Finding the Publishing World in the Epstein Files

I did not make good use of my time this past weekend. I could have been doing something fulfilling like doomscrolling or playing an inane game on my phone, but instead I became an armchair detective searching for particular names in the latest dump of more than three million documents in the Epstein Files. I don’t recommend doing this; I truly believe it made me physically ill. If there was evidence of terrible, unthinkable crimes sitting in newly unsealed documents from Ghislaine Maxwell’s grand jury trial, which there appears to be, then I wanted to know, I needed to know.

The evil ultra rich have long been a fixture of literature and pop culture in general, and I have been fascinated by nearly all of them, the ones depicted in Dickens and Austen as well as the more modern monsters of Bret Easton Ellis and Edward St. Aubyn, and, if I’m being honest, EL James. I never understood the people who said “I can’t watch Succession because all of the characters are so awful.” Yes, that’s the point. How delicious it is to see how they live, to take in their depravity from a safe distance.

I keep thinking about the depictions of the fictional ultra wealthy because it turns out that the actions of real people in real life were more depraved than fiction allowed me to imagine. Maybe this is where I turn into a full-time conspiracy theorist who rants about what the mainstream media doesn’t cover because the conspiracy theorists have been proven right about a few key things, most notably that many of the leaders of the world are involved in a child sex-trafficking cabal. The files contain a who’s who of the rich and powerful, many known previously but with plenty of new names, socializing with Epstein and joking about “pizza” and “girls” long after he had pled guilty in 2008 to solicitation of prostitution with a minor.

It turns out that the actions of real people in real life were more depraved than fiction allowed me to imagine.

There was and still is so much appalling content to uncover, and the Department of Justice gives us an interactive element: a search bar on their Epstein Files website. You can just type the name of anyone rich and powerful and see their entire correspondence with Epstein, from the most mundane to the highly upsetting. Some names of Epstein’s co-conspirators are redacted; some names of his victims had not been. It’s a travesty.

I have not been able to concentrate on anything else. The need to monitor is strong. If not me, then who? What will I miss if I don’t look? I’m not sure there will ever be justice for the victims or consequences for the perpetrators, but I will bear witness (I know this is not healthy).

I was relieved to find few fiction writers in the files—Woody Allen has written a novel and Bill Clinton’s ghostwriter has contributed to two thrillers. JK Rowling may or may not have been in the files—she’s denying it.

Instead, a great deal of people who were seemingly close to Epstein are authors on the New York Times nonfiction bestsellers list, and seemingly half of the Health, How-To, and Miscellaneous list. They span liberal and conservative imprints, crossing the aisle to be abhorrent: Dan Ariely, Peter Attia, Noam Chomsky, Lawrence Krauss, Deepak Chopra, and Stephen Hawking. Not to mention Art of the Deal “author” Donald Trump.

It also occurs to me that there is an entire fictional genre built around the depravity that takes place in the halls of higher education, and what is more real-life dark academia than a whole slew of professors at Harvard and other top universities revealed to be sex pests or sex-pest adjacent? And what is to become of the literary agent who brought so many of these academics into Epstein’s orbit?

I don’t know what to do with these names. I hope they are all investigated thoroughly, even though I’m not counting on it. It is certainly not my place to. But I do hope that, at least in the world of book publishing, we can start to have a conversation about what it looks like to protect victims and make work environments safe.

We tried to have such conversations in the era of MeToo and we were told we had gone too far. Some women in publishing and media even tried to share information and to warn others in the industry about their experiences. The fact that the latest drop of the Epstein files reveals that men in media who were accused of sexual misconduct turned around and enlisted the help of Epstein to fight back has me thinking twice about what “MeToo has gone too far” really means.

In silver linings, I suppose I’m relieved that Jeffrey Epstein didn’t live long enough to write his own book.