Missing The Point

By tristero

On the front page of the Times Book Review, Jennifer McDonald eviscerates Lifespan of a Fact with such humorless viciousness that it reads, unintentionally, as a hilarious parody of a bad review. Especially because she missed the main irony, which is that in telling the story of the story about the story, D’Agata apparently was accurate (you’ll have to read the review). That is, he chose to be factual when telling his own Iliad of Woe, rather than when reporting on another’s suicide. That paints D’Agata’s intentional lying in the original story in a very intriguing, and genuinely unflattering, light. D’Agata’s own values and behavior, in other words, are far more damning than anything Jennifer McDonald hurls at him.

But by writing so nastily, and with so little apparent awareness of the meta-issues D’Agata was playing with, Ms. McDonald actually made “Lifespan” sound like a very, very interesting and important book. Which was the last thing she wanted to do.

Facts are facts, no doubt. But they are slippery critters indeed in the hands of the untalented or clueless – not to mention the malicious. And that fact, which McDonald simply can’t grasp, is one we ignore regularly, and to our peril