of a salacious charge should not be enough to destroy someone’s reputation.” In Bailey’s case, though, Norton acted on what seems substantial evidence, he says.
On the other hand, Eaddy puts more weight on Rice’s allegation than Nierman does. Norton, she says, needs to look at its processes and decide whether or not it handled Rice’s 2018 email correctly.
“If they don’t, they’re bound to have trouble again. If so, it’s not ‘Crisis Averted;’ it’s ‘Crisis Delayed,’” she says.
Moreover, she says, publishers and other content purveyors need to periodically check their authors and content. They need to institute standards that align with the company’s mission and values. “This can’t be done in a day. It takes a thorough and thoughtful assessment.”