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Malcolm 2

"Unlike other relationships that have a purpose beyond themselves and are clearly delineated as such (dentist-patient, lawyer-client, teacher-student), the writer-subject relationship seems to depend for its life on a kind of fuzziness and murkiness, if not utter covertness, of purpose. If everybody put his cards on the table, the game would be over."

"Wambaugh was an ex-cop (he was once a detective on the Los Angeles police force), and, maybe even more to the point, he was one of America’s most successful popular writers, who apparently could afford to be blunt (as McGinniss, strapped for cash, apparently could not). “You should understand that I would not think of writing your story,” Wambaugh wrote, and he went on: It would be my story. Just as The Onion Field was my story and In Cold Blood was Capote’s story. We both had the living persons sign legal releases which authorized us to interpret, portray, and characterize them as we saw fit, trusting us implicitly to be honest and faithful to the truth as we saw it, not as they saw it. With this release you can readily see that you would have no recourse at law if you didn’t like my portrayal of you. Let’s face another ugly possibility: what if I, after spending months of research and interviewing dozens of people and listening to hours of court trials, did not believe you innocent? I suspect that you may want a writer who would tell your story, and indeed your version may very well be the truth as I would see it. But you’d have no guarantee, not with me. You’d have absolutely no editorial prerogative. You would not even see the book until publication."

DMU Timestamp: January 05, 2016 22:31





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