In the Book Review:
Livin’ La Vida Local
Detail from Conrado Massaguer’s poster: I could look at this design all day. It’s both gorgeous and very, very clever.
A tolerable issue, at least by Book Review standards; no Noes. Walter Kirn’s piece on the new James Frey novel may not be his best review ever, but it’s extraordinarily amusing — in a non-LOL way.
This bears repeating. Puts the whole issue to bed, for me:
In its own modest way, “City of Thieves” becomes a commentary on the literary rigidities of our day. James Frey and Margaret B. Jones — gifted storytellers who, perhaps cravenly, mislabeled their work as nonfiction — are eviscerated in the same court of public opinion that venerates apple-cheeked first-timers who transcribe every heartbeat of their suburban youth but have the moxie to call it fiction. Benioff’s opening chapter, “true” or not, is a gentle reminder that fiction is often nonfiction warped by artifice, and that nonfiction is unavoidably a reinvention of what actually happened. In exposing these seams — God bless his editor for leaving in that chapter — Benioff reminds us what a beautifully ambiguous world we live in.