Author Q&A

Author Q&A: James McGrath Morris

By Joseph Barbato, WIW Vice President

James McGrath Morris, author of The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism (Fordham University Press), has worked as a journalist, trade magazine editor and publisher (Seven Locks Press in the late 1980s), and is now a high school teacher and historian. His book tells the tragic story of Charles E. Chapin (1858-1930), legendary city editor of Joseph Pulitzer's New York Evening World , who in 1918, at the height of his fame, facing financial ruin, decided to kill his wife and himself. He killed his wife, but not himself, and spent the rest of his life in Sing Sing Prison, where he created world-famous rose gardens. The author, 48, a WIW member, lives in Falls Church, Va. Chapin is buried in Washington, D.C.

Why a book about Charles Chapin?

I was bitten by the Chapin bug in the early 1980s, while researching an earlier book, Jailhouse Journalism: The Fourth Estate Behind Bar s. He is not a likeable fellow, but he was a great journalist, a wonderful headline writer and he could beat everyone on a story. He became a 20-year obsession.

But you didn't work on the book full time?

No, it was like needlepoint. I was always working on it in one way or another, on weekends, on vacations. About four years ago, I really dived in. I traveled across the country; walked the streets Chapin walked early in his career, in Chicago; made carefully planned visits to the National Archives and to World archives in New York on my days off and so on. I didn't have the luxury of time. I'd photocopy stuff and bring it home to sort through.

Did you have a contract while writing the book?

No. I just knew I had to write it. Chapin lived in the most exciting time in American journalism—I would love to have worked in that city room at the World. I wanted to tell his story and the era's. I had a local agent, Laura Belt , and we got terrific readings from a dozen or more publishers. They all turned it down. Their marketing people were worried readers would not buy a book about an obscure figure. It wasn't yet another book about Teddy Roosevelt . Finally, several editors at   Fordham University Press got excited about the book. We went with them. Now publishers who turned the book down are inquiring about paperback rights!

What was your biggest challenge?

The writing. I had to find a way to hook readers and keep them reading about a man nobody knows. So I set the first chapter in Chapin's rose gardens at Sing Sing, which included about 2,000 bushes. I hope it works. I visited the prison in my research. Inmates there have excavated the fountain that was once at the center of the gardens—and you can even see two metal arbors where Chapin's roses grew. As I say in the book, I spotted a small rose plant at the base of one of the arbors and I like to think it was one of Chapin's.

Will you tour?

Sure. I'll be at Chapters here and go to New York and a few other cities. I'd love to give a reading at Sing Sing. Inmates still tell stories about Chapin there.