10/05/2012 - Myclipp

The New York Times/ - Politics, Ter, 15 de Maio de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Civil Rights)
Mike McGrady, Known for a Literary
Hoax, Dies at 78
Mike McGrady, a prizewinning reporter for Newsday
who to his chagrin was best known as the mastermind
of one of the juiciest literary hoaxes in America — the
best-selling collaborative novel “Naked Came the
Stranger,” whose publication in 1969 made “Peyton
Place” look like a church picnic — died on Sunday in
Shelton, Wash. He was 78 and lived in Lilliwaup,
Wash.The cause was pneumonia, said Harvey
Aronson, who with Mr. McGrady was a co-editor of the
novel, written by 25 Newsday journalists in an era
when newsrooms were arguably more relaxed and
inarguably more bibulous. Intended to be a work of no
redeeming social value and even less literary value,
“Naked Came the Stranger” by all appearances
succeeded estimably on both counts. Originally issued
by Lyle Stuart, an independent publisher known for
subversive titles, the novel was a no-holds-barred
chronicle of a suburban woman’s sexual liaisons, with
each chapter recounting a different escapade: She has
sex with a mobster and sex with a rabbi. She has sex
with a hippie and sex with at least one accountant.
There is a scene involving a tollbooth, another
involving ice cubes and still another featuring a
Shetland pony. The book’s cover — a nude woman
seen from behind — left little to the imagination, as, in
its way, did its prose: “Ernie found what Cervantes and
Milton had only sought. He thought the fillings in his
teeth would melt.” The purported author was Penelope
Ashe, who as the jacket copy told it was a “demure
Long Island housewife.” In reality, Mr. McGrady had
dreamed up the book as ironic commentary on the
public’s appetite for Jacqueline Susann and her ilk. For
interviews and public appearances, Mr. McGrady
conscripted his sister-in-law Billie Young to pose as
Mrs. Ashe. “Naked Came the Stranger,” which remains
in print, has sold about 400,000 copies, according to
its current publisher, Barricade Books, which
rereleased it in 2004. That year, The Village Voice
rapturously described the book as being “of such
perfectly realized awfulness that it will suck your soul
right out of your brainpan and through your mouth, and
you will happily let it go.” First published in summer
1969, “Naked Came the Stranger” quickly sold 20,000
copies. Later that summer, Mr. McGrady and his
co-conspirators came clean, and news of the book’s
genesis made headlines round the world. By the end
of the year, the novel had spent 13 weeks on the New
York Times best-seller list. “What has always worried
me,” Mr. McGrady told Newsday in 1990, “are the
20,000 people who bought it before the hoax was
exposed.” Michael Robinson McGrady was born in
New York City on Oct. 4, 1933. He earned a bachelor’s
degree from Yale; in 1968 and 1969, he studied at
Harvard as a Nieman fellow. For Newsday, Mr.
McGrady covered the civil rights movement and the
Vietnam War. His series of columns from the front, “A
Dove in Vietnam,” won an Overseas Press Club Award
in 1967 and was published as a book. Mr. McGrady
conceived “Naked Came the Stranger,” fittingly, in bed.
“It came after a night of reading ‘Valley of the Dolls,’ ”
he later told Newsweek, “which I couldn’t put down
because I was asleep.” Surely, he reasoned, a
newsroom full of journalism’s best and brightest could
together produce something just as schlocky — and
just as successful. He fired off a memo to his
colleagues. “As one of Newsday’s truly outstanding
literary talents, you are hereby officially invited to
become the co-author of a best-selling novel,” it read.
“There will be an unremitting emphasis on sex. Also,
true excellence in writing will be quickly blue-penciled
into oblivion.” Two dozen journalists — mostly men
and a few women — signed on, each contributing a
chapter. True to his word, Mr. McGrady rejected
submissions that were too well written. Among the
contributors was Bob Greene, Newsday’s
distinguished investigative reporter; Gene Goltz, a
Pulitzer Prize winner; and George Vecsey, a
sportswriter who went on to work for The Times.
Reviewing the novel in The Times before the hoax was
divulged, Martin Levin wrote, “In the category of erotic
fantasy, this one rates about a C,” a quotation that
quickly found its way into the book’s print
advertisements. Neither Mr. McGrady nor his
co-authors were involved in the cinematic adaptation
of “Naked Came the Stranger,” a pornographic film
released in 1975. Mr. McGrady was later a film and
restaurant critic for Newsday. His other books include
two as-told-to memoirs by the pornographic film
actress Linda Lovelace, “Ordeal” (1980) and “Out of
Bondage” (1986), and an instructional manual,
“Stranger Than Naked: Or, How to Write Dirty Books
for Fun and Profit” (1970). After an early marriage that
was dissolved, Mr. McGrady wed Corinne Young. She
survives him, along with two sons, Sean and Liam; a
daughter, Siobhan Benoit; a brother, Seamus; and five
grandchildren. Also surviving is Mr. McGrady’s
sister-in-law Billie, who went on to write books of her
own under the name Penelope Ashe.
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