Now that her novels SPEEDBOAT and PITCH DARK are set to be republished by NYRB Classics on Tuesday, interest around Renata Adler hasn’t been this high since her 1999 book GONE dropped a veritable nuclear bomb on the New Yorker and the city’s literary scene. At some point soon I’ll be writing about one of Adler’s more recent, lesser-known career chapters, but in the meantime, here is a rerun – with revisions – of part of a piece I wrote for (now-defunct) The Daily in March 2011 on the book Adler was supposed to produce next – but, for reasons that still remain murky – never got published.

**



Renata Adler has been a silent figure for nearly a decade, and many believe it has to do with the vociferous reaction to her 1999 book Gone, the scorched-earth epic burn of The New Yorker, which employed her from 1963 until that year. What’s less known is that Adler had her next project set: an expose of the annual Bilderberg Conference, where the world’s elite meet in a manner so secret the location changes – and is kept undisclosed until after the fact. Adler even signed a contract with non-fiction publisher PublicAffairs, which planned a 2002 publication date, the catalog copy promising a book based on a “cache of Bilderberg archives, secretly turned over to the author by a few senior leaders of the Bilderberg, the book describes the organization, and discusses who has been involved and when.”

But Private Capacity was never published (though the Amazon.com page still exists). A spokesperson for the company said at the time that a “mutual agreement” between Adler and PublicAffairs led to the book’s cancellation, adding that “while both the author and the publisher agree that the subject matter of the proposed book is fascinating, both parties also agree that a full length book treatment of the subject is probably not necessary.” PublicAffairs remained stayed mum upon our inquiries.

**

Two years later and no one really knows much more than that. I was, shall we say, surprised the Bilderberg business didn’t come up in Boris Kachka’s “Adler at a party” piece*, seeing as he was talking to her at Edward Jay Epstein’s book launch – and Epstein, of course, is well-versed in all things conspiracy, murky, and unsolved. Something tells me, though, there will be answers forthcoming in the next few weeks.

*and now I see some smart-ass commenter called Adler “the Lena Dunham of her day. (That’s not a compliment.)” to which I say…uh, way to miss the point entirely, by thousands of miles.