Opportune or opportunistic timing?

I have nothing personal against Oscar Pistorius, but the media brouhaha surrounding his protracted trial under the glare of the media circus spotlight has made me fume.

When it happened we all knew it was going to be big news. It had all the makings of a Hollywood-style drama of CSI proportions – a legless paralympian, a supermodel law graduate, an upper-middle class gated estate and it couldn’t have happened on a more significant date if it were scripted. 

So at the time everyone was an Oscar expert. Social media, the mainstream press – both local and international were feeding off the ravages of this sick story. Now that it’s played out in court and the judgement handed down, out come the Oscar books, and it seems like anyone with even the most remote connection to the case has some “inside” scoop. I can just imagine the security guard at Oscar’s estate and his book, which would probably carry the title Call for Help, or the ex-girlfriend’s, grandmother’s cousin from Reijckevic who had made the journey to the London Olympics and from the back row had seen him run, and her book titled Perspectives on Oscar: A View from Far Away... Very Far Away. You see what I’m getting at. 

So I read an excerpt from this new book in a local paper on the weekend and had a cursory glance at the book itself; the one that Samantha Taylor’s mother wrote with Melinda Ferguson, and I’m just amazed at how quickly she was able to produce this book; 176 pages in 11-point Sabon font. 

For me the timing is a little dubious. As far as I’m concerned, there’s opportune timing and opportunistic timing, and there is a line to be drawn between them. Big difference. So maybe she had a genuine interest in the paralympian with the supermodel girlfriend and she had started writing a book about him, and as his life story evolved it included the culpable homicide of his girlfriend and so that gets documented in the book. It would be opportune that she would produce a book and release it when there’s all this media hype around that person. 

It is opportunistic to write a book and release it on the back of this whole media circus. 

Then there are journalists who have been covering the trial who now have plans to write books. I mean there is an obvious voyeuristic element to it, and I suppose that’s the whole point of the journalist; to bring the story to people who can’t be there. 

But unfortunately what we do get is a synthesised version of that thorough the eyes of somebody else. Inevitably it’s mediated – which is what media is all about – mediated by somebody else; so there isn’t really that first-hand experience. You have your reporters sitting in court the whole time, listening and writing down what’s said and then they write the story so that we can vicariously experience what it was like to be in that courtroom – in the event that we didn’t watch the 24-hour blow by blow television coverage. 

The fact is we have a very instant gratification type culture, and to be perfectly honest our reading culture is not that great here, so who knows, they might only make fifty rand. They’ll sell 4000 copies to a bunch of people, the publishers will take their cut and then there’s the budget for media and marketing and all the rest of it... Add to that the printing costs and at the end of the day, these authors will probably not make as much as they presumed they would. 

It also depends on what the angle of the book is, this is very important. I’m sure not all of it is bull; I’m sure some of it is going to bring real value. Take the Lolly Jackson book for example, I’m sure there are about two and half thousand people who are genuinely intrigued by the whole saga. And what’s so interesting is that you could pick up a fiction novel that would probably tell the same story and probably has been told a thousand times, but this is somebody we all knew about; a local personality, you might have even seen him in one of those bust ups in those restaurants in Midrand or whatever. And that’s the appeal.

There are all these books that have emerged after tragedies, like the one about Madeline McCann, or all those Mandela and Princess Diana books and people say these are opportunistic. For me it depends on two things. How far removed were you from the events? 

So can you offer any real insights, which would interesting to a reader and I think that’s the actual starting point. Is this going to be genuinely interesting to a reader? Or is it something that’s just going to sell because it has a picture of Oscar Pistorius on the cover and people are all hyped about it? Is it buying into the hype or is it something that’s going to be really interesting to read; is it going to offer some insight that you couldn’t gain from television and from all the other stuff that’s been happening because it was somebody who had a unique perspective – maybe a journalist or someone like that.

You could be very far removed from it but bring a unique angle, perspective or expertise – maybe you’re a legal expert on this kind of thing, or a psychologist who really understands disability and the realities of living as a disabled person in a crime infested country, that would bring a unique perspective to the event, and then I would say that might be an interesting read for me as a person. 

But when something is a “tell all” that means nothing to me. I don’t really care. I would ask is it factual or is it just gossip, is it conjecture? It might satisfy a particular kind of reader who would enjoy that kind of salacious reportage or gossip mongering type of writing, but it certainly doesn’t interest me. Who is the audience? And for me, with this barrage of all these books, we’ve got to be a little more circumspect about the value that they bring. And unfortunately the reality is: because it’s written down and it ‘s between the glossy covers of a paperback it somehow has more credibility and that’s not necessarily the case.

For me, these books should come with a warning label to the general public to say: don’t waste your R150 on this soft cover salacious book, whatever book it is... Take a step back from the hype and ask: is this going to be interesting and is this going to bring me some new idea or new thinking? Am I going to learn something from it? As opposed to just going in for the gossip. If you enjoy the gossip go for it. But don’t be disappointed when that’s all you get. 

Email Terence Pillay at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @terencepillay1 and interact with him there.