Column Chronicles: Books that were victims of circumstance

Books that were victims of circumstance

Frank Cotolo
December 1, 2016

Writers don't have it easy, especially if a writer writes a piece that he or she knows will not be published for many months.

Being timely with writing is a matter of time. It becomes very important that if a topic is in jeopardy of changing before a piece about it is published then the piece will be useless.

Let's take an example for example. In October of 1963, C. Crawford Imobile all but completed a book about President John F. Kennedy. The author was ready to hand the book to the publisher, which had scheduled a November release with the contingent that Imobile include all of the fresh quotes he promised. President Kennedy had committed to an interview with Imobile to produce those quotes, telling the author he could give the interview "as soon as I return from my campaign swing through Texas."

We all know - or should know - what happened to the President during that swing. What we don't know is that after the deadly incident, Imobile's book was canned and he became an alcoholic. Though he remained a writer, he was reduced to penning cheap paperback novels, including "Secret Death Panties," "Someone Call An Ambulance," "The Crawling Cowboy," "I Was A Teenage Troubleshooter For The FBI," and "Flu Manchu - Villain With A Virus."

Fate also played a role in many would-be classics. Take, for instance, Esther Cribbings' "The Wind Blew It Gone," a novel about the South and the Civil War that was going to be published until Margaret Mitchell's classic, "Gone With The Wind."

There is no way a writer can be a fortune teller, even when a writer is writing about a fortune teller. Sid Beyer was promised his book, titled "The Amazing Alicard Knows What Is Going To Happen - The True Story Of An AlwaysAccurate Fortune Teller" would be published in early 1963. But in late 1962, after a decade of intense work following the life of The Amazing Alicard, the fortuneteller was accused of murdering his wife in a controversial incident involving a handmade tractor.

Alicard did not plead innocent and used as his defense the fact that he knew it was going to happen, so therefore it had to happen and he should not be convicted for causing the death of a person that had to die in order for the human race to continue because due to her death mankind would have many positive events occur.

When the jury at Alicard's trial unanimously agreed he was guilty without even leaving the jury stand for sequestering, Beyer's book was rejected for publication and the publishing company sued him for an advance that exceeded twenty-five thousand dollars, which it demanded be returned to the company. But Beyer had already spent most of it learning how to build a tractor with his bare hands and lost the suit. He left the country via the Atlantic Ocean, on foot, and was never heard from again.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.