Hey guys—

A pass from Doubleday.  Gerry’s comments here are starting to point to an overarching issue for which having this outline document might be very, very helpful.  Enough people have said, now, that there’s a concern about perspective / being too close to the material to tell the story in a quasi journalistic way (journalistic only in the sense of have enough distance to lay out a discernible narrative).

Barrett, have you made any progress on that front?  If so, I may be able to use it to stave off passes from editors who’re on the bubble.

Mind you, we have a number of editors intrigued as is, so I’m not waving the white flag.  

ALSO:  I leave tomorrow for a conference in St. Louis, will be out of town till Sunday afternoon—so we’re going to figuring out our schedule on the fly, with my assistant Stephen Barr’s help.  PLEASE CC HIM ON EVERYTHING going forward, and please be sure to give us both your cell #s and your contact info for when you’re here in New York.

More to come today!

Dan, I know there is a book in this subject, but I am not at all sure there is a book in this proposal.  I had the hardest time finding any narrative through line in here, but I can’t  really tell if that was because I am of the pre-digital generation and don’t think about  things in the proper post-digital fashion, or if this is simply not well constructed in the narrative sense. It feels to me as if Gregg Housh is so in the middle of things that he doesn’t have the perspective to know what a reader does not know and would need to be told.  Add to that layer of uncertainty my ambivalence as to whether Anonymous is actually a force for good in the world or a bunch of folks who basically like to fuck shit up, and I have to conclude that I am not the right  editor for this project.   

 Thanks for  the look, though, and good luck in finding an editor who feels differently.

Best,

Gerry  

Dear Gerry,