Talese: no more summers in Jersey.

While you were at the beach this weekend, Gay and Nan Talese moved out of their summer house in Ocean City, New Jersey to join Graydon Carter in Roxbury, Connecticut.

More from Publisher's Weekly on Robert Weil's new imprint at Norton, Liveright & Company (see our article from last week, too.)

The first of what will likely be many, many Casey Anthony books is announced: Inside the Mind of Casey Anthony, by the forensic psychiatrist and FOX news pundit Keith Ablow, to be published by St. Martin's Press.

MobyLives writes about the discovery of a memorial book for Byron, where more than 800 friends and family penned remembrances and poetic tributes after his funeral. The book was purchased at a church sale in Savannah, Georgia for $35.

Paul Auster on why Philip Roth is wrong to avoid fiction. [Video via BookForum.]

How many emails did Mr. Meacham get Monday when his American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House won for biography? "Oh, probably five or six hundred," he told The Observer the next day at a reception on the 21st floor of Newsweek's New York office on 57th Street.

One message was from New Yorker editor and fellow Pulitzer Prizewinner (1994, general nonfiction for Lenin's Tomb) David Remnick, who told him, "You're about to hear from your third grade teacher, so enjoy it." (Close: Mr. Meacham heard from his seventh grade teacher.)

"I'm still a little numb," Mr. Meacham said surveying the room. "It's all very exciting."

Mr. Meacham's attention was a bit divided by the crowd of well-wishers—among them legendary Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, Gay and Nan Talese, about 50 Newsweek staffers, and Mr. Meacham's 6-year-old son, Sam, who ran over more than once to offer his dad some love—but The Observer managed to ask him a question or two.

Was it strange that on the very week his magazine ran a cover story headlined “The Confessions of Eliot Spitzer” (the latest in a series of gestures The Observer's John Koblin called “The Reconstruction of Eliot Spitzer” in March), The New York Times took home journalism's top award for breaking the story that brought the former governor of New York down?

"Yeah," Mr. Meacham said with a long, almost uncomfortable pause. "I guess I think that's what we call coincidence."

At that, he laughed.

Until 2001, the couple attended an annual holiday party on East 64^th Street thrown by their dear friend, Serpico author Peter Maas and his wife, Suzanne. But when Mr. Maas passed away two weeks before Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. and Mrs. Talese volunteered to move the gathering to their own four-story townhouse on East 61^st Street, and invite the Maases’ guests as well as a few of their own. This year, the guest list has grown to an intimate 150.

“The idea of the party grew out of the fact of a mournful city and the death of a person who had been a friend of ours for maybe 25 years before that. So the first party here was a memoriam and a festive night, but in response to the loss of lives in the city and Peter Maas. And it continues that way,” said author Gay Talese, speaking to the Transom by phone from his Upper East Side home.

While the death of a friend and the shock of Sept. 11 dwarfs anything that might happen in the current recession, the bleak mood that has returned to the city on the heels of the crisis in banking makes this one feel, once again, a necessary tonic.

“In my own wife’s company—hell, you’ve read about it—fellow editors lost their jobs,” he said, referring to extensive layoffs at Doubleday this fall. “There are many people who have experienced this year what the nation and the city have experienced. And yet this night is a night not to dwell upon that; to be aware of it, but not to dwell on it.”

And so on Dec. 24, sometime around 6:30 p.m., the couple’s friends and colleagues—editors, writers, filmmakers, actors, artists and financiers—will walk up the spiral staircase of the townhouse and be greeted with a cocktail on the parlor floor. There will be sherry and bourbon and martinis and wine. With drinks in hand, the guests will mingle by the Christmas tree in the library or in the 60-foot-long enclosed greenhouse in the back or maybe somewhere upstairs among the taupe walls and the Frank Stellas and the pale blue velvet and leather sofas.

“There is a whole selection of people and you never really know who’s going to show up, but there generally seem to be the same people year after year,” said Mr. Talese. “It’s a New York evening for us. We’ve been in New York for 50 years and we know a lot of people—people who you might see at Elaine’s.” (This was Mr. Talese's only concession to our request that he name some of the regulars. But it gives a pretty good picture.)

Around 8:30, dinner will be served on the second and third floors by nine or so waiters, who will weave their way between tables set for four, six, eight and ten (covered in green, red, and white tablecloths) and try to avoid tripping on the two Australian terriers wagging through the crowd. The seating isn't formal: some guests just stop in for a cocktail before heading home to have dinner with their families and others arrive on the later side for dessert and an after-dinner drink. “A Christmas dinner open house,” Mr. Talese called it.

He himself doesn't pay much attention to the menu.

“You’re not talking to Frank Bruni here. I’m not a food guy, that’s one of the things I don’t pay much attention to,” he said. Mr. Talese said his wife would know better, but he was hesitant about asking her.

“My wife is not in on this. If I go down and ask her for the menu, she might say, ‘Don’t put it in the paper,’” he confessed. Mr. Talese thought about it for a moment. “I tell you what, let me see if I can get the name of the caterer without having to ask my wife. Maybe the housekeeper knows.”

He hung up. A moment later Mr. Talese called back and placed his wife on the phone.

“He doesn’t have a clue!” said Ms. Talese in reference to the menu, which she willingly relayed. (Roasted vegetables, lentils, salad, cheese and the aforementioned main courses.)

The Taleses' five-decades-long marriage is the subject of Mr. Talese's upcoming book, which will also prominently feature the couple's residence, where they’ve lived for the duration of the marriage.

Mr. Talese rented an apartment in the building when a friend, a gossip columnist named Joseph Dever—who was a colleague of a then gossip newbie from Texas named Liz Smith—asked if he would like to sublet his place. (Ms. Smith and Mr. Dever at the time contributed to a column titled Cholly Knickerbocker that appeared in the Hearst newspaper chain.)

Mr. Dever was moving into a bigger place and offered to sublet his apartment in the building to Mr. Talese, who was then living on MacDougal Street. “One of the tenants when I first moved in was a fashion model who was having an affair with Otto Preminger, the movie director, and I’d see him in the steps ringing the bell of this beautiful model,” recalled Mr. Talese. “Her name was Hope Bryce and she later married him and moved out.”

After Mr. Talese got married himself, he and Ms. Talese rented each apartment in the building one by one until eventually taking over the entire building and converting it back to a single-family, four-story home where their two daughters were later born. On Christmas Eve, the house will be filled to capacity with the many people the couple have come to know over the years—a tradition the couple wouldn't think of canceling. 

“The theme is hope and friendship and optimism and a happier year ahead. We don’t cancel. As long as we’re alive, we’re going to have this,” said Mr. Talese. “Fortunately, we can still pay for it. No sense in cutting back now."

Much, much more on this soon, but for now, the basics:

—Doubleday's flagship imprint and its Nan A. Talese unit will fall under the command of Sonny Mehta at Knopf.

—Crown will incorporate Broadway, Doubleday Business, Doubleday Religion, and WaterBrook Multnomah, with Crown publisher Jenny Frost presiding over all of them.

—Gina Centrello at Random House group will get Susan Kamil's Dial Press, previously the literary imprint of Bantam Dell, and Spiegel & Grau, the division of Doubleday launched last year and nurtured by Steve Rubin.

—Mr. Dohle in his memo said he is "currently in discussions" with Mr. Rubin "about creating a new role for him at Random House, Inc., working directly with me."

Full text of Mr. Dohle's memo below:

MARKUS DOHLE

CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

MEMBER OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD OF BERTELSMANN AG

December 3, 2008

Dear Random House Colleagues:

I am writing today to tell you about a new publishing structure and a new leadership team for the adult trade divisions at Random House, Inc. here in the U.S., effective immediately. After looking closely and extensively at our organization and its rich diversity of authors and resources, we have created a plan for our future that aligns existing strengths and publishing affinities and fosters teamwork throughout the company. It will maximize our growth potential in these challenging economic times and beyond.

The new structure will augment the exceptional publishing programs of the Random House, Knopf and Crown divisions and draw on the veteran leadership of Gina Centrello, Sonny Mehta and Jenny Frost, respectively.

The Random House Publishing Group, under the leadership of President and Publisher Gina Centrello, will expand to include the imprints of the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, including The Dial Press, along with Doubleday’s Spiegel & Grau.

The Knopf Publishing Group, led by Chairman Sonny Mehta, will expand to include the Doubleday and Nan A. Talese imprints from the Doubleday Publishing Group.

The Crown Publishing Group, under the direction of President and Publisher Jenny Frost, will expand to include the other imprints from the Doubleday Publishing Group—Broadway, Doubleday Business, Doubleday Religion and WaterBrook Multnomah.

As a result of this reorganization, Irwyn Applebaum and Steve Rubin, two colleagues who have dedicated many years of service as the publishers of Bantam Dell and Doubleday respectively, will step down from their positions as announced in the accompanying memos.

Within the new Random House Publishing Group, Ballantine, Bantam Dell and Random House will continue to have separate editorial departments. Random House, true to its heritage as the flagship imprint, will continue to publish its diverse list of distinguished and bestselling fiction and nonfiction in hardcover and trade paperback. The addition of The Dial Press and Spiegel & Grau will make this group an even greater force in literary and high-profile publishing. Side by side, Ballantine and Bantam Dell will be a commercial powerhouse with their stellar lists of bestselling and critically acclaimed authors.

The Knopf Publishing Group will augment its enduring reputation as a leading publisher of quality nonfiction and literary fiction—and now some of the biggest names in fiction—with the addition of the flagship Doubleday and Nan A. Talese Books imprints. Collectively, Doubleday

and Knopf have more than two centuries of distinguished publishing history, and Knopf Chairman Sonny Mehta is committed to supporting the great publishing traditions of their now sister imprint. The group will take on a new name, The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, and the hardcovers of all their imprints will feed the extraordinary paperback lines of Vintage and Anchor Books.

The Crown Publishing Group’s unique and editorial diverse portfolio combines lifestyle and business books, along with prominent authors and branded businesses which have long dominated their nonfiction categories. The addition of Broadway as well as Doubleday’s business and religion imprints will complement and solidify these core areas of publishing strength. The group’s high-quality nonfiction and fiction frontlist programs will feed the impressive trade paperback lists of Broadway and Three Rivers Press.

I want to stress the fact that all the imprints of Random House will retain their distinct editorial identities. These imprints and all of you who support them are the creative core of our business and essential to our success.

The newly formed publishing groups will continue to bid independently in auctions. Each group will have my full support to publish autonomously, promote aggressively, and strive for more competitive advantages in the marketplace.

Through greater collaborative efforts among the publishing, marketing and sales departments, we can sharpen our priorities, market our books more effectively, and respond more quickly and directly to a constantly changing marketplace. That, in turn, will strengthen our vital partnership with our customers.

Coordinating our online marketing and growing our digital publishing business will be further priorities.

Gina, Jenny, Sonny and I will share our more specific publishing plans and organizational structure in due course.

The highly regarded Random House Children’s Books division, led by President and Publisher Chip Gibson, will continue its remarkable publishing programs without change.

We are all proud of the hundreds of years of publishing that our combined imprints represent. In order to preserve this legacy of excellence and build upon it in the future, we must continuously examine the way we do business, and the way the business is changing. Our aim is to always be a leading force in American trade book publishing.

Because of the current economic crisis, our industry is facing some of the most difficult times in publishing history. We are very fortunate to have four of the most dynamic and accomplished publishers to lead us into this new phase of our life at Random House.

I greatly value the support of all of you who care deeply about our authors and the content and quality of the books we publish. I share your commitment to publish the best books in the best way, and I am excited about the opportunities that these changes offer us. I am convinced that our new organization, drawing on our expertise and focusing on the market with a team-oriented approach, will make our great company stronger than ever before.

Sincerely,

Markus

Janet Silver is moving from Houghton Mifflin to Nan Talese's imprint at Doubleday. Leon Neyfakh checks in with with Ms. Talese who says, "I called Janet and she sent us a list of the authors she had worked with and the ones who’d said they wanted to come with her, if not immediately then eventually." That list may include Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer. Plus: Islam observers on Wieseltier's Amis review; James Frey's PR Dream Team; Spitzer's bio; Nabokov's unfinished novel.

Doree Shafrir watches Lifetime and finds that, "the network has managed to replace its formerly interchangeable, and wholly forgettable, slate of made-for-TV movies with fare that’s based on trade-fiction women’s-book-group staples, like the very successful broadcast of Kim Edwards’s The Memory Keeper’s Daughter."

Also in this issue: Frank McCourt prefers bars to blogs; Tom Brokaw's bison; Salman Rushdie goes to the mat for David Mamet; Ana Marie Cox on Arianna Huffington's latest book: and will The Economist move way down town?

“I’m not a blog man,” said Irish author Frank McCourt, in his melodious brogue. “I’ve read two in my life. I really don’t like to be sequestered in a room with a screen. I’d rather sit in a bar and listen to some guy uttering platitudes. You need time to think for yourself; I can’t absorb it all anymore. A book is enough, and a bar.” He gulped some more red wine.

Then the writer Gay Talese and his wife, Nan, an editor at Doubleday, swept in. Mr. Talese professed some weariness with PEN. “It’s very quick to judge lack of candor in other countries,” he said, with a mischievous, contented look on his face. “Like this Don DeLillo thing about signing petitions against China... Oh man, don’t get me started.”

But the Transom had and there would be no stopping him.

“I so will not sign that little circular letter under the auspices of PEN and with the distinguished Don DeLillo showing us the way, uh-uh, leave me off. I want China to have a wonderful Olympics!”

And another thing: “Believe me, if tonight someone says, ‘Now in memory of Norman Mailer, our former president, I’m going to get a glass and throw it in the air!” He said that in neglecting Mr. Mailer for too long, the organization had lost the right to celebrate his legacy.

Writer Michael Cunningham scoffed at Mr. Talese’s criticism. “The PEN awards will be at Gay Talese’s funeral,” he said. “I can’t imagine an era when writers are so disregarded as to be coming out against any attempt to recognize any writer under any circumstances. And Norman Mailer could write rings around Gay Talese.” Oh, snap. “Don’t quote me on that.” Oops!

Playwright Tony Kushner was gabbing away merrily with a clutch of bookish-looking women. He said he is currently reading The Rest Is Noise, by New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, and lots of stuff on Abraham Lincoln, for the screenplay he’s writing.

“When you’ve got a play that’s getting in trouble with some right-wing asshole group in Illinois, you can call on PEN and they’ll write a letter,” he said.

Co-chair Tina Brown, looking glamorous in a black blouse with a plunging neckline (hello, boys!), began the ceremony with a tribute to Mr. Mailer, crediting him for, among other things, founding this party. Mr. Talese elected to pump his fist rather than hurl his glass.

The evening, which honored author Toni Morrison, was emceed by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

Plastic surgery expert Alex Kuczynski left early to see her newborn son, Maxime, named after her grandfather. The big blond bouncing boy had just been born 11 days earlier, via surrogate.

Back in January, Ms. Silver and several other editors at Houghton Mifflin were made redundant as part of the company’s merger with Harcourt.

But Ms. Silver and Ms. Talese may have the better end of the stick: The author list Ms. Silver built at Houghton, which included Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer, did not play a small role in Ms. Talese’s desire to recruit her.

“I called Janet and she sent us a list of the authors she had worked with and the ones who’d said they wanted to come with her, if not immediately then eventually,” Ms. Talese said. “We ran down the financials and ... we made an agreement with her that she would stay up there in Massachusetts. It was all done in a rather good fashion.”

So far, Ms. Silver has formally moved three of her authors to her new list at Doubleday: Monique Truong, Peter Ho Davies and John Pipkin. That leaves about a dozen more, all of whom, according to Ms. Silver, could still end up following her to Doubleday.

That means Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer are in play. Mr. Foer, according to Ms. Silver, couldn’t think of changing houses when she got her job because he’d just turned in the manuscript for his forthcoming nonfiction book about vegetarianism. After that one is published, Mr. Foer will only owe Harcourt Houghton Mifflin one more book: a Passover Haggadah. After that, he’ll be free to find a new publisher. And Mr. Roth, who only signs contracts for one book at a time, will be a free agent after his next book, Indignation, comes out this September; according to Ms. Silver, he is already working on a new novel.

Ms. Talese has put in a call to Mr. Roth’s agent, Andrew Wylie, and told him the author was welcome at her imprint.

It would be a natural move, Ms. Talese explained to Pub Crawl Monday. "When I was first in publishing I was a line editor on Philip's first and second novels. He knows me and I know him and he knows [her journalist husband] Gay. So it's just up to him. Things change so quickly in publishing."

Ms. Talese has reason to be optimistic: when she left Houghton Mifflin for Doubleday in 1988, she was allowed to bring all her authors-including Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan-- with her. The fact that Houghton Mifflin, once a beloved, ambitious literary house, has been all but dismantled as a result of the Harcourt merger, suggests that authors will be even more eager to jump ship now than they were when Ms. Talese went through this twenty years ago.

At Houghton, Ms. Silver edited books by Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Jonathan Safran Foer, and a score of other well-known writers. Many in the publishing industry were dismayed when news of her ouster broke. 

In a statement from Doubleday issued this morning, Ms. Talese is quoted as saying, “Over the course of her distinguished career, Janet has nurtured an impressive array of talented writers, providing them the level of support and care their work so richly deserved... Her now joining our imprint is such a natural match, and I am thrilled to welcome her as a colleague.”

But Ms. Talese truly had no idea what she was in for.

“I was asked to go onto a program that was going to have James on it, and then I was going to be joined by Frank Rich and Richard Cohen to talk about ‘Truth in America.’ That was the program,” Ms. Talese said by phone this past weekend. As she was walking onto the set of the special live broadcast, however, she was informed that the theme of the show had been changed to something called “The James Frey Controversy.” Ms. Talese was surprised.

A spokesperson from Harpo Productions said that the company had no comment.

So yet another “truth”—this time from the jaws of Harpo itself—is called into question. Ms. Talese might never have agreed to appear on the show had she known Ms. Winfrey’s full intentions. The resulting televised spectacle was less a dissection of the lies that comprise modern American life and how they led to Mr. Frey’s fabrications, than an opportunity for Ms. Winfrey to vent her anger on Mr. Frey and Ms. Talese—in essence, on the entire book business.

Suddenly called upon to defend the troubled industry she’s worked in for decades, Ms. Talese faltered.

“I hoped I would have the opportunity to explain that publishing is a business of trust—we trust our authors are telling the truth,” said Ms. Talese later, outlining what she had wanted to say. “Fact checkers will no more protect people against those who do not honor truth any more than they protect the public against newspapers, television, bloggers—the Internet is rife with misinformation—or indeed from politicians and corporations. So in the end, it depends on honor, trust and character. And, indeed, forgiveness for mistakes.”

Mercy evidently was not on the schedule that day. But what was also clear was that the publishing veteran was unable to adequately explain how this particular mistake happened or, as many have suggested, sufficiently accept responsibility for it. Ultimately, Ms. Talese was taking the fall for a business long known to be ailing—one desperate for the next gimmicky novel or sappy memoir to bail it out of a gloomy fiscal year and satisfy its corporate owners.

Back in Oprah-world, angered by personal humiliation fueled by critical newspaper columns and viewer e-mails, Ms. Winfrey aggressively reduced Ms. Talese and Mr. Frey to puddles on the couch. Ms. Talese said that Mr. Frey was “reeling” on the flight back to New York from Chicago.

Ms. Talese said that she’d initially been reluctant to appear on the show at all and actually said no at first. But Mr. Frey had already agreed. Ms. Winfrey was the one who had asked him to appear on Larry King Live on Jan. 11, and he felt that he had to do Ms. Winfrey’s show as well, Ms. Talese said, since she had made his book such a success. So after repeated calls from Oprah’s people, Ms. Talese relented and agreed to talk publicly about “Truth in America.”

Explaining how the publishing industry failed its public was another matter entirely.

Ms. Talese’s meek performance on TV only emphasized something she has in common with many of her publishing colleagues. In those circles, there is outrage over Mr. Frey’s deceptions, but there is no strong belief that Ms. Talese or Doubleday did anything wrong in the handling of his book in the first place.

THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY BEARS THE WEIGHT of contradictory expectations: It must make money, as well as maintain the illusion that it’s one of the last bastions of highbrow culture. Which leaves book editors and publishers with the impossible task of creating products that will both sell at Costco and serve as intellectual currency at Upper West Side dinner parties.

But if the publishing business wants to keep shacking up with Oprah—and perhaps save face post-Frey—it might have to start paying better attention to distinctions such as fiction and nonfiction, memoir and “autobiographical novel,” reality and “emotional truth.” Ms. Winfrey represents the millions of Middle Americans who don’t trust the “liberal media” and who buy best-sellers at Wal-Mart; New York publishing prides itself on certain intellectual standards. Somewhere in between lies the watchful Google eye. As the financial incentives for exaggeration in art and life have grown exponentially, so have the opportunities to get caught. A permanent alliance between publishers and Ms. Winfrey’s millions signifies the end of the gentleman’s handshake.

Yet, like Ms. Talese, many—perhaps most—people in the book business claim they don’t think that anything is wrong with the old way of doing things, which explains the clash of civilizations apparent on Ms. Winfrey’s show. Thus far, it seems that no major changes will be made to ensure that future memoirs will be more truthful.

“It worked until now. I’ve only been doing it for 30 years,” said one veteran literary agent, who wouldn’t speak for attribution.

“Most authors are law-abiding authors, but you get one in 1,000 who is a nutcase, and no magazine, no book publisher, can defend against that,” said another, who also requested anonymity.

“It will change for a nanosecond because of the fear factor,” said one publisher at a well-regarded house. “If you hope to book somebody on Larry King, you’ll ask harder questions of that writer so nothing explodes in your face. The biggest terror everyone has right now is that Oprah will suddenly say ‘Oh, to hell with it’ and stop doing her book club.”

When asked why the publisher, like the others, refused to speak for attribution, the person admitted it was because they were in the throes of their own memoir panic, revisiting the books in their catalog.

“I don’t want to call attention to them in any way,” the publisher said. “I’m sure they’ll check out and everything, but …. ”

Additionally, the criticism from columnists and reporters and reviewers from newspapers and magazines—which run corrections every day—strikes the publishing people as pure hypocrisy. The nagging about fact-checking seems both naïve and impossible to execute.

“Having journalists pointing fingers at fact checkers … it’s not like it doesn’t happen with The Washington Post and The New York Times,” said Daniel Halpern, the editorial director of Ecco Press. “I just don’t know if fact-checking is the only answer. I think it’s got to be a combination of the legal people, some kind of fact-checking, and maybe the relationship between the author and editor, to catch the majority of the problems.”

Morgan Entrekin, the publisher of Grove/Atlantic, ran through the economics of hiring underpaid 20-year-olds to look up facts: “How much can one person employed at $35,000 a year fact-check—10,000 words a week?” said Mr. Entrekin. “That means they can do four 125,000-word books a year, so that adds $8,000 to $10,000 in costs to each book. If it’s going to sell three million copies, that’s no problem, but many books sell only 5,000 copies, which would be a burden.”

However, Mr. Entrekin continued, “this is a very important issue, and we as an industry need to make sure that we’re very clear about this, because there is a sort of erosion of truth, with the Internet and the new media and reality TV. And the authority that is conferred on a book that comes from Random House—one of most prestigious publishers in the English language—is a very precious thing, and it’s got to be guarded very carefully.”

When asked whether he felt that book publishers should accept the standards and transparency of someone like Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, Mr. Halpern of Ecco paused.

“I would hate to think that I would put a book out there that was a distortion of the truth, that caused people the kind of pain that this evidently caused people,” Mr. Halpern said. “Nobody’s in publishing to make money. You’re putting books out there because you’re on a kind of mission, because you believe you have a taste in literature, whether fiction or nonfiction, and you want to share that, and you want to publish books that change people’s lives. You do the best you can to not have this happen. Not for the embarrassment of it, but for the immorality of it.”

THE HUMILIATION THAT MS. TALESE SUFFERED on network television was felt viscerally by many of her colleagues. But surely Ms. Talese’s former protégé, the young, media-savvy Sean McDonald, was having the strongest stirrings of remorse, watching his old boss take lashings for a book that he acquired and edited?

Mr. McDonald has resisted explaining his role in the Frey mess (he didn’t return calls from The Observer). But it is believed in the industry that he and Mr. Frey are extremely close and that he bears some responsibility for Mr. Frey’s deceptions. (Ms. Talese said that she has had little contact with Mr. McDonald since the drama began.) So why hasn’t Mr. McDonald come forward?

Mr. McDonald and Mr. Frey are known to be buddies who socialize and watch sports together. According to a transcript of a panel discussion between the two of them on Mediabistro.com in Oct. 2005, Mr. Frey said: “We’re friends. We do a lot of stuff outside of publishing and writing and we talk about shit that has nothing to do with work and for me that has been a very important part of it because I trust a friend who’s giving me good advice, as opposed to a boss who’s giving me an order.”

The editor brought Mr. Frey with him from Doubleday to the Riverhead imprint at Penguin in 2003, where he published Mr. Frey’s next work, My Friend Leonard, and developed a buzzy reputation (an “editor-as-rock-star-type” profile of him was underway at New York magazine before the scandal broke). Leonard was published in hardback with Riverhead’s standard disclaimer notifying readers that identifying details had been altered.

However, the timing of Mr. McDonald’s next contract with his celebrity author raises questions.

On Jan. 5, the online newsletter Publishers Lunch reported that Mr. McDonald had signed Mr. Frey to two more books, including a novel. (The deal is thought to be a generous one, well into the seven figures.) Three days later, on Jan. 8, the Smoking Gun posted its lengthy exposé, the result of a six-week investigation, indicating that Mr. Frey had spoken with them several times since Dec. 1—well before his book deal with Riverhead was signed.

Whether Mr. Frey had shared this information with Mr. McDonald is unclear. Regarding Mr. Frey’s new two-book deal, a Riverhead spokesperson said: “The ground has shifted. It’s under discussion.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Frey’s agent, Ms. Evashevski of the Hollywood agency Brillstein-Grey, told Publishers Weekly that she never sent his first book out as a novel, as Mr. Frey has repeatedly maintained.

She also disclosed that she has dropped Mr. Frey as a client.

Ms. Evashevski, who mostly works with movie types, not authors—in Hollywood, not New York publishing—had this to say to PW’s Sara Nelson about why she wouldn’t stand behind Mr. Frey: “It became impossible for me to maintain a relationship once the trust had been broken.”

"I apologize, I was wrong," Ms. Winfrey said, about her support of author James Frey. The Smoking Gun released an investigation of disputed facts in Mr. Frey's memoir, A Million Little Pieces, earlier this month. She also said, "I regret my phone call to Larry King," referring to her live phone call to the talk show host, in which she blamed the publishing industry for not disclaiming the memoir. "The truth matters," Ms. Winfrey said, and: "My judgement was clouded."

Mr. Frey's publisher, Nan Talese, said on the show that she found the whole experience sad. "It's not sad for me," said Ms. Winfrey. "It is embarrassing."

After a number of disclosures, including his inability to recall whether he had actually experienced the infamous root canal without pain medication that he recounted in his memoir, Mr. Frey said that "there were no other major issues." No questions were asked about the title character of Mr. Frey's second memoir, My Friend Leonard.

--Choire Sicha