At least since the New Testament Gospels recorded Jesus' rather harsh verbal exchanges with his fellow Jews, conflict within a given faith tradition hasn't exactly hurt efforts to sell books. On the contrary, part of what gives, say, the Gospel of John its air of tension and excitement is the buzzing hostility back and forth between Jesus and his Jewish contemporaries.
And so it is today. When religion is the subject, publishers and booksellers agree that controversy can help get out the message. This is especially the case where the religion is led by a tightly organized hierarchy, as in the Roman Catholic Church, or where there is a single ancient and fairly unified tradition for dissenters to run up against, as in Judaism. Having an orthodoxy to kick around guarantees a certain degree of excitement. By contrast, Protestantism is defined historically by dissent, so there tend to be fewer occasions for conflict because every faction is free simply to launch its own denomination.
Broadly speaking, books spark disputes within a faith for two reasons: either because respected persons in the religion are shown in a negative light or because forbidden ideas are articulated.
In the first category, the principle story of interest to Catholics over the past year has been the scandal of sexual abuse by priests, and the related decline in the authority of Church leadership. Joining the spate of books published last year, a flood of new and forthcoming titles on the twin crises has begun to wash over bookstores. Titles include New York Times religion columnist Peter Steinfels's A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America (S&S, Aug.), Newsweek reporter David France's Our Fathers: The Secret Life of the Catholic Church in an Age of Scandal (Broadway, Aug.), David Carlin's The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America (Sophia Institute Press, May), David Gibson's The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful Are Shaping a New American Catholicism (Harper SF, Aug.), Anita M. Caspary's Witness to Integrity: The Crisis of the Immaculate Heart Community of California (Liturgical, Mar.), and Raymond Hedin's Married to the Church (an updated version of the 1995 original to be published this spring by Indiana Univ.).
Farrar, Straus & Giroux has high hopes for its contribution to the genre, Paul E. Dinter's The Other Side of the Altar: One Man's Life in the Catholic Priesthood (Mar.). Editor Paul Elie expects hostility from within the Catholic Church: the book takes a critical stance toward priestly celibacy and relates stories of a certain unnamed bishop sleeping with fellow members of the clergy. Elie tells PW, "I don't think the bishops are going to like the accusation that they are principally to blame for the sex abuse crisis." But attacks generate sales, so would Elie welcome them? "I wouldn't put it so simply," he says, reflecting the genteel tradition of FSG. "I don't think that our ultimate purpose is to sell books."
By contrast, Alfred S. Regnery, president of Regnery Publishing, welcomes controversy without reservation. In June he brought out last year's most controversial Catholic book, Michael S. Rose's Goodbye, Good Men, which charges that a gay mafia dominates many of the nation's Catholic seminaries. Says Regnery, "You want controversy around a book like this. Frankly, it helps." In this case, it generated sales of more than 50,000 copies of the 80,000 so far printed. The key to the marketing campaign for the book was radio, with Rose doing some 200 to 250 interviews. It didn't hurt either when Rose threatened legal action against a priest in Michigan whose criticisms of him in print, on radio and on the Internet had, according to Rose's attorney, crossed over into libel.
In the category of dangerous ideas, books written or published by members of Catholic religious orders periodically come under Vatican investigation for possible suppression. A recent example is Father Roger Haight, professor of systematic theology at Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass. His 1999 book Jesus, Symbol of God (Orbis) landed him in hot water with the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which barred him from teaching while the investigation continues. His book suggests that Jesus may not be the only avenue to salvation.
Catholic bookstores affiliated with religious orders are naturally wary of carrying titles like these. Sister Nancy Usselmann, manager of Manhattan's Pauline Books and Media, explains that her order, the Daughters of St. Paul—which runs a chain of bookstores worldwide—is guided by a review process conducted from the order's Boston home office. In the case of Goodbye, Good Men, the decision came down that "no, this is not really appropriate for our customers," because Michael Rose "misrepresents the majority of seminaries." As for Father Haight, Sister Nancy says, "We don't carry him because it could be confusing to people. Someone might come in and say, 'Is this what the Church is teaching now?' Well, no, it's not."
A bookseller with a Catholic clientele but without a formal church affiliation will of course have an easier time. Jack Cella, manager of operations for Chicago's Seminary Coop and Bookstore, said the name of his store is taken from the nearby Catholic Theological Union, though only 10% of the titles he stocks are religious. Asked about books on the abuse crisis, he notes, "We certainly sold them all well. I don't have to be careful about displaying controversial books because people expect controversy in books." On the other hand, "When it comes to books that are not well thought out, that are just vitriolic attacks, that's something I expect we wouldn't have an audience for."
In Judaism there is no formal mechanism for censoring ideas, but rabbis can strongly suggest that a book is not appropriate for religious Jews. That's what happened with Rabbi Jonathan Sacks's The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations (Continuum). The book was published here in November, but had already come under attack from rabbis in England who objected to ambiguous phrases hinting that Judaism might not have an exclusive claim to absolute truth ("in heaven there is truth; on earth there are truths"). The author, who is Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, declined to comment to PW, but his U.S. editor, Frank Oveis, noted that a revised second edition (paperback, Apr.) has been prepared to dispel any doubt that Rabbi Sacks is Orthodox.
Though the attack of the English rabbis generated media attention and Oveis said the book has sold "quite well" (10,000 copies), he laments that it has been ignored by reviewers—illustrating the danger that controversy can overwhelm a book's intended message. "I'm not aware of a major book by a major religious leader that has been so neglected by reviewers," he comments.
Jewish books that break entirely with traditional thought don't tend to draw such scrutiny. Take Douglas Rushkoff's Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism (Mar.), which has been getting a push from Crown with an initial printing of 25,000. In November, Rushkoff published an op-ed piece in the New York Times encapsulating the idea of his book, which is that Jews need to stop worrying about the decline in their numbers and start getting busy totally redesigning the religion for a new generation. This generated enough interest in the book that Crown was able to organize a 15-city tour. Steve Ross, senior v-p and publisher at Crown, hopes for controversy, "because the point of the book is to spark discussion. There will be some who rabidly attack his thesis."
But there's reason for skepticism that the book will attract "rabid" attacks. With its embrace of "pluralism" and "social justice" as Jewish ideals, it hardly clashes with the liberal philosophic stance of many Reform and Conservative rabbis. At the same time, Orthodox rabbis will have no cause to warn their followers from a book that so clearly speaks to a different audience.
Not that Orthodox Jews lack occasions for controversy. As a rule, the more intensely committed to religious observance, and to book-reading, the more likely believers are to erupt into intrafaith disputes. Among devout Jews, religious books are a mania because study is regarded not merely as a source of inspiration and joy, but a divinely ordained commandment equal to all other commandments put together.
Bookseller Tuvia Rotberg, talking to PW from his store, Tuvia's, in the ultra-Orthodox New York suburb of Monsey, struck a cheerfully defiant pose in regard to one recent highly controversial book. "Most booksellers won't touch it," he says, "but I don't buckle to pressure. The more you pressure me, the more likely I am to carry it." He was speaking of The Making of a Godol, by Rabbi Nathan Kamenetsky (Hamesorah Publishers, Sept. 2002), which has ultra-Orthodox Jews across the country up in arms. In Hebrew, a godol is a great rabbi, and the book is an intimate biography of the author's father, Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky—a bit too intimate for the group of prominent sages who in November signed a statement strongly urging religious Jews to stay clear of the book. Rotberg had ordered 200 copies to begin with, and told customers, "I know it's going to be banned, so grab it at $40 because it's going to be selling for $100 some day." With a waiting list of 400 would-be purchasers from around the world, Rotberg still has 15 copies stashed away, but will sell them only to regular customers. "Why should I give it to anyone who never shopped in my store?"
At Eichler's, grande dame of Orthodox bookstores, in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, the store's buyer, Yosef Chaim, expresses a more conservative approach: "We have standards. We don't want to offend anyone. We don't have a reason to get anyone nervous." Thus, at Eichler's (which has a second store in midtown Manhattan), another book that troubled religious sensibilities was treated as changing circumstances seemed to dictate. One People, Two Worlds: A Reform Rabbi and an Orthodox Rabbi Explore the Issues that Divide Them, by Ammiel Hirsch and Yosef Reinman (Schocken, Aug. 2002), was at first sold prominently in the store. Then, in October, a group of rabbis disclosed their strongly expressed view that an Orthodox rabbi (Reinman) going on publicity tour with a Reform rabbi (Hirsch) might give the impression that the two understandings of Judaism are equally valid. Reinman withdrew from a 17-city, 17-day tour as it was about to start, and Eichler's removed the book from its shelves. "But if someone asked us for it, we'd sell it to him," says Chaim.
"Did we sell more books because of the controversy? Yes," says Altie Karper, editorial director at Schocken. "But I would have been happier if the two rabbis had been able to go on tour together. The point of the book was to show that people can get along." Other editors and publishers express similarly mixed feelings about intrafaith conflict as it manifests itself in books like these. Sometimes the scandal becomes the story, and what the book itself has to say goes unheard.
Of course some books with religious themes arouse ire in their community for reasons that are sui generis. Leonard Nimoy's venture into art photography is a case in point. His book Shekhina (Umbrage Editions, Oct. 2002) features photographs of naked women cavorting while wearing Jewish prayer shawls and phylacteries. No one might have taken much note had the Jewish Federation of Seattle not invited Nimoy to speak at an October 23 fund-raising dinner, then insisted that he drop his plan to show slides from Shekhina (the Hebrew word means God's immanent presence in the world) during the speech. Nimoy took umbrage at this and withdrew from the speaking engagement, making headlines in the Seattle Times as well as the local Jewish paper and the national Jewish Forward.
"It was embarrassing for some customers to see a naked woman on the cover wrapped in a talis [prayer shawl], and you can see her nipple really clearly," says Alle Hall, marketing manager of Seattle's Tree of Life Judaica, who carried the book but felt it would be most appropriate not to display it face-out. Nevertheless, "We sold a metric buttload of those books."
All of which leaves one to wonder about the approach adopted by some Jewish and Catholic leaders for dealing with objectionable books. Whenever a book is condemned from above or otherwise perceived as having offended a religious or communal hierarchy, demand can be expected to shoot up dramatically, helping to disseminate the very ideas or images that the leadership had sought to deflect or suppress.
Does this suggest a strategy for sales-minded authors? Maybe. One Jewish writer who wouldn't at all mind a little controversy is Daniel Lapin, an Orthodox rabbi and corporate management consultant. His book, Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money (Wiley, Sept. 2002), draws on Talmudic wisdom and could be understood as implying that Jews have a special knack for money-making, an offensive notion to some. "Do you know," he asks mock-plaintively, "how I could go about having my book banned?"
Klinghoffer's most recent book is The Discovery of God: Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism (Doubleday)
