Another City, Not My Own: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir

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Summary: A novel in the form of a memoir
Review: At first glance, this book appears to be a novel about the O.J. Simpson trial. However, as the subtitle indicates, this book is really a novel about Dominick Dunne. Dunne's account of the Simpson trial and how it consumed America's attention is fascinating. However, it isn't the story of the Simpson trial that holds the reader's attention. It is Dunne's own story that touches us and keeps us reading until the end.

This isn't an ordinary roman a clef. Here, Dunne gives almost every character the name of the actual person upon whom that character is based. Simpson is Simpson, Cowlings is Cowlings and Fuhrman is Fuhrman. Only the names of Dunne, his family and a few others are changed. Here, Dunne calls the character modeled after himself Augustus Bailey. Bailey is a fiction writer who specializes in roman a clefs concerning the crimes and scandals of the rich and famous. He also writes a regular column in Vanity Fair. He tells how his marriage and movie industry career were brought to an end by his drug and alcohol abuse, how he redeemed himself through writing, and how his personal tragedies haunt him and compel him to write.

As always, Dunne's writing is insightful, biting and gossipy (often too gossipy for my tastes). Dunne seems to to come into contact with every celebrity on the planet. He writes most effectively when he wear his heart on his shirtsleeve. The passages concerning Bailey's fears, his compassion and his overwhelming anger are very moving. After the first few chapters, Bailey (aka Dunne) felt like an old friend.

If you're looking for an unbiased, objective account of the Simpson trial, you'll be disappointed. Dunne is the first to admit that he is biased. If you're looking for a glimpse into Dunne's life and emotions, you'll find this book very rewarding.

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Summary: "Fiction" without a point
Review: Dominick Dunne's "Another City, Not My Own" is an extraordinarily confusing novel. The protagonist is Gus Bailey, who is essentially Dunne himself. Dunne suggests that the renaming of the protagonist and the label of "novel" applied to the book are to protect against libel suits, though any legal protection these devices afford is at best dubious. The story, such as it is, is of Bailey/Dunne's coverage of the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson that so dominated the media. Well, that's part of the story. The rest involves Bailey/Dunne's visits with celebrities from Elizabeth Taylor to Nancy Reagan to Andrew Cunanan.

With so many books about the trial, the question of this book's worth is probably whether it adds anything new. In some respects, Dunne does contribute to our understanding of the case by sharing insights about the main players, from the defense team to the prosecution to some of the witnesses. Of course, we are told that the book is fiction, and that fact mitigates against the faith we can put in Dunne's tales. Some of the events are obviously fictitious, but some are patently real. Where the truth lies is something Dunne evidently would prefer to avoid disclosing.

One of the more curious aspects of "Another City, Not My Own" is that Bailey/Dunne repeatedly laments the people who would rather tell him what they know than tell officials. At the same time, Dunne himself is being exceedingly less than forthright in using the literary structure he does. We are told to believe in Simpson's factual guilt because of the hearsay Bailey/Dunne hears, but the result is merely one of preaching to those who have made up their minds one way or the other. In the end, one must wonder to what end this book was written, aside from the net effect on Mr. Dunne's bank statement. If the book is purely fiction, then one wonders why such a fictional account is necessary. If the book is mostly non-fiction, then why disclaim it as Dunne does? Finally, if the book is a mixture of fact and fiction (as it is), how are we to know what is what?

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Summary: Tabloid Proust
Review: Gus Bailey returns to a city from his past, Los Angeles, to cover the OJ trial for Vanity Fair. A native of Connecticut, Gus has behind him a failed career as film producer in tinseltown, as well as the trauma of a murdered child and a trial of her killer which he felt betrayed the principle of justice. Arranging his accommodation at the Chateau Marmont, Gus finds copies of a previous novel of his displayed in a vitrine in the lobby; as homage he's put up in the room of the hotel which he featured in that novel. And so the recursive mirroring between life and fiction that structures this novel begins. Gus has remade himself as a quality journalist, a kind of tabloid Proust who eavesdrops at the tables of the rich and famous and retails his information in suavely persuasive opinion pieces. In fact, it was Dominick Dunne who chronicled the trial for Vanity Fair, and indeed it was Dominick Dunne who experienced just about everything Gus Bailey experiences in this novel.

Dunne calls Another City, Not My Own "a novel in the form of a memoir," and the book clearly relives one chapter of the Dunne life saga. Bailey has Dunne's past and predilections, although the novelistic frame makes it unclear what purports to be truth and what is subject to the laws of fiction. Bailey carries a notebook with him to record encounters as they happen, often describing their planned appearance in the novel he is writing about the case - a novel called, appropriately, Another City, Not My Own. Fiction becomes the repository of what may not be said in journalism - libel, gossip, rumor - as well as of a poetic truth in events which real life often fails to achieve, although there's much to be thought poetic and uncanny in the story of the trial.

Dominick Dunne writes of Gus Bailey's living room: "the orchid plants, the Chinese export porcelain, the leather-bound first editions of Anthony Trollope and Edith Wharton." It's interesting to speculate on Dunne's own debt to the two novelists mentioned, authors each responsible for exhaustive chronicles of a mode de vie. Social comedy and satire are Dunne's tools of trade, although at times the book reads something like a cross between the Warhol diaries and Truman Capote with a bug up his ... The cavalcade of names dropped, connections traced, and glittering social occasions works because the book is intensely readable: compelling for those who wish to imagine themselves one step closer to the "truth" of the trial, even when it is cast in ambiguous fiction. Few of the characters of this novel are fictional, and few of the events, one suspects. Its conclusion is necessarily contrived, a rather abrupt and melodramatic reminder of how unreal fiction may become. I liked, though, Dunne's urge to expand his chronicle with this gesture to the improbable, a moment of satirical invention that finally severs

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Summary: Fun and Fury At the Trial of the Century
Review: Only Dominick Dunne could combine truth, fiction, frivolity and fury in one novel. Or is it a memoir? Along with enumerable tales of dinner seated between the rich and famous Dunne, who had a front row seat for the length of the Simpson trial, unleashes his anger at a system that sentenced his daughter's killer to less than two years in prison. People talk to Dunne (or his alter ego, Gus Bailey - whoever you choose to believe). Folks not willing to "get involved" in the trial tell him their secrets, be it bloody sheets found in the garbage or Simpson's gift of a bag full of knives. Gus knows things, and soon we are privileged to know them, too. They are gossipy and delicious, and learning these inside stories along with Gus's friends Nancy (Reagan), Liz (Taylor) et.al. gives a vicarious thrill.

How this frivolity mixes with outrage over the murder (and Dunne's unwavering believe in Simpson's guilt) is a tribute to Dunne's talent. Only a weak and tacked on ending mars Dunne's juggling act. Not Dunne's best work, but certainly one of his most interesting.

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Summary: Touching
Review: While at first glance, ANOTHER CITY, NOT MY OWN, seems to be a barely fictionalized first-person report by a writer covering the O.J. Simpson trial, it actually is far more significant than the news event it purportedly documents.

There is no escaping that this "novel" (in the form of a "memoir," the cover of the book tells buyers) is a personal anecdote about author Dominick Dunne. As a result, it is self-revelatory in the extreme. Dunne does not spare himself when he recounts his life. The story of his marriage, and of his daughter's murder, inescapably are touching. Once this novel--or memoir--has been completed, these are the details which stay with a reader, not the additional account of the Simpson trial.

There is no escaping that Dunne was born under some combined influence of stars and planets which has planted him, over and over, in places which allowed him to witness, from the inside, some of the most important social events of the 20th century. As a result, his memoir makes for fascinating reading.

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Summary: Squeezing O.J. Once More...
Review: While attending a Luncheon at L.A. mega-artist Tony Duquette's Bel-Air home, I had occasion to sit with and listen to one of Dominick's many, many 'floor shows' - as his main character, Gus Bailey considers the multitudes of hosts' requests to dish up O.J. gossip at their elite parties. And indeed he was just as enthralling and insightful as the story he writes. Later that same year, a Dinner party at Gordon and Anne Getty's home brought another chance meeting with the fab Dunne and once again his keen insights held enrapt a table of San Francisco socialites. I began to notice however, how Dunne's own musings on the trial were becoming increasingly personal and so I waited anxiously everytime he'd say "It'll all be in my novel." for it's publication. It is no surprise to me that Dunne chose a quasi Nathaniel West "Day of the Locust" route for his fictional memoir (an allusion he makes reference to often in his book). By trial and books'end and clamouring out of the American Legal system is not the truth, or even Darden's precious 'Baby Justice,' but an obvious downward spiraling madness that swept a city, certainly, perhaps a nation - and a few international celebs. For those who feel that Dunne's book makes up in name-dropping what it lacks in content, is to miss entirely the point of what Wealth, Power and the ends by which image and self-preservation are served. The trial was one giant Name-Dropping event; so many called, so few examined. Consider this novel Dunne's way of examining the trial, and our breathlessly waif culture and his own horrific realization of what his role as journalist-storyteller has actually been all these years. Certainly the ending of the book, so incestuous to it's main theme, cannot elude even the most irony-blind. This book sews up one wound, and quickly cuts another. As a fictional memoir, it is wicked, grimy and candid. As a mirror that we'll stare at for years to come - we'll wonder why we keep refusing to see all those little cracks.