Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon People

Nothing Personal
Snoop's dazzling doggy dream
Check your Glock at the gate: Here comes Doggyland; a boner, er, make that a bone to pick with Austin action doll; Buffet cookin' up goodtimecharlie.com? Plus: Wimmin of wrasslin' ready to rumble.
By Amy Reiter
[06/24/99]

Nothing Personal
Austin's secret mojo jelly
Actress reveals mystery of covert curves; Ken Starr sings Clinton's praises; fabulous new carbonated bra concept. Plus: Rod the Mod finds God.
By Amy Reiter
[06/23/99]

People Feature
A "black mark" for Luchese crime family
Two mob soldiers get plenty o' slammer time for attempting to whack an informant's sister.
By Jerry Capeci
[06/23/99]

Nothing Personal
Falwell: Lilith sucked face with she-demons
Falwell shifts focus from Tinky-Winky to the Beast; off with his head! Prince William gets digital makeover. Plus: This week's fun couple -- Evel Knievel and Chrissie Hynde.
By Amy Reiter
[06/22/99]

Brilliant Careers
Germaine Greer
The impulsive, fatally naive diva of feminism made the world a better place in spite of herself.
By Laura Miller
[06/22/99]

Complete archives for People

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

A couple years back, while I was delirious with some kind of flu gawdawfulness, a friend brought me Norman Mailer's "Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery," which turned out to be the perfect reading matter while touring delirium, because brain-fever fantasizing was the book's required accessory. Reading "Oswald" was addictive -- just like staring at knotholes on the ceiling.

Douglas Cruickshank Douglas Cruickshank's Rogues' Gallery appears every Thursday. The Raw and the Cooked appears every Saturday. + Biography + Archives

In researching the book, Mailer was given extraordinary access by the Russians to all manner of information (though not, presumably, that which has recently been released), including secret surveillance recordings made of Marina and Lee's conversations in their apartment. Fascinating? Not quite. More like the Bickersons on borscht by way of Beckett. The star-crossed couple dragged one another through numberless wee set-tos, utterly uncompelling in their dullness and focused on issues like Lee's helping with the housework (he was no dreamboat in that regard, comradettes) and, if memory serves, a run-in over the old in 'n' outski (apparently no dreamboat in that regard either -- wotasurprizski).

Oswald comes off as a dreary depressobag and a poor speller to boot. Poor Marina comes off as, well, a confused young woman stuck in the middle of Russia with someone who was either a megalomaniac homicidal loser or history's biggest patsy. In Oswald's single-page, handwritten letter that the Russkies just shipped to President Clinton, LHO, requesting asylum, tells the "Surprem Soviet of the USSR" that "I have lived in a decadent capitalist society where the workers are slaves," and yet a search of Salon personnel files reveals no record of Oswald ever having been employed here.

Next page | Of bulls, mannequins and Wittgenstein