“In Hollywood,” one seasoned screenwriter said, “You don't argue with the suits. When Goldwyn said Jump, you should have said, How high? Money rules.”
        But money is mindless, soulless, without motivation. The rich use money as a tool of oppression. They're able to do this because the rest of us need money—it's become as necessary to survival as air and water—and their good buddies, the bankers—by controlling money needed by politicians for reelection—control its distribution. If I'd been homeless and starving in the streets, I might have done whatever it took to please Goldwyn, but my previous novels had done well, and my lawyer, Abe Friedman, was sure I could sell the novel version of Poorboy, and then sell movie rights to it.
        It dawned on me that distribution of money is what the sixties were really all about (the military-industrial complex is a huge moneymaker) and why Ian Ballantine had lamented that I was “not housebroken,” and why my teachers in Girard repeatedly complained that I had “problems with authority figures.” And why, at Pitt, I had switched my major to economics so I'd have an important theme to write about: money.
        Still it didn't make sense that the book industry would dump the editor who'd made the most money in book publishing history. And to kill Alexander, Korda had to make a liar out of Publishers Weekly Magazine, which had featured Poorboy on its cover, signaling that this book would top bestseller lists.
        (An odd coincidence was to happen few years later. On the same day I got a royalty check in the mail from my German publisher, with a note apologizing for the delay, I got a call from a Simon and Schuster accountant demanding I repay the most recent advance they'd sent. As I'd been moving a lot, the German publisher, Rovolt Verlag, had enlisted their government's secret service to track me down so they could pay me. As for the S&S accountant, I told him I'd spent the money, and never heard him again.)

        Over time, persistent rumors trickled in about why Korda had prioritized eliminating Herb Alexander and me over reaping profits from a novel that had been fast-tracked to bestseller. And why my first novel suddenly became difficult to buy. I got this from a friend who had been in the book business for 30 years on the West Coast:
        “There was an American Booksellers Association convention here in the early 80s. I had a long lunch with a senior editor at Knopf. I asked why Ballantine was so hostile to the new things you were writing. 'He isn't. Korda is. Ian doesn't control much now. Michael moves him where he wants him to go. Michael dislikes Gover's political pornography. That's what he calls it. He's easily threatened.'"
        Political pornography!
        What a delicious phrase! And so apt. It's fine and dandy to write pornography, but woe be unto he or she who combines sex and wealth, for a sexual obsession can undermine family wealth. The wealthy want their children to marry wealthy spouses, not share the family fortune with “riffraff.”

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