When the Kill Fee Curdles, Bklyn Writer Not Amused As Harper's Pulled Plug on Comic's Profile

Date: January 3, 2013
Authors: Adam Wilson, Teddy Wayne, Justin Taylor, Sal Pane
Venue: KGB
Neighborhood: East Village
Free Drinks: not even a buyback
UE check #: benefits ended


Brooklyn novelist Adam "Flatscreen" Wilson was overheard last week telling an admirer about his less than fun experience working on a Harper's assignment to profile the comedian Louis C.K.

Wilson said the magazine didn't cancel his story until late in the game, going so far as to keep the writer up all night making changes as if the story was going to live. But well-past the eleventh hour, like the 11:50-ish hour, Harper's aborted the story.

Maybe the thought among Harper's editors was that Louis C.K., in the course of Wilson's and their staffers' labors, had become overexposed.

Wilson said the Harper's kill fee was higher than most magazines pay for an accepted story. He found a home for the piece at the Los Angeles Review of Books, see link here. Oh, never mind, this is a blog that disdains links, graphic design, and occasionally spell-checking because if it isn't an editorial tool that the original Samuel Pepys had access to, the current Samuel Pepys of the New York City readings scene, me, eschews it.