I’ve already testified, I believe because I was encouraging him to not discourage me from finishing the book that I had put so much of my life into at that point. My commitment was to the book and to this truth.
Q: And it was O.K. to tell him something that you really didn’t believe in the service of this truth?
A: I would say that falls into Mr. Wambaugh’s category of untruth.
McGinniss’s reference to Wambaugh’s “category of untruth” concerned what everyone later agreed was the pivotal moment of the trial. As the cornerstone of his defense of McGinniss, Kornstein had gathered together a roster of well-known writers—members of what he called “the literary community” and Bostwick less delicately, if perhapsmore accurately, called “the writing industry”—to come and testify that McGinniss’s deception of MacDonald was standard operating procedure. Kornstein’s original list of “experts on the author-subject relationship,” included William F. Buckley, Jr., Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Victor Navasky, J. Anthony Lukas, and Wambaugh, but only Buckley and Wambaugh actually testified; after their appearance, the judge, evidently feeling that the defense had taken enough punishment from itself, called a halt, and decreed that no more writers would be heard from.
Buckley came first. Kornstein asked him, “Based on custom, practice, and usage within the literary community and your own experience, what is the scope of the author’s discretion to encourage self-deception on the part of the subject?”
A: Well, there again, that’s an artistic question. If Senator [Alan] Cranston, let’s say, while I was writing a biography about him, began to make references that sounded to me as though he had another wife living in Florida, I would from time to time return to that subject to encourage him to give me more details, but I wouldn’t alert him to the fact that I was suddenly discovering that he was a bigamist.…
Q: Again, based on custom, practice, and usage within the literary community and your own experience, would it be appropriate or inappropriate to perhaps feign agreement with the principles of the subject in order to encourage further conversation?
A: Well, I think it would be appropriate, given the priorities. The priorities are to encourage the person you’re writing about to tell you everything, and if that takes going down to a bar and having a beer with him, you go down to the bar and have a beer with him. If it means that you haveto listen to three hours of boring, trivial matter of really no concern, you go ahead and do that. It’s part of the ordeal of a writer in seeking to get all the facts, on the basis of which he makes his definitive evaluations.
In his cross-examination, Bostwick got right down to his enjoyable business:
Q: You’re not trying to tell the jury that you believe that an author can lie to the subject of a book that he’s writing about, are you?
A: Well, it all depends on what you mean by the word “lie.”
Q: A lie is a false statement of fact, Mr. Buckley. I’m sorry you’re having such a difficulty—
A: Well, look, look, look—
Q: I can try to give you the definition of the word “lie.”
A: Look, it’s not that easy. I’ve read Sissela Bok’s book on lying, and it’s not that easy. For instance, if the Gestapo arrives and says, “Was Judge Rea here? Where did he go?,” and I said, “Well, he went that way,” am I lying? Thomas Aquinas would say I was lying, a lot of other people would say I wasn’t lying, I was simply defending an innocent life.
Bostwick continued to nudge Buckley toward the minefield.
Q: I’m simply asking you whether it’s the custom and practice in the literary field for authors to lie to the subject in order to get more information out of them.
A: It would really depend on the situation. If, for instance, you were writing a book on somebody who was a renowned philanderer and he said, “I mean, you do thinkmy wife
Q: And it was O.K. to tell him something that you really didn’t believe in the service of this truth?
A: I would say that falls into Mr. Wambaugh’s category of untruth.
McGinniss’s reference to Wambaugh’s “category of untruth” concerned what everyone later agreed was the pivotal moment of the trial. As the cornerstone of his defense of McGinniss, Kornstein had gathered together a roster of well-known writers—members of what he called “the literary community” and Bostwick less delicately, if perhapsmore accurately, called “the writing industry”—to come and testify that McGinniss’s deception of MacDonald was standard operating procedure. Kornstein’s original list of “experts on the author-subject relationship,” included William F. Buckley, Jr., Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Victor Navasky, J. Anthony Lukas, and Wambaugh, but only Buckley and Wambaugh actually testified; after their appearance, the judge, evidently feeling that the defense had taken enough punishment from itself, called a halt, and decreed that no more writers would be heard from.
Buckley came first. Kornstein asked him, “Based on custom, practice, and usage within the literary community and your own experience, what is the scope of the author’s discretion to encourage self-deception on the part of the subject?”
A: Well, there again, that’s an artistic question. If Senator [Alan] Cranston, let’s say, while I was writing a biography about him, began to make references that sounded to me as though he had another wife living in Florida, I would from time to time return to that subject to encourage him to give me more details, but I wouldn’t alert him to the fact that I was suddenly discovering that he was a bigamist.…
Q: Again, based on custom, practice, and usage within the literary community and your own experience, would it be appropriate or inappropriate to perhaps feign agreement with the principles of the subject in order to encourage further conversation?
A: Well, I think it would be appropriate, given the priorities. The priorities are to encourage the person you’re writing about to tell you everything, and if that takes going down to a bar and having a beer with him, you go down to the bar and have a beer with him. If it means that you haveto listen to three hours of boring, trivial matter of really no concern, you go ahead and do that. It’s part of the ordeal of a writer in seeking to get all the facts, on the basis of which he makes his definitive evaluations.
In his cross-examination, Bostwick got right down to his enjoyable business:
Q: You’re not trying to tell the jury that you believe that an author can lie to the subject of a book that he’s writing about, are you?
A: Well, it all depends on what you mean by the word “lie.”
Q: A lie is a false statement of fact, Mr. Buckley. I’m sorry you’re having such a difficulty—
A: Well, look, look, look—
Q: I can try to give you the definition of the word “lie.”
A: Look, it’s not that easy. I’ve read Sissela Bok’s book on lying, and it’s not that easy. For instance, if the Gestapo arrives and says, “Was Judge Rea here? Where did he go?,” and I said, “Well, he went that way,” am I lying? Thomas Aquinas would say I was lying, a lot of other people would say I wasn’t lying, I was simply defending an innocent life.
Bostwick continued to nudge Buckley toward the minefield.
Q: I’m simply asking you whether it’s the custom and practice in the literary field for authors to lie to the subject in order to get more information out of them.
A: It would really depend on the situation. If, for instance, you were writing a book on somebody who was a renowned philanderer and he said, “I mean, you do thinkmy wife
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