Milo Yiannopoulos buys more time for controversial book
Milo Yiannopoulos is getting more time to finish his book so he can write about recent campus protests that disrupted speeches he was to give.
On Monday, the controversial right-wing provocateur posted on Facebook that Dangerous has been moved from March 14 to June 13. His publisher confirmed the change to USA TODAY.
"I asked my publisher, Threshold Editions, for more time to submit the manuscript for DANGEROUS so I could include material about the craziness and rioting at UC Berkeley, UC Davis and UW Seattle," he wrote on Facebook. "It would be absurd for me to publish a book without some discussion of the insanity of the last few weeks."
Here’s what we know about the book by the Breitbart News editor and Trump supporter, who was banned from Twitter for his role in a harassment campaign against Ghostbusters and Saturday Night Live star Leslie Jones:
1. After violent riots Feb. 1 at the University of California, Berkeley, that forced cancellation of a Yiannopoulos speech, Dangerous shot up to No. 1 on Amazon, based on preorders. It has since dropped considerably and on Monday afternoon was No. 37.
2. Yiannopoulos received $250,000 for the book from Threshold Editions, a conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which revealed the deal in late December.
In an interview with THR, Yiannopoulos said: "I met with top execs at Simon & Schuster earlier in the year and spent half an hour trying to shock them with lewd jokes and outrageous opinions. I thought they were going to have me escorted from the building — but instead they offered me a wheelbarrow full of money." (He declined to confirm the reported amount.)
3. The description of the book on Amazon couldn’t be more bare bones: “A new book by Milo Yiannopoulos entitled Dangerous published by Threshold Editions.” Threshold “respectfully declined” a request from USA TODAY for more details.
4. So what are we likely to get from his autobiographical effort? In the interview with THR, the gay British writer warned: "Every line of attack the forces of political correctness try on me fails pathetically. I'm more powerful, more influential and more fabulous than ever before, and this book is the moment Milo goes mainstream. Social justice warriors should be scared — very scared," he said.
Milo Yiannopoulous' speech at UC-Berkeley canceled as protest turns violent
5. Could the book be funny? In a 2015 interview with Fusion, the flamboyant Yiannopoulos said he created his public persona as a “comedy character.” “My natural disposition is a satirist and a comic,” he said. “I like to entertain and to please people.”
6. Will Yiannopoulos do a book tour? His public appearances have become so incendiary, it’s unclear. Threshold again declined comment.
7. Is there a chance the book could be canceled? It seems unlikely, based on pre-sales and the fact that a new publication date has been announced. However, Threshold and its parent company have faced a backlash over the book from celebrities, its stable of authors and bookstores. The furor prompted writer Roxane Gay, for one, to pull a book from one of S&S’s imprints, and S&S president Carolyn Reidy felt compelled to send a letter to concerned authors, which read in part: “First and foremost, I want to make clear that we do not support or condone, nor will we publish, hate speech.”
In the letter, dated Jan. 23, she gave a sneak peek of what Dangerous might tackle: “When Threshold Editions met with Mr. Yiannopoulos, he said that he was interested in writing a book that would be a substantive examination of the issues of political correctness and free speech...”
Leslie Jones speaks out after harasser Yiannopoulos lands book deal
8. Meanwhile, Threshold also declined comment on whether advance copies will be made available to reviewers. (Some books with sensitive or newsy material are embargoed.) The world waits.