Word: woodwarding
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That is the way his life reads, anyhow, in Bob Woodward's mildly sensational, ultimately senseless account, Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi (Simon and Schuster, $17.95). The book, kicked off with a front-page serialization launch and favorable review in the Washington Post, where Au thor Woodward heads up the investigative reporting staff, is drawing the kind of hoopla usually kindled by more conventional show-biz behemoths; an excerpt has also appeared in Playboy. Like some Hollywood superproduction, the book boasts a long list of cameo appearances by stars (Jack Nicholson, Robin Williams, Robert...
...case invested Belushi's life with a weight and dimension it lacked when he was busy living it. It turns out, however, that there are no unanswered questions that matter. So everyone comes up short: Belushi's widow and his sister-in-law, who first enlisted Woodward in the project; the author himself, who does a considerable amount of vamping and page filling by re-creating old Belushi routines from Saturday Night Live; and any reader who hopes to learn some lesson from Belushi's death or is even curious to know why it matters...
...Woodward does not attempt to appraise Belushi or to put him into any social or moral perspective. Like Sergeant Joe Friday, Woodward goes for just the facts, and they do not take him very far or deep. Since many of the facts are known from the headlines anyway, Woodward must resort to details. In large part, this means recounting endless rounds of drug blowouts, frazzled work sessions and show-biz parties. There are occasional testimonials to Belushi's sweetness (he and his wife make love on a Martha's Vineyard cliff; he buys his father a ranch...
...bypasses the one potentially intriguing question about Belushi's death: Why did the Los Angeles police release Cathy Smith, who was subsequently indicted for murder and for "furnishing and administering" speedballs (potent mixtures of cocaine and heroin) during the final days of Belushi's life? Portrayed by Woodward as a user and sometime dealer of heroin, Smith was able to hotfoot it to Canada, where she is still fighting extradition. Woodward is so absorbed in writing about Belushi's demons that he has barely a moment to suggest where they might have originated. Evoking an Albanian father...
...appeared two days before the Washington Post could publish its own thoroughgoing inquiry by its ombudsman (an independent critic), who judged the Post's performance "inexcusable." The Post admitted to squelching its own doubts when Cooke's story was first challenged. One of her superiors, Bob Woodward, reportorial hero of Watergate, said, "We went into our Watergate mode-protect the source and back the reporter...