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Article: Killer journalism; Schindler dissent
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- April 13, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1994 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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John Wayne Gacy is obsessively fond of defending his innocence,
which is imaginary."
Alec Wilkinson's "Conversations with a Killer" in this week's New
Yorker is a look at the murderer of 33 boys -- as such Gacy is
America's most notorious killer -- and its lead is provocative. But
the piece doesn't build and ends up demonstrating why it's not easy
or simple to go slumming or dabbling in lurid journalism.
Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," which originated as New Yorker
journalism, is the model. It defined the genre of literary
tabloidism. But Wilkinson isn't Capote, a successful novelist who
used his incomparable novelistic techniques to get inside his
subjects, the thrill-killers of an ...