“Those Who Trespass” by Bill O’Reilly

Tue, 17 Feb 2004 21:00:00 +0000

Bill O'Reilly wants to sell you a part of himself. This week, it's not a membership to his Web site or the "Spin Stops Here" doormat, or any of the other merchandise he regularly hawks on his show. No, he's selling his first work of fiction, "Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Murder and Television." Originally published in 1998 by a small press, it was rereleased last week in a Broadway Books trade-paper edition. Mel Gibson has already optioned the rights for the movie, certainly a change of pace from the "The Passion of the Christ." Last Monday night on his Fox News show, O'Reilly billed the book as an "R-rated thriller" that's "not for children, not for adults who find strong situations objectionable." The novel, he says, will give the reader an insider's view of the media and the New York Police Department.

A close read, however, gives you an inside view of the author's mind. Like many other works of fiction -- think Philip Roth's Nathan Zuckerman books or John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom series -- it seems largely autobiographical. The talented talk-show host serves up characters who are paranoid, arrogant, insecure and supremely egotistical. On television, those qualities are O'Reilly's greatest assets -- his personality fills the screen as he strikes down enemies at the New York Times, CNN and NPR, derides Al Franken, and defends himself against an Internet infested with "smear merchants." Translated to the page, however, those assets are fatal flaws.

Salon.com > Michael Hastings

“Those Who Trespass” by Bill O’Reilly