As pleasingly intriguing as it is to realize that a few stray copies of
O.J. Simpson’s
If I Did It are floating around, we’re even more pleased that one landed in the capable hands of
Vanity Fair columnist James Wolcott. So, James, was the ReganBooks fiasco worth the ensuing scandal? His answer, it seems: Not so much. In a review-cum-condemnation posted to
VF.com today, Wolcott is most struck by the banality of the allegedly incendiary material, noting that O.J.’s story is a “suave void” in which the running back turned movie star presents himself as a passive figure in his marriage and the murders, only slightly less inert than ghostwriter Pablo Fenvjes’s prose. Don’t think that means you shouldn’t read the review itself, though. Even if
O.J. isn’t able to spin more than a yawn-yarn from his story of a wife-beating marriage, double murder, and Trial of the Century, Wolcott’s toss-offs, like his gloriously alliterative contortion — “a shameless yet ingeniously opaque cockteaser of a cash-in confessional (who knew a book about a double homicide could be so flipping coy?)” — are the closest this case will ever get to poetic
justice.
Murder, He Wrote (Sort Of) [VF.com]
