John Berendt will be reading from and signing his nonfiction bestseller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil on Tuesday, October 20, 7pm, at Borders, and with him will arrive at least two stories. The first constitutes the true, engrossing account of the milieu and events surrounding May 2, 1981, when a moneyed gay antiques dealer in Savannah, Georgia shot (in what he claims was self-defense) a tempestuous hustler named Danny Hansford. The second story, only minimally less interesting, is the book’s publishing history, which Newsweek recently called “the publishing story of the decade.” Midnight was released in January 1994 and since then has sold nearly two million copies, been through 83 printings, published in 19 foreign editions, and stuck to The New York Times‘ bestseller list from six weeks after it was published up to the present. Tourism has increased in Savannah 88% and Clint Eastwood is directing the film version (to be released November 21). Midnight is Berendt’s first book, oh ye of little faith.

In fact, the first literary agent Berendt submitted the book to passed on the manuscript because he thought it too locally oriented and not commercial enough. According to an interview with Time in April 1995, Berendt thought Midnight would be “a cult favorite and a critical success. I didn’t think about a big audience.” Berendt was right, however, about both the book’s cult status (go to The Book gift shop in Savannah and see Midnight‘s cult fans for yourself) and its critical success, largely due, it seems, to Berendt’s measured, vibrant evocation of a neglected South the world has passed by. And to think that all of this insight into an eccentric South and its denizens emanated from a Yankee who graduated from Harvard in 1961, wrote for David Frost and Dick Cavett, was editor from 1977 to 1979 for (gasp!) New York magazine, and wrote a monthly column for Esquire from 1982 to 1995. It’s almost as unbelievable as his publishing record. — Claiborne K.H. Smith

This article appears in October 17 • 1997 and October 17 • 1997 (Cover).

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