Forum / Mysterious Hiatus for Troublesome Novel: Sarkhan, by Burdick and Lederer

• 
  Mathew Paust

  Oct 15, 08:15pm

  Eugene Burdick's death in 1965 of a heart attack ended a meteoric literary career on a mysterious note that remains unexplained to this day.

  He is best known for the two novels he wrote as collaborations: The Ugly American, with William J. Lederer, and Fail-Safe, with Harvey Wheeler. Both novels, which became must-see movies,
  nudged conventional thinking out of its comfort zone—one with American involvement in Southeast Asia, the other with unintentional nuclear holocaust.

  http://tinyurl.com/njnan52

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Oct 16, 03:39pm

  Read and loved The Ugly American. I never heard of the novel Sarkhan, but I was already in Vietnam when it was published. I would not be at all surprised if it had been suppressed. Thanks for the info.

• 
  Mathew Paust

  Oct 16, 04:41pm

  LBJ, President Paranoid. Must be someone who was at McGraw-Hill then who can tell the story.

• 
  Barry Friesen

  Oct 18, 06:27am

  Burdick (and Harvey Wheeler) published Fail-Safe in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Both were sued for alleged plagiarism by Peter George, who published an extremely similar novel, Red Alert, in 1958.

  Fail-Safe was adapted for a Sydney Lumet film of the same name in 1964, at the same time Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern adapted Red Alert into its black humor version, Dr. Strangelove.

  According to Lumet, Kubrick then sued Columbia Pictures alleging plagiarism of Red Alert, for which Kubrick owned the film rights, as the real source of Lumet's Fail-Safe film.

  As a result, Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove was released first to great acclaim and box office, while Fail-Safe's release was delayed eight months, to great acclaim but lousy box office.

  Nobody's yet explained why Burdick's Fail-Safe novel was almost identical to Peter George's Red Alert published four years earlier.Both cases settled out of court.

• 
  Mathew Paust

  Oct 18, 06:00pm

  I recall now reading about that kerfuffle back then. I suppose when a concept based on so contemporary plausibility inspires different artists the plagiarism suspicion is almost inevitable. Usually such charges are made by an obscure artist of something that wins popular success. Alex Haley's "Roots" comes to mind.

• 
  Barry Friesen

  Oct 18, 07:36pm

  Kubrick had no interest in plagiarism per se. He took the controversy over similarities purely as a marketing opportunity to file plagiarism suits to generate more publicity for Dr. Strangelove, "to prevent the present heat from dissipating," as he put it.

  Interesting that while Burdick died at 46 of an apparent heart attack, Red Alert author Peter George died at 42 by suicide, apparently in despair over an inevitable global nuclear holocaust.

• 
  Mathew Paust

  Oct 18, 08:25pm

  Kubrick took P.T. Barnum to heart. At the same time, in retrospect, Strangelove might well have been the best face to put on that unthinkable scenario. I've just finished reading Leonard Michael's diaries, and one thought among his later entries comes to mind, that comedy represents the triumph of spirit over matter, while tragedy does the reverse. Albeit Strangelove is tragicomic, but maybe the comic edge serves as protective coating enabling us to peer more deeply into the abyss without blinking.

  I haven't watched it since the one time, in the theater when it was released, and have no real desire to see it again despite the brilliance and hilarity. The call was too close, and now other dires are pressing in.

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