|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
[jayson] Blair also confides, in the middle of his narrative of the attacks: "... Anger as a byproduct of hurt and fear was not a foreign concept to me."
That authorial solipsism approaches the great recent landmark of the form: Elizabeth Wurtzel's infamous "It was just beautiful" remark on the collapse of the Twin Towers. And it is Ms. Wurtzel, a plagiarist herself, who seems to echo through the pages of Mr. Blair's book. The jabbering cadences, the ceaseless contemplation of one's own misery—this is the voice of the comfortable class, looking inward to find some reason to be uncomfortable. That a black man can sound like a spoiled upper-middle-class white woman is, perhaps, a sign of social progress. But beyond that, Mr. Blair's main achievement is a kind of reverse transcendence: He doesn't stand for anything but himself.
In the book, Mr. Blair does indulge in flights of empathy, explaining how he sees himself in others. Given Mr. Blair's credentials, this is not always flattering to the others. That's especially true in the passage where he sits down to confess his cocaine abuse to then-managing editor Gerald Boyd:
"I was less concerned about my drug problem becoming more public than I was about the background of the man who was sitting across from me," Mr. Blair writes. "Gerald grew up in St. Louis, raised by his grandmother after his mother died following a long struggle with drugs."
When Mr. Boyd wishes him luck, Mr. Blair reflects that the editor was "presumably relying more on personal experience than he was willing to give up."
Or less. Mr. Boyd's mother suffered from anemia, not drug addiction, according to remarks that the editor reportedly made about his life story in a 2000 speech.
- Tom Scocca, "off the record," new york observer march 22, 2004
posted March 17, 2004 in crap, print