News from me - May 15, 2001

May 15, 2001

AN OPEN LETTER to Roger Simon, Chief Political Correspondent of U.S. News & World Report...

Dear Mr. Simon —

As a staunch fan of your work — especially Road Show and Show Time — I should be elated that Amazon-dot-com says that your new book, Divided We Stand, is being released today by Times Books. And if by some fluke, this turns out to be true, I probably will be elated. I have always enjoyed your witty insights into the political process, your up close/personal views of the participants and your willingness to spare no one and to show good and bad on all sides. I even enjoy your constant use of short, punchy sentence fragments as paragraphs.

Like this one.

However, I am understandably (I hope) dubious that such a book exists. This is because I have now spent months scanning the Internet, hoping that my favorite political correspondent would publish a volume that made some sense of the 2001 presidential election. This means that I have endured a lot of bizarre, conflicting misinformation, much of which is still represented as truth.

I know you have never encountered such a thing in the world of politics. But, amazingly, one occasionally finds "facts" on the Internet that may not be entirely accurate.

For example, for months now, an on-line merchant called www.bookvariety.com has been assuring me that the new Roger Simon book is Public Affair: Bill Clinton's Allies and Enemies and the Price They Paid and that it will be published in January of 2001 by Times Books. They have recently begun listing it as "cancelled" but that's okay, because another on-line bookseller, Greenbooks, is currently telling me that if I send them $21.49, they will ship it to me within 2-3 days. (They have it down with a publication date of 5/01/01 from Crown Books)

Better still, A1books.com says they will ship it to me in 24 hours for $17.75 and I can also purchase it from www.nowalking.com and The Green Giant. In the meantime, in what is obviously part of some vast right (or maybe left) wing conspiracy, Varsitybooks.com tells me that Public Affair came out in January of 2000 from Random House and is now out of print.

As if that's not all confusing enough, www.alldirect.com will ship me the new Roger Simon book in 24 hours for $15.00 — except they say it's called High Horses on a Low Road: The Race for the White House in 2000. Wordsworth.com also has High Horses on a Low Road listed but they charge $21.45 and they've illustrated their listing with a copy of Divided We Stand.

Wait. It gets worse. The shopping division of www.yahoo.com will allow me to order A Public Affair for twenty bucks and they tell me it "usually ships in 1 day." However, if I click on the button that orders a copy, I suddenly find myself at www.barnesandnoble.com and I've mysteriously placed an order for Divided We Stand. All of this is beside the fact that most online booksellers don't know the difference between you and Roger L. Simon, who writes the Moses Wine mysteries. Half of the above vendors treat you as one author. No wonder all these "dot-coms" are going bankrupt.

So I'd really love to order your new book(s), whatever it or they may be called. I may order a couple of titles from a couple of places and hope I get something.

I just think it's amazing that in this country in this century, we can split the atom, cure certain non-controversial diseases and send people who have enough money into space. We can even convict Robert Blake of murdering his wife before the police have finished collecting the evidence.

We just can't seem to count ballots or sell books.

Yours truly,

Mark Evanier