Mark Judge and The Kavanaugh Book – An Important Lesson About Publishing Memoirs

Writing a memoir is a great way of recording your life journey, and many authors want to share their story. But this week in Washington, one author must be regretting he ever published his.

After hearing tearful women recounting their sexual abuse stories in the corridor, Senator Flake went back into the bipartisan meeting today and asked incredibly awkwardly for the floor vote on confirming Brett Kavanaugh to The Supreme Court to be held for a week while the FBI investigates claims and information given. And this may lead to one book in particular being hastily read across Washington.

The FBI has given little information on one standout person of interest: Mark Judge. A schoolboy pal of Brett’s, and now a writer, we know they grew up together, and by all accounts so far, were drinking partners as teens, but in Judge’s letter to the committee he claims to have “no recollection” of Kavanaugh’s behavior. But in 1997, he published his memoir. “WASTED, Tales of a GenX Drunk” a non-fiction account of the adventures of himself and “Bart O’Kavanaugh” and their drinking and humping escapades in the Washington suburbs.

The book on Goodreads has drawn some pretty polemic (read: bitter, ridiculous, way out, murderous) comments this week from “both sides.” (Just take a look at what happened to author Jennifer Wright for sticking her head above the parapet).

The Washington Times reports,

A page from WASTED by Mark Judge

“Over much of his adult life, Judge has dived back repeatedly into his memories of Georgetown Preparatory School student life in the early 1980s, and his two memoirs and a cluster of internet essays provide cautionary takes on his prep school days and boozy weekend rounds as a teenage drinker. Judge’s book “Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk” surveyed his alcohol-fueled escapades in high school and college, a time of “drinking and smoking and hooking up,” he wrote in a 2015 essay on the Acculturated website.”

But then things get more interesting when you start looking at the characters in the book.

 Business Insider reports,

“Judge changed names in the book to protect people’s privacy, but he at one point referenced a friend named “Bart O’Kavanaugh.” The character was described as someone who got so drunk he “puked in someone’s car the other night.”

As well as Judge’s Twitter account being deleted this week, The book has been removed in all forms for sale except hardback, which of course, cannot be deleted from Amazon’s catalogue. Remember this, authors, if you write a book and publish a paperback, it will remain in circulation online forever!

Here’s the book description:

“This coming-of-age memoir is presented from the perspective of an “ordinary” kid who grew up in a small town outside Washington, D.C., attended Catholic school, and experimented with alcohol in a fairly typical way. What is atypical is where the experimentation led. While his drunken acts first appear as little more than adolescent antics and harmless pranks, it slowly becomes apparent that there is a serious problem lurking behind the laughs and half-racks.”

Now the flurry starts: Can the American people leave this stone unturned? Should we all be reading this book?

At least one thing’s for sure: Mark Judge might sell a lot of hardbacks this week.