Friday, March 1, started out an exceptionally fine day for David Vise and Morgan Entrekin. The two ambitious men had every reason to believe that their impressive, high-powered, East Coast careers were right on schedule to arc even higher. After all, Vise had written—and Entrekin had published—a book about Robert Hanssen, the FBI counterintelligence agent who became a Soviet spy. That book, The Bureau and the Mole, was sitting at No. 4 on The New York Times' vaunted nonfiction best-seller list.
The men, both of whom were raised in Nashville only a stone's throw apart, had left the city behind in the 1970s and never looked back. Entrekin, who grew up in affluent Belle Meade, took off for Stanford University. Vise, raised less than two miles away on Beekman Drive in Forest Hills, headed for the University of Pennsylvania. While they didn't know one another as kids, their career trajectories, with Entrekin based in New York and Vise in Washington, D.C., ultimately fused them together.
Entrekin, 47, is the long-haired, intellectual wunderkind of the New York book publishing world. As president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic, he is the brains behind one of the last—and most successful—independently owned publishing shops in the country. From his artsy offices in Lower Manhattan's Union Square area, with books piled high in every nook and cranny, he has published a string of big books that have ridden high on the New York Times best-seller list. Among those blockbusters have been Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, published in 1997, and Mark Bowden's 1999 thriller Black Hawk Down, which is now playing to packed houses in movie theaters around the country.
On March 1, Entrekin had yet another hit on his hands. The Bureau and the Mole—the inside story of Hanssen, the FBI agent who became a spy for Moscow—was still perched high on the Times' prestigious list, a list it had first cracked on Feb. 3.
If this was a happy time for Entrekin, the 41-year-old Vise also had reason to rejoice. A veteran Washington Post reporter, Vise had garnered a Pulitzer Prize in 1990 at the tender journalistic age of 29 for a series on the Securities and Exchange Commission. (After news of that Pulitzer leaked, legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee wandered over to Vise's desk in the newsroom, shook the young reporter's hand and boomed out, "You're awfully young to be winning one of these.") The Bureau and the Mole was not Vise's first book, but it was the first time that the enterprising reporter had hit the big time. In conjunction with Jerry Bruckheimer Films and Disney's Touchstone Pictures, Vise was hard at work on the movie version of his best-seller. He was also in promotion overdrive, appearing on The Today Show, The O'Reilly Factor, Don Imus' radio/cable TV program and National Public Radio.
In fact, the high-energy Vise seemed to be everywhere. In the fickle and competitive media world, where stars rise and fall with breathtaking speed, Vise was well on his way to becoming the latest media darling. His ship was finally coming in. It had to be heady stuff.
All that changed March 1.
A short breaking news story, headlined "Hanssen Author's Behavior as Enigmatic as His Subject," appeared that day on an online news service, PW Newsline. The article suggested that Vise might have purchased thousands of copies of his own book—as many as 17,000, from online retailer Barnesandnoble.com —to inflate the sales reported to The New York Times in determining its best-seller list. Later, the story added, he had returned most of the books. Naturally, some speculated that because he returned so many books, the purchase had been made for no other reason than to climb the list.
By most journalistic standards, the PW Newsline story was a shoddy one, relying on unnamed sources and innuendo. It had been written by Steven Zeitchik, a relatively obscure reporter, for the online news outlet affiliated with Publisher's Weekly, a trade magazine. Unfortunately for Vise, PW Newsline had rushed the story into print before the reporter had been able to get in touch with him and hear his version of events. "We were on deadline," Zeitchik now says. "It seemed to be a legitimate story, and we weren't sure if Vise was ever going to talk to us." Suddenly, both Entrekin and Vise were in damage-control mode, at the center of the proverbial media maelstrom.
On March 5, Zeitchik wrote a second story that included Vise's version of events. At this point, it became even clearer that Zeitchik and his news service were more interested in stirring the pot than in producing responsible journalism. The second dispatch once again tried to hammer home the point that Vise must have done something improper, and relied in large part on the comments of Geoff Shandler, who had edited The Spy Next Door, a competing book about Hanssen.
Published by Little, Brown, Shandler's book had not cracked the Times' list. Shandler was quoted as saying, "If true [that Vise intended to manipulate the list], it's atrocious behavior. It breaks the rules of fair play. It hurts publishers and authors who play by the rules." Shandler had no firsthand knowledge of what Vise did or didn't do, and clearly, he was not an objective source.
The New York Times itself then weighed in on the matter on March 6 with a story in its business section. The Times stated that Vise had "left many in the book industry suspicious of his actions." Not wanting to leave themselves open to criticism that they had gone easy on one of their own, Vise's editors at The Washington Post quickly assigned a reporter to the story and a day later published their own ambivalent analysis of the episode.
Under the headline "A Case of Strange Book-Keeping," Post writer Linton Weeks concluded only that "much is murky." Murky, indeed. Although the Times and Post had both covered the story, neither had unequivocally concluded that Vise had acted improperly.
Typically, in situations like these, the publisher and editor circle their wagons and stand together against the media onslaught. Certainly, that's what Boston-based publisher Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. did under somewhat similar circumstances in 1995. At that time, Business Week magazine revealed that authors Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema had spent at least $250,000 secretly buying their own book, The Discipline of Market Leaders, at bookstores around the country that reported their sales to The New York Times for use in compiling the best-seller list.
Even though the authors were caught red-handed trying to buy their way onto the Times' list, both they and their publisher continued to deny wrongdoing. But the Times itself acknowledged that the devious plot had worked and quickly changed the way its best-seller list was compiled. Shortly after the incident, the newspaper began calling attention to those books on its list that were the subject of bulk buying. (The paper places a dagger graphic next to book titles that are the subject of bulk buys.)
But to this day the Times does not exclude the books purchased in bulk buys when tallying its best-seller list—unless specifically instructed to do so by the bookstore. Asked if Barnesandnoble.com had given specific instructions to the Times to disregard Vise's purchases, a spokesperson for the national bookstore chain dodged the question, confirming only that the retailer "reports our bulk orders to the Times."
The bottom line: It is readily apparent that his purchases could have—and almost certainly did—affect the Times' list. Still, it seems equally unlikely that this was Vise's intention.
Throughout the ensuing media circus, Vise has been unapologetic and vitriolic in defending his actions. Entrekin has responded much more coolly and thoughtfully. To put it simply, these two native Nashvillians have had very different responses to the current controversy.
Vise has come out swinging. He has denied wrongdoing, willingly shared his own credit card receipts to prove his innocence, and taken on all comers. In presenting his defense, though, he has often come across as too red-faced and daffy to have much credibility. Vise appeared on Don Imus' show shortly after the controversy began; one Nashvillian who saw the broadcast characterized Vise as "comic, babbling, unbelievable and wacko—with an emphasis on the wacko." In another New York Times story on the book-buying incident this week, Imus himself told the paper that when Vise appeared on his show, "He was crazed, he was hollering and going on about what I could do to put his book on the list and get it up to No. 1."
In a rambling, two-part interview with the Scene last week that lasted more than three hours, Vise was variously charming, thoughtful and incoherent. Largely unprompted by questions, he discoursed in a hoarse and raspy voice about his charitable work in Washington, D.C., his children, his devotion to his parents and his appreciation of life and freedom. He came across as sincere, genuine and likable—like a lost puppy.
Entrekin has also been readily available to the media ever since Vise's book-buying episode. Most reporters have bought Entrekin's version of events and feel he has stuck carefully to the truth. His responses have come across as measured, responsible and believable. This much is certain: Entrekin appears to have more loyalty to the truth than he does to clearing Vise's name. By his own admission, the publisher can ill afford to lose any personal credibility with would-be authors and book retailers.
Thus Entrekin hasn't exactly climbed out on a media limb on behalf of Vise, having told The Times that the author "may have been naive or overly optimistic about demand for his book." To the Post, the publisher explained, "David has been a dynamic promoter, but he's gotten a little overenthusiastic. The book was having great success, but not at the level he was perceiving." To be sure, Entrekin has not quite come out and said he thinks Vise tried to goose the Times' list. But he's come damn close.
If the answers the two men provide reveal striking similarities and differences, their respective backgrounds do as well. Both grew up in white, upper-income, well-educated circles in Nashville. But with homes only blocks apart, they could just as well have been continents away.
Vise is a first-generation American. His grandfather, Alfred Vise, was a prominent German intellectual and rabbi who, by an extraordinary stroke of luck, was released from a Nazi concentration camp in 1938. Upon leaving Germany, Rabbi Vise, his wife and their 17-year-old son Harry found their way to Tennessee, where Harry started a company to capitalize on the fashion tastes of his new countrymen: the manufacture of cowboy boots. Texas Boot Company, located in nearby Lebanon, became a large commercial enterprise, and he and his wife raised three children, of whom David was the youngest. After he sold his company in the 1960s, the Vises led a comfortable life in their home just outside the Belle Meade city limits.
David Vise was the classic "Mr. Everything" at University School of Nashville, from which he graduated in 1978, and at The Temple, where he was active in Jewish youth affairs. He edited the school newspaper and played on the basketball and tennis teams. "It was always clear that David was going to amount to something," recalls David Fox, a childhood acquaintance and editor of NashvillePost.com. "He was blessed with a really outgoing personality and a great brain." Vise, then and now, seems to bubble with enthusiasm for life. Another childhood acquaintance says Vise was "annoyingly popular and well-adjusted."
Graduating as a co-valedictorian of his high school class, Vise went through the five-year MBA program at the University of Pennsylvania. One summer, when he was only an intern at The Tennessean, he says he convinced then-editor John Seigenthaler to let him start the business section at the paper. Seigenthaler says he has no specific memory of Vise launching The Tennessean's business section, explaining, "It's not something I would have done, since I had a business editor, but I believe David may have done 90 percent of the work." Again, Vise is not dissembling; in his own mind, he surely believes he launched that section. To be sure, Seigenthaler did recall that Vise "was a star from the first day he walked into the newsroom."
Few were surprised when the bright, affable and self-confident Vise won the Pulitzer in his 20s. By all accounts, he's always been a chronic and enthusiastic overachiever who fervently believes in himself.
Six years older than Vise, Entrekin has Southern roots that run far deeper, with the lineage on his mother's side tracing back to Alvin Hawkins, the Republican governor of Tennessee in the early 1880s. Entrekin's late father, Ervin, was a prominent Nashville attorney and a founder of the law firm Tune, Entrekin & White.
If the smarter sons and daughters of Nashville's well-heeled Jewish families have traditionally attended University School, many of the city's prominent Protestants have sent their male offspring to Montgomery Bell Academy. There, Entrekin wore his hair as long as he could get away with, was president of the Student Council and was known as a noted intellect in a highly intellectual class. "Then and now, Morgan was straightforward and of the utmost integrity," says MBA classmate and lifelong friend Tim Douglas, a Nashville businessman.
Never married, Entrekin had a reputation as a Manhattan party boy in his younger days. "In every superficial aspect, Morgan does not fit your typical stereotype of the MBA guy," reports Brad Gioia, the headmaster of MBA, upon whose advisory board Entrekin sits.
When Entrekin left Stanford, he eventually journeyed to New York and hit it big as a Simon & Schuster editor, buying—in a two-year period—a number of best-sellers, including Richard Ford's The Sportswriter and Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis. Fresh off that success, Entrekin—along with old friend Gary Fisketjon—started his own publishing shop in partnership with Atlantic Monthly Press. He quickly leapt onto the national publishing stage, attracting an enviable stable of writers that included P.J. O'Rourke, Jim Harrison and Tom Stoppard. Entrekin's imprint has gone through several incarnations, but by virtue of his literary acumen, he has consistently been able to recruit significant writers to his company, often for less money than they might receive elsewhere.
"One of the things I have tried to do in my career as a publisher," Entrekin says, "is to take chances, to take on authority. Still, you try to live your life in a certain way, from the values you get from your parents and your school. I am the sort of person who always tries to tell the truth, to be fair."
Given his desire to be honest and objective, Entrekin simply can't say with any certainty whether Vise acted improperly. "As far as the situation with David goes," he says when pressed on the question, "I have tried to get to the bottom of it, to figure out what happened and to speak honestly about it. But only David knows what his motivations were."
In a nutshell, here's a thumbnail sketch of what Vise says happened. Ever the innovative marketer, the author created his own Web site (www.bureauandthemole.com), from which he said he planned to sell books. In fact, he envisioned the creation of "virtual book signings," in which readers could get autographed and personally inscribed copies of a book without having to go to a bookstore.
Vise now says he intended to buy only around 4,000 copies of his book from Barnesandnoble.com, to keep in his garage to sell. Customarily, authors get a certain number of complimentary copies directly from their publisher; if they want additional copies, they purchase them from the publisher at a greatly reduced cost. But Vise did not do this because, he says, Barnesandnoble.com was offering free shipping. As well, he could get a discount on the books as a frequent buyer there, and at the same time, he'd receive author's royalties on every book sold. The bottom line, according to Vise, is that he was trying to buy the books cheaply. (The question remains, though, whether he actually ended up saving money this way.)
In any event, Vise twice returned shipments to Barnesandnoble.com after the bookseller lowered its price. Due to the limitations of the bookseller's accounting systems, Vise said he was told by staffers that if he wanted his books at the cheaper price, he would have to return the ones he had already ordered and place a new order. (When major books hit best-seller lists, as Vise's book did, retailers typically cut their prices.) As well, due to a mix-up with his credit card, Vise says he twice received double batches of his books. Nonetheless, when Barnesandnoble.com staffers noticed the large volume of books being ordered and returned by Vise, they became suspicious. In a huff, they called Grove/Atlantic.
According to the March 6 account in the Times, Vise said his only mistake "was failing to discuss his plans with Mr. Entrekin, who says he would have sold Mr. Vise the books for the lowest online price." In fact, that was not Vise's only mistake.
For one, The Times' article quoted anonymous Barnesandnoble.com executives as saying his explanation is "implausible." The Times originally explained that sources at the book retailer "said the majority of [Vise's] orders—12,000 copies—and his returns both took place after the final price reduction, to $15 a copy, and therefore could not reflect efforts to receive a new discount on previous orders. They also said that only one order, for fewer than 1,000 copies, was shipped twice."
Vise's own newspaper, in its March 7 edition, uncovered the second problem with his story. The Post simply did not find Vise's claim—that he intended to sell personalized, signed copies to the public via his Web site—to be consistent with the facts. That's because, the paper stated, there was no indication on Vise's Web site "that signed copies are available." Rather, the Post explained, "Visitors to the site are redirected to Barnes & Noble's online store or to Amazon.com or to their nearest independent bookstore or to the book's publisher, Grove/Atlantic."
Vise contends that his purchases would not have been counted toward the Times' best-seller list tallies, but his argument does not stand up to scrutiny. The stories that appeared in both The New York Times and The Washington Post badly overstated the ability of The Times' computers to weed out bulk orders in compiling the best-seller list. In reality, according to reliable sources familiar with the process, The Times' list was—and remains—surprisingly vulnerable to manipulation by bulk orders such as the ones Vise placed.
For its part, the stodgy Times continues to defend the integrity of its list. In an unsigned editorial earlier this week, the newspaper finally gave Vise a clean bill of health, arguing that the "theory that [Vise] was trying to force the book onto the best-seller lists seems unlikely, since most lists, including the New York Times', aren't easily swayed by bulk buying."
In fact, the Times' editorial writers are dead wrong. As well, they are hardly objective observers. Still, one can hardly fault the paper's top editors for trying to protect the value of the Times' best-seller franchise. In fact, this is just the same sort of pabulum that the paper's editors initially spouted during the 1995 book-buying incident; at that time, it was only later that the Times begrudgingly acknowledged that its list had been violated.
As for Vise, it remains entirely possible—if not likely—that he did not know he was manipulating the list, even as he did so.
The bottom line to many is that Vise appears to be fudging in defending his actions. For his part, the author told the Scene that "he regrets any confusion or difficulties caused by my decision to try to do a virtual book signing."
Clearly, Vise is still a man of great energy, but it is this exuberance that may have gotten him in trouble. Entrekin relates a story: He said he was left scratching his head when Vise insisted on taking 1,000 copies of his book to a book signing, when Entrekin himself had indicated that 150 should have been plenty.
Does Vise care that Entrekin hasn't gone to bat for him? He hasn't even noticed. "I have enormous respect for Morgan Entrekin and Grove/Atlantic," he says. "Grove/Atlantic is one of the last great independent publishing houses left.... It's a wonderful thing that two boys from Nashville, who grew up blocks apart, have to go all the way to New York City to meet and work on a book."
These are not prepared comments for public consumption, but rather heartfelt sentiments from a man who genuinely loves life and cares deeply about those around him. But this is a terribly sad state of affairs for Vise. In fact, it's not at all clear that he's guilty of anything other than bad luck, a distinct lack of self-awareness and extraordinary self-promotion. Yes, he has related some fibs—but he seems genuinely unaware that he wasn't speaking the truth. Thus it's entirely possible to believe that he didn't intentionally try to goose the Times' list.
Speaking before the Nashville Rotary Club earlier this week, Vise continued to protest his innocence. Responding to a critical article that had run in The Tennessean over the weekend and had raised legitimate concerns about his book-buying episodes, Vise said, "I have never been prouder of The Tennessean and [of former colleague] Frank Sutherland, because the hardest thing for a newspaper editor to do is to run a story that raises questions about someone with whom you have a great relationship and love." Still, Vise told the packed audience at the Wildhorse Saloon, "Sometimes you can't believe everything you read."
Given Vise's profession, those words have a uniquely sad ring to them—a recognition that even in the world of journalism and publishing, much remains open to debate and interpretation. His own story couldn't be a more obvious example of that. But no matter how hard it may be to get to the bottom of what happened with The Bureau and the Mole, Vise—the bootmaker's son, dedicated family man and inside-the-Beltway marketing whiz kid—will forever be the writer whose reputation is somehow tainted. That may not be fair, but that's the way it will be.
