ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 18, 1996 TAG: 9608190078
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DECLARING that the trial was "an utter farce," Joe McGinniss will return his $1.75 million book advance. Joe McGinniss had a front-row seat at the O.J. Simpson trial and a big $1 million advance. But, in the end, the author didn't have a book in him.
The best-selling author said Friday he has abandoned his book project on the Simpson trial, citing a lack of anything new to say about the sensational trial that has spawned a library of titles.
In so doing, McGinniss loses his entire two-book deal with Crown Books and must forfeit a total advance of $1.75 million. But he said he gains a fresh outlook and a new career: sportswriter.
The 53-year-old writer plans to focus on his true passion, European soccer.
``I feel wonderful. I feel 20 years younger,'' he said by phone from his Williamstown, Mass., home. ``The whole process of sitting out there was some sort of very expensive therapy. It finally enabled me to see that all you have in life is what you want to do.''
The ``Fatal Vision'' author was granted a coveted front-row, permanent seat at the Simpson trial, chronicling the case on a yellow legal pad. His concept was to play the ``13th juror'' by avoiding the news conferences and TV coverage.
But, as he said in an Aug.8 letter to his publisher, what he saw was ``an utter farce.'' He complained of the ``prosecution's incompetence,'' Judge Lance Ito's ``total loss of control over the proceedings,'' ``ludicrous witnesses'' and ``that nauseating group of cretins'' who made up the jury.
The trial, he told his publisher, ``sapped my intellect, my physical strength and my confidence that I had made the right decision by agreeing to do the book in the first place.
``I could express the full extent of my indignation about this in a 600-word piece for the Op Ed page of the [New York] Times. It's not a book. There is no book. At least not one that I can write.''
There will be other books, however, coming out in the next year, including those by Marcia Clark and Johnnie Cochran, and an inside-the-Dream-Team book by Larry Schiller with an assist from Simpson pal Robert Kardashian.
LENGTH: Short : 49 linesby CNB