Washington
“Oh, Joe McGinniss has a new book?”
Well, yes. And no.
The author is actually Joe McGinniss Jr., not his late father. This is his second novel, which means another round of talking about the blessing and the curse of his famous, exhausting, alcoholic parent.
When he was growing up, their relationship “was pretty much wonderful when I was around him,” says Joe Jr., 45, sitting in the office of his home in Northwest Washington. “His career was off the charts. Other than the drinking, which really upset me as a child, he was just a gentle, warm soul.”
“Gentle” is not how most people would describe the acclaimed author and journalist Joe McGinniss, who burst on the scene with The Selling of the President 1968, an account of Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign. The book spent six months on the bestseller lists, changed the way politics was covered, and made the author internationally famous. Also rich and arrogant. He was just 26 years old.
That success was ill-suited to the prosaic demands of a wife and three young children, and McGinniss’ marriage soon fell apart. Young Joe and his two sisters were essentially raised by their mother while watching their father become ever more famous.
“We’d watch him on the Today show and Larry King Live and laugh at his bald spot when the camera angle shifted,” Joe Jr. wrote for The New Yorker last week. “We’d miss him and wish he were closer. But we knew better. This was how it was, and who he was, and what choice did we have?”
Fatal Vision, which came out in 1983, was a sensational dive into the murder trial of Jeffrey MacDonald, an Army doctor who was accused of killing his pregnant wife and two daughters. MacDonald sought out McGinniss to write his story, believing that the famous author would prove his innocence; instead the book (like the jury) found him guilty. MacDonald sued for fraud, and McGinniss settled at the urging of his publisher.
Six years later, New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm penned a notorious, damning essay about the case. “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible,” she wrote.
His father was crushed by the accusation, says Joe Jr. “No one came to his defense. Her argument was ludicrous. Anyone who goes into an interview knows all bets are off.”
But the real blow to his father’s career came in 1995, when McGinniss’ publisher gave him a $1 million advance to cover the O.J. Simpson trial. It was supposed to be the definitive account of the Trial of the Century. But when the trial ended, McGinniss refused to write the book and returned the advance — to the shock of everyone who cared about him.
“The O.J. book was validation that he still mattered, that he was relevant,” says Joe Jr. “When he walked away, everyone tried to talk him out of it — his lawyer, his agent, his wife, his kids. And he said, ‘Can’t do it. I have nothing else to add.’ ”
By this point, McGinniss had remarried and had two more sons. Joe Jr. graduated from Swarthmore College, interned at the Clinton White House, then moved to San Francisco and began working for the city. He was passionate about progressive politics but hated the backbiting and bureaucracy and burned out quickly.
He moved to Washington for graduate school and decided that he wanted to be a writer. His father, who had penned one mediocre novel, was adamant: Write if you must, but journalism and nonfiction. “You’ll never make a living writing fiction,” Joe Jr. says his father warned him. “It is brutal. You will never find satisfaction. It’s impossible. Do. Not. Do. It.”
Naturally, fiction was all he wanted to write.
It was remarkably easy for him — he happily wrote five and six hours a day — and after a couple of years, he was convinced that he had produced a great novel about a tortured 20-something and his on-again, off-again girlfriend. He didn’t show it to his father, but instead sent the manuscript to one of his idols, Less Than Zero author Bret Easton Ellis. Ellis, a friend of his father’s, sent it back with extensive edits saying it was bloated and messy, though there was a good idea buried in it somewhere.
In retrospect, Ellis’ criticism was a gift, but the aspiring writer was floored. “Literally, I was lying on the floor,” he recalls. “I was gutted.” He rewrote the book, cutting it in half, and sent it back to Ellis. Better, came the reply, but still not there. That’s when Jeanine Ford McGinniss, now an economist at the SEC, gave her husband a loving ultimatum: One more shot, and then he had to consider a different career path.
This time it worked. The end result was The Delivery Man, a dystopian love story set in Las Vegas published in 2008 that sold 50,000 copies and landed a movie deal. (Floria Sigismondi, who directed Rihanna’s Sledgehammer video, is slated to direct.) McGinniss considered using a pen name but rejected the idea as “really pretentious,” although some people in the book industry steered clear because of his father’s reputation. His dad eventually read the book and was thrilled.
That success allowed McGinniss to take about a year off to be a full-time dad to the couple’s son, Julien, before tackling his new novel. Carousel Court is the story of a young couple who move from Boston to California to find their American Dream — and discover something quite different. The book came out last week.
His dad, who died of cancer in 2014 at age 71, didn’t live to see it. His last books — one on Italian soccer and one on Sarah Palin — didn’t get much attention. He became negative and cynical. He burned most of his professional bridges with angry calls and late-night diatribes to his editors and publishers.
“Email was not his friend,” says Joe Jr. “He would email at all hours, raging about how they were handling his books or their promotion.” His father died broke, having lost millions to bad investments, addiction and poor choices.
And yet, when he learned that his son’s second novel would be published, he sent what turned out to be a last, cherished email to him.
“Bravo, son,” it read. “I am so proud of you, but most of all so very happy for you and for this vindication of your talent — which, no doubt, you had more doubts about than anyone else did. I love you, Dad.”