Waging Heavy Peace (T.O. Star article)
Sharry reports:
Neil has set off a tidal wave of interest in the Canadian publishing industry for homegrown celebrity memoirs. Read all about it below in an article that was published yesterday in the Toronto Star.
I’m really excited about Neil writing his memoir. Isn’t it something that we’ve all secretly been hoping for all these years? I never thought I’d see the day when he would do this.
here is the Toronto Star article:
News that Neil Young has decided to write his own memoir has Canadian publishers scratching their heads over the possibility of more potential gold in the lives and secrets of the nation’s star entertainers and celebrities.
“In Canada it’s kind of hard to come up with star-power names whose books people will want to buy,” McClelland & Stewart president Doug Pepper confessed to the Star following the announcement Tuesday of Young’s deal with Blue Rider Press, an imprint of Penguin Books.
…
“And in the end, it’s not the size of the star that counts as much as his or her fearlessness. Can they be genuinely candid? Can they write about what people want to read?”
That question is particularly relevant in Young’s case. Young participated in an earlier biography written by James McDonough’s in 2002. But he later took it to task, and caused it to be bowdlerized after legal proceedings.
Given Young’s objections to McDonough’s biography, and his reputation as an eccentric and obsessive custodian of his own myth, others in Canada’s publishing industry, who asked to remain anonymous, are skeptical that the Canadian folk-rocker will be as candid as Rolling Stone Keith Richards is in his top-selling 2010 memoir, Life, though they agree the length and artistic scope of Young’s eventful career will likely fuel intense sales.
Among Canadian celebs with potentially golden memoirs, Young seems a popular favourite, though few publishers are willing to make public their actual wish lists, for fear of tipping off the competition.
…more here on Toronto Stare .
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