Seen a Rogue on the loose? Get in touch with our Roguemeister: JOHN SCHRAG jschrag@wweek.com (503) 243-2122 FAX: (503) 243-1115 It's a fact we might prefer not to acknowledge, but most people have their price--a sum that would make them commit an act so stupid, silly or shameless as to qualify them for the rolls of roguery. For Lewis Turco, the dollar figure for doing so appears to have been about a hundred bucks. Turco lives 2,800 miles from here but has a direct connection to the Rose City via Diana Abu-Jaber, an Oregonian contributor and writer-in-residence at Portland State University. When Abu-Jaber was a student at the the writing program at State University of New York-Oswego, Turco was her adviser. After graduating in 1981 Abu-Jaber continued to correspond with him, informing him of her struggle to become a big-time published writer--which finally occurred with her novel, Arabian Jazz, winner of the 1994 Oregon Book Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award. In 1998, tipped off by one of her students, Abu-Jaber discovered that seven of her letters to Turco--along with a copy of her book personally inscribed to him--were advertised for sale on the Web site for a New England bookstore. The letters would reveal "details of her hopes and plans, her frequent moves, her marriage and divorce, her loves and adventures," the site promised. The price? $125. Her boyfriend grudgingly paid the ransom and delivered the letters back to Abu-Jaber, after learning from the bookstore that the source was her old adviser. When Abu-Jaber recently related this tale of betrayal on Salon (http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/ 02/10/letters/index.html), she did not name Turco, but a few calls to New York by WW's Rogue Investigation Team identified him as the culprit. Turco did not return WW's calls. The RIT was unable to nail down what the bookstore paid Turco for Abu-Jaber's personal correspondence, but assuming a reasonable profit, presumably it was no more than $100. Whatever the price, it wasn't enough to justify a college counselor betraying a student's personal confidence.   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Willamette Week | originally published March 1, 2000