HI, Carole: This is a real interesting topic. I, too, have been hearing
some controversy over his story, but I haven't found anything else as
detailed as the NY Times article. For those who haven't read it or don't
have access to it, here it is:
Dysfunction for dollars
New York Times Magazine; New York; Jul 28, 2002; Pat Jordan;
Dave Pelzer has one subject - himself, as an abused child. He may not
have been, but that hasn't stopped his readers from buying millions of
his books.
"It's not about the books," he says. "My fans are buying the DNA of
Dave." Dave Pelzer is sitting in the lobby of the Hilton in Daytona
Beach, Fla., watching college girls in bikinis run by He's a vaguely
good-looking man, vaguely nerdy, with a squinting, almost spinsterish
smile. "I was shy with girls," he says. 'At 21, 1 had this girl in my
room. I poured her a glass of wine, turned around, and she was taking
her shirt off. I said, 'I guess it's all night to kiss you."'
Pelzer, 41, the author of three autobiographical books and one self-help
book, is on his spring speaking and book-signing tour. Daytona is one of
the bigger cities on his route; most of his stops are In smaller towns.
After a speech in the morning in Daytona Beach, then a book signing
later that day, he will leave at 1 a.m., drive two hours to Orlando
Airport, catch a 6 a.m. flight to Butte, Mont., and then fly to North
Platte, Neb. I I
"I did 'Oprah' in January," he says. "My books got a little bounce, but
Oprah's not enough to make the New York Times best-seller list." Pelzer
is a man who is fairly obsessed with the New York Times best-seller
list. His first three books have been on The Times's nonfiction
paperback list for a combined total of 448 weeks, which is unprecedented
in the paper's record-keeping. The books are protected there, like
squalling eaglets that refuse to leave the nest, primarily by bulk
sales. These are large single purchases of hundreds or thousands of
copies of a book from bookstores or online booksellers. They can
significantly inflate an author's sales and are denoted by daggers on
the Times list. Late last year, all of Pelzer's books fell off the list;
then in late January his first three books miraculously reappeared in
almost the identical spots they had held for years.
Pelzer is relentless in peddling his books. He speaks more than 270 days
a year, and after many of his talks he sells copies of his books to the
crowd assembled there. To watch him work is to be put in mind of those
itinerant preachers of the early part of last century. They traveled the
dusty back roads of America, put up their revival tents in an open field
and then laid on hands and healed, or swindled, their believers. In
Pelzer's case, how much he is healing or how much he is swindling is
unclear and depends in large part on whether or not you believe the
horrific story he has so profitably told and retold and continues, day
after day, to tell.
"A CHILD CALLED `IT,'" Pelzer's first and biggest book, was published by
Health Communications Inc., a publisher of self-help books in Deerfield
Beach, Fla. Pelzer claims he got no advance and received net royalties
of only 3 to 7 percent, but his contract at H.C.I. showed that he got 15
to 20 percent of the net sale of each book. "David's always complaining
we don't appreciate him," says the company's publisher, Peter Vegso.
"David's a professional victim. I haven't a clue if his abuse stories
are true, but we kept his book in stock when it wasn't selling. Then
Dave got on Montel Williams, and there was an instant demand."
"A Child Called `It,'" a curious book told through the eyes of Pelzer as
a small child, age 4 to 12, has spent 215 weeks and counting on the
best-seller list. Over the course of 160 pages, Pelzer tells how his
mother, Catherine, burns David's arm over the kitchen stove, smears a
feces-stained diaper in his face, makes him vomit and then eat it, stabs
him in the stomach, starves him for 10 days, makes him drink ammonia and
separates him from his four brothers, who never witness his abuse.
What makes the book a riveting read for people with a taste for the
subject are Pelzer's vivid descriptions of his abuse. The stabbing is
dragged out over 13 pages. It begins: "a sharp pain erupted from just
above my stomach ... a warm sensation flowing from my chest ... where
dark red blood pumped out .. . pain ripped through my ribs and blood
seeped through my ragged T-shirt ... pinched the slit. . . . I saw a
yellowish-- white substance begin to ooze from the red, angry gash. ...
I wiped away the pus ... until blood seeped through."
His second book, "The Lost Boy" (which was published by H.C.I. in 1997
and has spent 160 weeks on the list), chronicles Pelzer's experiences in
foster homes. These are dull by comparison, so Pelzer devotes
significant space in "The Lost Boy" to rehashing the abuse incidents
from his earlier book, as well as adding some newly remembered scenes,
like the time his mother made him eat dog feces. In a recent interview,
he offered even more details, saying that it was dog feces "with worms"
and that his mother had stabbed him not in the stomach but "in the
heart." Pelzer calls himself "a storyteller," and it is hard not to read
or listen to his stories and think that this description may be a little
too on target, that his m.o. is to tell a story, gauge the response to
it and then embellish until that story reaches the limits of
believability.
After "The Lost Boy," Pelzer left H.C.I., saying he got no respect at
the publishing house, and signed two contracts with Dutton (hardcover)
and Plume (paperback) that amounted to $800,000. In "A Man Named Dave"
(his third book, published in 1999, which has spent 73 weeks on the
bestseller list), Pelzer moves away from the subject of his childhood
and adolescence. He joins the Air Force, begins speaking publicly on
child abuse,. marries, has a son, divorces and marries Marsha Donohoe,
his editor at H.C.I. Still, Pelzer seems either to know what his readers
want or is fixated on revisiting his past, and he again rehashes abuse
scenes from "A Child Called `It."' He also adds a new wrinkle,
self-pity. He is rejected by his fellow airmen and his neighbors, who
think of him as "a pasty white geek" because he doesn't drink, smoke or
take drugs as they do. And his wife, Patsy (Pelzer's pseudonym),
constantly belittles his writing. She says of "A Child Called `It'":
"That's a depressing title. It's about you, isn't it?"
He responds: "Let's just say it's a story about a kid who never quit."
Patsy is quoted in the book as saying the volume is full of garbage and
that "you're a liar." After his divorce, Pelzer meets Marsha, who, he
writes, "believed in this book. . . . with all [her] heart."
In "Help Yourself," Pelzer's most recent book (published in 2000; two
months on the business best-seller list before falling off, apparently
for good), Pelzer returns yet again to the vivid abuse scenes from his
first book, using them as a way of setting up various trite lessons:
Don't be a "pleasaholic." Learn to "psychologically purge." "Life isn't
fair."
THE BELLMAN AT the Hilton appears with a cart loaded with boxes of
Pelzer's books. Pelzer says, 'Thank you, sir," and tips the man. He
calls all men "sir," he says, because "people will do anything for you
if you call them sir."
Pelzer opens the boxes and begins signing the books, adding a smiley
face to each signature. "I buy thousands of books a year," he says. "I
get a discount." He looks up. "Oh, but I don't do it to pump up my
best-seller list," he adds. Pelzer is a timid man, always one step from
flight. He sees danger in every reaction to what he says and constantly
restates himself. If questioned too forcefully on something he doesn't
want to talk about, he checks his watch and says, "I have to go."
Pelzer frequently purchases his own books for his signings at a discount
and then sells them at list price. It is not clear whether these sales
alone keep his books on the best-seller lists. The big bookselling
chains like Barnes & Noble and Borders, as well as huge stores like
Wal-Mart and online sellers like Amazon, refuse to release specific
sales numbers. So if they sell 10,000 copies of "A Child Called `It'" in
a week, there is no way to know whether that was made up of bulk sales
or the combined individual sales from all their stores. Still, those
10,000 books would be tallied for best-seller purposes.
Pelzer's wife, Marsha, who is also the vice president of Pelzer's
company, D-Esprit, says all the books her husband sells come from "our
personal stock, which we buy from his publishers." But Pelzer admits he
buys his books from bookstores, and Vegso of H.C.I. says Pelzer buys
only a little more than 1,000 copies each of "A Child Called `It'" and
"The Lost Boy" from him in a year.
"He may be buying his books from Amazon," says Vegso. "He's not buying
enough from us to cover his speaking engagements."
The crowds at Pelzer's speaking engagements range from "300 to 3,000
people," Marsha says. "He speaks two to three times a day. We sell books
to 25 percent of the crowd." By that accounting, Pelzer is selling
between 40,000 and 400,000 of his own books, which does not include, he
says, "the thousands I give away to kids." If these numbers are even
roughly correct, then Pelzer is singlehandedly keeping his books on the
best-seller list, influencing it in the same way that David Vise, author
of "The Bureau and the Mole," was accused of doing when he bought 20,000
copies of his book from Barnesandnoble.com.
"We call it back-of-the-room selling," says Christine Belleris, H.C.Us
editorial director. "When Marsha worked for us, she went to hear David
speak, and we heard she was selling his books in the back of the room,
which we frown on. Then she quit, and he hired her."
Pelzer, still signing books, takes out a photo of his wife, an
attractive redhead. "Oh, she's a hard-nosed lady," he says. Then he
adds: "I wish this book was in a lot more hands. A psychiatrist said it
was deep, like Norman Vincent Peale meets Clint Eastwood. It is the best
tome I ever penned. It's being taught at Harvard and was a Pulitzer
Prize nominee."
Pelzer's hardcover publisher, Dutton, has no record of the book being
taught at Harvard. As for the Pulitzer nomination, it is true that
Dutton submitted two of Pelzer's books to the Pulitzer committee, though
that doesn't qualify it as a Pulitzer "nominee." The committee receives
800 unsolicited books a year and accepts them all without critical
comment. Theoretically, the committee would accept Pelzer's grocery list
as long as he filled out the proper forms and paid a $50 fee. These
books are called "entries or submissions." Only the final three,
short-listed books can truly be called "Pulitzer Prize nominees," and
Pelzer's books have never made that list.
IT IS ALMOST 11 p.m., and Pelzer is still signing books in the lobby.
"Did you know John Grisham sold his first book out of his truck?" he
says. "It's honorable. I learned from Arnold Schwarzenegger, too, that
it's O.K. to be pluggish. It's about Arnold's DNA. My DNA is Dave.
There's a lot of Dave mania when I speak." At 11 the next morning,
Pelzer is meeting and greeting his fans in the Hilton lobby. They are
mostly women, mostly social workers, dressed in pants suits and long
summer dresses. Pelzer has spread out his books on a table where a woman
is selling them for list price. Pelzer will make a profit, and he will
be paid for his speech, although he won't say how much. His fee, the
coordinator of the event told me, is $7,000, plus expenses.
In the lecture hall, Pelzer is introduced as "a survivor of a horrendous
childhood, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, whose books have been on the New
York Times best-seller list for eight years."
Pelzer steps to the podium and asks, "If you're all here, who the hell's
taking care of the children?" The women laugh. Then he does
impersonations: Clinton, Jethro from "The Beverly Hillbillies," Dr. Evil
and, finally, Arnold, with his thick, Austrian accent. He segues from
his comic impersonations ("I'm the Robin Williams of child abuse,"
Pelzer says) into stories of his own abuse and ends with the platitude,
"Everyone has issues. In my mom's day, there was no Oprah to help her
purge her issues."
He is the Elmer Gantry of the 21st century, selling his books, his
abuse, his platitudes, the DNA of Dave, an afternoon of laughter, some
praise and a nice lunch on a day away from the office. "You do such good
work," he says, "and you get no credit." An entire room of teased and
bouffant hairdos nods in agreement.
After his speech, Pelzer hugs and kisses his fans in the lobby. His
books are almost sold out when Gail Biro picks one up. "It's
unbelievable the child survived," she says. (Pelzer refers to himself in
his books as "the child," which is what he says his mother called him
when she wasn't calling him "it.") "I believed it all," she adds. "But I
identify more with Dave than his books."
Pelzer's fans believe his books, you suspect, because they want to
believe in Dave, in his recovery from such unimaginable horrors and in
the power of their own compassion. According to Trevor Dolby, his
British publisher, "It's being bought by people who don't normally read
books." It shows in his writing, which is filled with cliches. He writes
that someone's "mouth nearly fell to the carpet," a "head spun around
like a top" and "his hands rattled."
A close reading of Pelzer's books leaves other readers with the
impression that they may not be entirely true. Pelzer has an exquisite
recall of his abuse, but almost no recall of anything that would
authenticate that abuse. His mother was of "average size and
appearance," he writes. "I never could remember the color of her hair or
eyes." Yet he recalls distinctly his childhood bruises: "dark circles of
purple bruises faded on top of fresh rings of blue bruises." He can't
explain his mother's psychological motivation for abusing him but not
abusing any of his four brothers, other than to say, "She had not dealt
with her unresolved issues." And of the six people who might have
witnessed his abuse firsthand, Pelzer gives pseudonyms to the four who
are still alive - his brothers. (He refuses to give journalists their
real names or phone numbers because, he says, "I want to protect their
privacy.")
I spoke with one of Pelzer's younger brothers, Stephen, 40, who was
stricken with Bell's palsy as a child and whose speech is slightly
slurred. Stephen denies his mother abused David or burned him or forced
him to eat dog feces. "Please!" he says. "That never happened." As a
witness to the stabbing incident, Stephen says: "I saw mom cutting food
when David grabbed her arm and got a small cut from the knife. There
wasn't even any blood, yet he screamed, `Mommy stabbed me!'"
Stephen says David wasn't ostracized from the family, but that "he was
very close to me and Robert," the oldest brother. "We were `The Three
Musketeers.' But David had to be the center of attention. He was a
hyper, spoiled brat."
Pelzer's grandmother, Ruth Cole, 92, remembers him as a "disruptive kid,
only interested in himself, with big ideas of grandeur." She says he
bragged that celebrities, like Chuck Yeager, would be at his and Patsy's
wedding. "But it was just a few family members in the garage," she says.
"His books should be in the fiction section."
Stephen adds that he thinks his brother was taken away from the family
because "he started a fire and was caught shoplifting. He was out of
control. Even the Air Force didn't want him." Stephen claims Dave was
discharged on psychological grounds.
When Pelzer learned that Stephen said this, he refuted it by producing
form from the Department of Veterans Affairs saying he had received an
honorable discharge. "Everyone sees things differently," Pelzer says.
"Besides," he adds, in a claim that seemed to me to be completely
untrue, "Stephen is semiretarded."
That evening, Pelzer is driving toward Barnes & Noble. "I thought my
speech was a seven and a half," he says of his talk that day. "You just
want to make them happy." His cellphone rings. He answers it, nods, says
"Roger!" and clicks off. "Marsha used to fantasize, `Dave Pelzer, No. 1
New York Times best seller,"' he says. He shakes his head. "Now I don't
want to screw up when my mojo's going good."
Inside Barnes & Noble, the manager, Tina, is nodding into her phone,
"Yes, I understand." She hangs up and says to Pelzer, "Your wife was
giving me instructions on how to introduce you."
Pelzer says, "Just say, 'H-e-e-e-e-re's D-a-a-a-a-ve!'"
In a corner of the store's vast, well-lighted space, Tina has set up
folding chairs facing a table piled high with Pelzer's books. All 40
chairs are occupied. "Dave's books empower my 13-year-olds because he
survived, and they think they can, too," Carleen, a social worker, says.
A lone man wearing thick-lensed glasses says, "I found the abuse
fascinating." Traci, a country-and-western-looking woman, is sitting in
the last row, sobbing. "Dave's an inspiration to me," she says. "I'm in
therapy for abuse. 'A Child Called "It"' was the first book I read in a
while."
Pelzer begins his talk, saying, "Kids read my books and clean up their
room because they're afraid Mrs. Pelzer will baby-sit them." The
audience laughs. "I'm not here to plug my books," he adds, "but I've
been on the New York Times best-seller list for 200 weeks."
After he finishes, he takes questions. "Is anyone going to make a movie
of your life?" a woman wants to know.
"Some heavy hitters are interested," he says. "Like who?" she asks.
"I can't say."
Finally, the audience lines up to buy books and chat with Dave. They
touch the sleeve of his jacket as if it were the shroud of Turin. "Oh,
look!" a woman exclaims. "A smiley face!" Pelzer stays for hours. He has
inexhaustible, almost manic energy. When his last fan is gone, he says,
"I try to make people feel good about themselves."
Late that evening, Pelzer sits down to dinner in the Hilton dining room.
"I like to eat at the end of the day," he says. "It makes me feel I
earned my food. My success comes from hard work. And because I've stayed
below the radar screen." He finishes, orders a whiskey sour and lights a
cigar. He relaxes, as much as a man can who never lets down his guard
and whose mojo, as monitored each week by the New York Times best-seller
list, is constantly in peril. "It's not that I'm a control freak,"
Pelzer says. "I'm scared the other shoe's gonna fall. What if I screw up
and lose everything?"
It's after midnight, and Pelzer takes the last few puffs of his cigar.
Then he gets up and prepares to hit the road, heading toward Butte and
North Platte, where he'll drive down the back roads, unfold his tent and
hawk his wares.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.
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