After Spitzer, a Biography?

Eliot Spitzer’s career in public service may be over, but the race to tell the story is just getting under way.

Investigative reporter Wayne Barrett of The Village Voice confirmed to me just now that he is considering writing a biography about the former governor, and has been contacted by at least two publishers about such a project.

“I haven’t made up my mind one way or the other,” Barrett said in a brief telephone interview.

While Spitzer’s resignation and connection to a high-priced call girl agency drew international headlines, that’s not exactly the story Barrett wants to tell about the former governor.

“I definitely am not interested in just doing a book about the collapse,” he said. “Obviously, that is what provoked the publishers to call me. One called me to specifically address that. The other one was a vaguer proposition. But I made it clear that I would not be interested in just doing a collapse story. I am intrigued by this federal investigation. I think there is a real story in the federal investigation. So, certainly it would be an important part of any book, but at the same time, I don’t think you can write a collapse story without the reader caring about the character before the collapse, so I would want it to be a broader book than that.”