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Co-author Schiller wrote in a foreword that from the very start, before they could even get the tape going, Simpson gushed ``like torrents cascading from a ruptured dam'' and that Schiller had to interrupt him to channel his thoughts. As it turned out, Schiller could have channeled a little more carefully. In one passage, for instance, Simpson describes his rage over biased press coverage as he sat in the back of Al Cowling's Bronco. ``Dan Rather was on the radio and he started talking about eight or nine different reports of domestic spousal abuse calls from my house and I said to myself: Where in the hell does that number nine come from?''
There were pockets of protest from booksellers around the country, mostly small independents who did not want to be seen as contributing to the author's defense fund. Nonetheless, in the first couple of hours the book was on the shelves, sales were reported as significant. The book had been kept a secret until a few weeks before publication, even from Simpson's lawyers, but no laws were broken. So-called Son of Sam statutes--still in force in many states, though the original New York law, aimed at serial killer David Berkowitz, was struck down by the Supreme Court--usually apply to convicted criminals profiting from their crime. Simpson has not been convicted, and his book stays clear of evidentiary matters as well as other areas that could put him crosswise with California's law.
Schiller's piece of the action is not known, but is not likely to be inconsequential either. When Schiller was a kid, Mailer wrote in The Executioner's Song, he had a police radio, a bicycle and a camera. When he heard about an accident, he tore off toward it. Even if the scene was far away and he was tardy, Schiller sold pictures of the skid marks to insurance companies. So he was right at home last week in the car wreck called the O.J. Simpson trial.
--Reported by Elaine Lafferty and Martha Smilgis/Los Angeles and Ratu Kamlani/New York