Content area
Full Text
Last month, the boxer disavowed his love of literature that was spawned during his 1992-1995 incarceration in Indiana State Prison by telling the press that "people shouldn't read that {Leo} Tolstoy crap"--and, per Newsweek's "Periscope" (September 16, 1996), he "now prefers comic books." Perhaps Tyson was just hyping his next fight (Did he convince sportswriters that Tolstoy was his opponent?), because the 500,000 junior- and senior-high-school readers of the January 1997 launch issue of Word will learn that he has a pensive side. In an interview with columnist/ex-New York Post editor Pete Hamill, Tyson says that, while imprisoned, he heeded the advice of an elderly con to "work your mind...or you'll end up right back here." Besides Tolstoy's War and Peace ("I like his way of thinking"), Tyson's "jailhouse favorites" include The Prince (Machiavelli), The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas), and fight-fan Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. * The controlled-circulation Word is the brainchild of Brooklyn- based NYP alumnus Brad Hamilton (he worked for Hamill), who tells min that he plans to have mostly record-label advertising (Mercury Records and Atlantic Records are confirmed). A key selling point is giving celebrities such as Tyson, Will Smith, and Madonna (a big Honore de Balzac fan) a platform to extol reading; look also for a Michael Crichton-introduced "lost chapter" from Jurassic Park. If the ad returns are healthy, Hamilton and partner Lee Heiman (with Track Marketing) hope to publish Word twice during the 1997-1998 school year, and monthly beginning in 1998-1999.