Suppose There Will Be Any Newts In Heaven?
Author Barbara Kingsolver (“Pigs in Heaven,” “Animal Dreams”) is none too pleased to share publishers with Newt Gingrich.
Kingsolver says HarperCollins’ contract with the House speaker for his book “To Renew America” is “part of the current trend in American publishing I don’t like, to throw millions of dollars at things I consider nonbooks - certainly nonliterary - by nonwriters. It’s pap, and it’s marketed as some sort of celebrity book.”
HarperCollins clients include Oliver North, Dan Quayle and Kato Kaelin. “If you added up what is spent for those books, it would be the gross national product of a small African country,” complains Kingsolver. “I’m not saying that they should pay me more money, but when you make a comparison, the scales just don’t tip, they collapse.”
Loose talk
Newswoman Diane Sawyer, on her $7 million salary (in USA Weekend): “We all know we don’t deserve as much (money) as a great teacher or, in my mind, a great plumber. Given a choice between Baryshnikov and a plumber, I would have to choose a plumber.”
Didn’t he used to play football or something?
O.J. Simpson turns 48 today.
Maybe he’s doing some diplomacy on the sly
Arnold Schwarzenegger, in Israel to open yet another Planet Hollywood restaurant, released a white dove from the roof and later met with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to discuss “some of the important things in the peace negotiations that are going on now, which I’m fascinated with.”
Hopefully, his career will be over by then
“Entertainment Tonight” anchor-cum-musician John Tesh informed President Clinton he was too busy to perform at the recent 50th anniversary celebration for the United Nations, but added that he’d have some free time in October.
You would, too, if you had to deal with Bosnia
By the way, one of the catering staff for the U.N. bash reports that Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali drinks Dewar’s White Label at breakfast.
And that’s the brief history of the relationship
Disabled British physicist Stephen Hawking plans to wed one of his nurses, who was formerly married to the designer of a computer-linked voice synthesizer that he uses to communicate. Hawking’s own ex-wife, Jane Wilde, told the Daily Telegraph: “He is in the grip of forces that he can’t control, and which broke up our home.”
But she’ll probably never make up with him
Fallen evangelist Jim Bakker, whose career crumbled following an affair with church secretary Jessica Hahn, is still carrying a torch for former wife Tammy Faye. “The walls are covered with pictures of Tammy Faye, and there’s a statue of her on the table,” a neighbor told Penthouse magazine. “It’s obvious he’s still in love with her.”
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino