Word: books
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Morris had a President who moved events. He seems to want to believe that to be true of Reagan as well. Morris says as much in the final, cloying scene of the book. He tells the reader that he himself was one of the people lifeguard Dutch saved from the river, and concludes: "Some day, I hoped, America might acknowledge her similar debt to the old Lifeguard who rescued her in a time of poisonous despair...
...writer's job, Morris observes, is different from the actor's in that the author tries to remember backward, to turn experience into a literary account. "To the actor, only artifice is actual," Morris writes. Unfortunately in this book, Morris has switched roles...
Professor David Stoll tracked down her history and found that parts of her book were simply made up. She was not uneducated. She was sent to boarding school. Her father was indeed engaged in a long struggle to keep from being dispossessed of his land--not by rich ladinos (Guatemalans of European descent), as she claims, but by his in-laws. Nor was her brother Petrocinio burned to death by the government death squads...
True enough. But she says she was there and saw his death. If she wanted to make stuff up, there is an easy way to do so. Call the book a novel (or, as the New Republic's Charles Lane wickedly suggested, We, Rigoberta Menchu). Why didn...
...fantastic deception? Because what could be more compelling than a child's eyewitness to the ovens. As fiction, noted Judith Shulevitz in Slate, the book is banal and formulaic. As fact, it becomes harder to dismiss...