Word: memoirs
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Publishers have barreled down the same cynical, slippery slope. Not so long ago, readers of autobiographies were meant to understand that Sammy Davis or William Paley actually produced his memoir. About a decade ago, the pretense was dropped and ghostwriters' names went onto book jackets; nobody minded. Now comes an extraordinary new stage in this postmodern devolution: works of fiction that the nominal celebrity authors not only didn't write but that publishers and celebrities admit they didn't write...
TELEVISION HBO recounts the history of the AIDS epidemic, gingerly. BOOKS Smilla's Sense of Snow is a riveting thriller set in Denmark and Greenland. Scott Smith's first novel, A Simple Plan, needs work. Willie Morris goes golly-gee in his memoir, New York Days. CINEMA True Romance is true carnage. MUSIC A cheap shot at the underclass mars an appealing new album by Garth Brooks...
Soderbergh's adaptation of A.E. Hotchner's novel-memoir is episodic, and that mutes the melodrama inherent in Aaron's encounters with crime, illness and loss. Aaron must improvise his response to events without fully understanding them, and that comes closer to the truth about boyhood than most movies do. It was a directorial mistake to bathe the images in a soft glow. But that visual error is not compounded psychologically. The film has a tough core, and in a time when movies about the troubles of little boys are a sentimental subgenre and dysfunction is being too easily overcome...
...Bernhard offers a vaudevillian hybrid--part comedy, part song, part dramatic monologue. This genre-bending works to keep audiences perennially on edge as she prods, sometimes viciously, at American popular culture. Bernhard may be trying for something similar with this book, described on the jacket as "a mix of memoir, fiction, invented memoir, and fiction that rings with the truth." This mostly means that these pieces feel unfinished or uncertain. Too many read like abandoned short stories or tiny ideas stretched unconvincingly over a few pages...
THEATER Was it worth making Sunset Boulevard into a musical? CINEMA The creator of Boys N the Hood flops this time. TELEVISION Chantilly Lace is sisterhood in action (men, beware). MUSIC Tony! Toni! Tone! updates sweet '60s soul. BOOKS A memoir of sexism and racism at the Washington Post. Honor Among Thieves is a plodding (non)thriller...