juicy tidbit about THE carol ann book

[catinthedark]

or at least... what i assume is the carol ann book.
scroll down....


http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=969483191630

The unauthorized biography and the kiss-and-tell memoir may soon be a thing of the past in Britain and the rest of Europe. Over the pond, the sanitizing and spin doctoring of celebrity lives is receiving greater support from courts.

Privacy legislation adopted by the European Union has given the rich and famous a new weapon against not only tabloids, but memoir writers — people telling their own stories in which a famous person may have played a part.

Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, adopted by Britain in 2000, has been used in the past couple of years by model Naomi Campbell, Princess Caroline of Monaco, Catherine Zeta-Jones and others to keep paparazzi from capturing their private moments. But it's a dispute between two Canadians, Loreena McKennitt and writer Niema Ash, that has most clearly revealed this law's potential to muzzle discourse about public figures.

Remarkably, the law constrains individuals from writing of their own lives if their friends or lovers decide that they don't want anyone to know details of their home décor or that they once had acute abdominal pains at Heathrow airport.

Ash's memoir Travels With Loreena McKennitt was issued last June by Purple Inc Press, Ash's own British imprint. A few hundred copies crossed the Atlantic (the book sold on Amazon.ca at $28) before McKennitt sought an injunction in the British courts in September to stop distribution.

The Stratford-based Celtic singer and harpist had her lawyers argue not that the book is libellous, but that it invades her privacy under Article 8 by revealing, for instance, that an old Irish cottage she purchased had — before Ash and her partner, Tim Fowkes, started fixing it for her — mouldy walls, floors of rotting linoleum and bedrooms "filled with rubbish, rotting clothes and rusted bed frames."

That was one of the forbidden passages identified by Mr. Justice Eady of the High Court of Justice in a February ruling after a closed hearing. A passage about McKennitt taking ill at Heathrow and Ash's immediate action to get her medical attention was another.

There is material in the book that is personal (see sidebar). But the passages seem not at all gratuitous, instead intended to illustrate Ash's affection and care for McKennitt over nearly 25 years, until McKennitt's growing fame and explosive temperament drove them apart.

During McKennitt's tours in support of her The Book of Secrets album, Ash was briefly an employee, handling the sale of McKennitt merchandise together with Fowkes.

That experience enabled the author to observe how hard McKennitt works and how tough she is as a business woman. McKennitt has not toured since the death of her fiancé, Ron Rees, in a boating accident in 1998.

Ash said in a phone conversation from her home in England that about 24 pages of her 327-page memoir have been placed under injunction in Britain. Ash says she's not a rich woman and was forced to represent herself for a time before Judge Eady in court.

"We are currently seeking permission to appeal," said her lawyer Korieh Duodu by phone from London. He said the earliest he'd expect the appeal to be heard would be June.

Ash, who is in her late 60s, has a long association with folk music and musicians in Canada, dating back to when she and her ex-husband Shimon Ash ran the old Finjan coffee house in Montreal, a folk and blues music venue.

In an earlier book, Travels With My Daughter, Ash described a young Bob Dylan appearing at Finjan on his first trip outside the U.S. Not used to border procedures, Dylan was affronted that anyone would search his luggage and he refused to accept Canadian dollars in change after buying a beer. "The dude gave me monopoly money," he told Ash.

Ash paints herself in her memoirs as a bohemian and free spirit who cares little for money and possessions and sets great store by friendship. Above all, her talent is for travelling and adventure. "The road was my university, my church, my true love," she writes.

She clearly likes people, is unhampered by a huge ego, and has the authority of the eyewitness. Travels With My Daughter, published in Canada by Dundurn Press, has lively anecdotes about her friendships with Leonard Cohen and Irving Layton. She has also written Touching Tibet, a travel book.

Dundurn publisher Howard Kirk said he enjoyed reading Ash's McKennitt book and "I'm surprised McKennitt was successful in her suit."

The British ruling, if upheld in appeal, has implications for Canadian publishers. ECW Press, for example, is noted for its biographies of pop-culture figures — books that often depend on sales in the EU.

"We see about three memoir manuscripts a day," says ECW publisher Jack David. "Everybody has a story to tell. We are looking at a manuscript now by a woman who had been a partner of Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac. A publisher in the U.K. commissioned it but when they read it, they got cold feet. We are going to go after world rights ... the British market could be denied to us."

As for McKennitt, the singer feels vindicated but remains bitter about what she sees as her former friend's motivation in writing the book: revenge over a real estate transaction.

"She was able to fool a lot of people in the writing community that this is about freedom of expression," McKennitt said in a phone interview from her Stratford, Ont., home. "This is about freedom of extortion .... Her whole case is fabricated."

Ash describes how McKennitt had helped her and Fowkes buy a home in Ireland by contributing $60,000 (Canadian). The three later disagreed whether the sum was a gift, a loan or payment for a one-third share in the house. McKennitt claimed the latter and won a court ruling to that effect.

"She was a friend and friends owe their friends confidence," says McKennitt. "She was also an employee. She knew I don't subscribe to the cult of celebrity, she knows that I protect my privacy and my reputation.

"She did not share (the book) with me before publication — she could have — so she has to accept the consequences. Even people in the public eye deserve to have their privacy protected."