Liars and Saints

  An element of Gothic storytelling is "the inexplicable." A shape in the doorway might be a vampire--or it might be just an odd effect of lighting. I love this uncertainty--it's maybe the thing that I love *most* in storytelling. I love it in true crime, as well; I almost feel deflated when a crime is actually solved. One of my favorite stories--about the DC townhouse--has three men conspiring to murder a friend. The friends claim they are innocent--but the facts suggest that this is almost impossible. But if they *are* guilty, then they are living (year after year!) with a terrible secret. This seems (additionally) impossible--at least to me. Patrick Radden Keefe is part of a dying breed--the breed of "the star journalist." His golden era began with "Say Nothing," in which he described a cold case from Ireland's troubled history. At the end of the book, he actually solved the case. He presented a hypothesis that seemed more or less airtight. He f...

 I've started "Empire of Pain," a history of the Sackler family, by Patrick Radden Keefe. The Sacklers launched their USA lives in Brooklyn in the early 1900s. The patriarch said, if you can't leave money to your children, then you can at least leave your good name. These words were meaningful: The Great Depression meant that the Sacklers lost basically everything. But an enterprising son, Arthur, was undeterred. Arthur was inventing side-hustles while still a high-school student at Erasmus; he considered a career in medicine, but wondered if a doctor's life would limit his stunning creative potential. At some point, Arthur began to work with mentally-ill patients, and he felt uncomfortable with ECT, and with lobotomies. So intrusive! Couldn't mental health grow out of a commitment to some new kind of drug? From here, I skipped forward to the present day, or something close to the present day. The Sacklers, today, are drug lords. A good portion of their money ...

"Best. Movie. Year. Ever." According to this book, 1999 was the Hollywood year to end all Hollywood years. "The Insider." "The Sixth Sense." "Fight Club." The list goes on. Do you have it in you to read 400 pages on a serendipitous year for film-making? I think *I* do. "Party of One." This is a memoir, a few years old, by a gay man, about his awkward coming-of-age. It's in the air now, simply because the author blurbed Andrew Rannells's memoir (which I recommend). In "Party of One," a gay man uses various pop songs (I imagine Celine and Mariah may be involved) to narrate the tale of his  maturation,  or semi-maturation. It's shocking to me that I haven't read this. "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone." I did just finish this one--and though the earnestness is occasionally tiresome, and the editor could have been a bit more ruthless, several stories are breathtaking. I was especially fond of the seve...