An Edited Editor
Little, Brown — which landed a memoir about
John F. Kennedy Jr. and George magazine by onetime George editor
Richard Blow for a reported $750,000 — has scuttled the deal,
citing the confidentiality agreement that Blow signed with the
magazine. ''I wasn't aware at the time that he had signed [such
an] agreement,'' Little, Brown publisher Sarah Crichton said. ''We
have been left with no choice but to cancel the book.'' ''As soon
as we closed the deal, I messengered [the agreement] over to
her,'' responds agent Joni Evans. For his part, Blow insists the
agreement does not apply posthumously and says the book — which
he hopes to publish elsewhere — will not be a tell-all but a
''chance to tell people what a wonderful guy John was to work for.''
Fine Romances
Knopf has paid in the high six figures for The
Venetian Affair, the nonfiction account of a liaison in 1750s
Venice between a nobleman — an ancestor of the author, Italian
journalist Andrea di Robilant — and a beauty of a different
class. ''It's a story of two people whose contemporaries are
Casanova, Canaletto, and Tiepolo,'' says Robilant's agent,
Michael Carlisle.... Hyperion will pay close to $700,000 for
Carter Beats the Devil, Glen David Gold's novel about magician
Charles Carter, considered as good an illusionist as the more
famous Harry Houdini. Hyperion is also closing a deal with
Patricia Bosworth for Jane, a full-scale, unauthorized bio of
Jane Fonda.
