News of Karl Rove’s imminent departure and book-writing plans prompted the Associated Press to ask publishers to share their opinions on a potential memoir from the controversial White House adviser referred to by President George W. Bush variously as “the architect,” “boy genius,” and, perhaps most poignantly, ”turd blossom.” Highlights:

“‘If he’s ready to talk about what he’s been doing, to lay out how he developed his architectural plans and then implemented them and what his vision is, I think that book would have significant readership,’ says Steve Ross, publisher of the Collins division at HarperCollins…

“‘He’s clearly one of the most controversial, notorious and elusive figures in politics, and I think that people would be interested in looking behind the curtain and seeing what the Wizard of Oz is actually saying,’ says Jonathan Karp, publisher of the Twelve Imprint at Grand Central Publishing.

“But, cautions Karp, he wonders how much Rove would reveal.

“‘He said the president has encouraged him to write a book, so one would not expect complete candor. Rove’s historical value would be in a candid rendering of the Bush presidency,’ says Karp…”

In other words: If Rove won’t testify before Congress about the inner workings of the White House, why would he do so in print? I predict something more Gingrichian, a set of ostensibly forward-looking policy prescriptions for his party couched in a lot of reputation-burnishing, revisionist-history claptrap.

In other Rove-related book news, the Wall Street Journal reported this morsel:

“The president calls him to chat about politics on Sunday mornings, and they have a contest to see who can read the most books. (Mr. Rove is winning.)”

Implication: The leader of the free world is intellectually incurious and implicitly rejects the notion of book larnin’. Har!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 12:28 pm and is filed under I on the News, Likely Stories, Publishing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.