Three Month Fever: The Andrew Cunanan Story

Rating:
Summary: Brave, fascinating & convincing
Review: WHY do so many people seem to dislike this book so much? First off, read Maureen Orth's 'Vulgar Favors' before reading Indiana's book--the two are a very good combination & Orth's book (which I also like, though less than Indiana's) gives a good idea how seriously to take Indiana's unusual technique. In at least two significant ways, Indiana's is the better book: he doesn't make the mistake of flailing around for some sort of conspiracy theory to explain Cunanan's murder of Versace and he convincingly discounts drug-use that Orth rather unwisely buys into. Also, his is better written. As to the debate about Indiana's fictionalization or creative non-fiction or whatever, it's certainly no more of a sin than anything Truman Capote did in 'In Cold Blood,' which if you take the time to read about it (e.g. George Plimpton's account) you'll see was fictionalized (though my edition was sold as NONFICTION/LITERATURE). Indiana is up-front about what he did, laying it out in the beginning, in the prefaces, specifying what he invented, which is good to know 'cause he has some excellent quotations from Cunanan's writings that are NOT fictionalized. Indiana isn't SYMPATHIZING with Cunanan, he's EMPATHIZING, & therein lies a world of difference & empathy with a murderer is no bad thing if you want to understand, which presumably would be one of the chief reasons to buy the book. Murderers are human & Indiana has a nice quotation from Gore Vidal about that in the beginning (if you want to see a killer, go look in the mirror). Indiana glorifies the murders much less than 90 percent of conventional 'true crime' books, which often seem to go overboard perhaps partly to justify their publication (gee, this murder was more brutal than most & that's why we need yet another account of yet another murder). Weaknesses of 'Three Month Fever' include that Indiana's sense of place is, as someone else commented, not very good at all ... but then the places are maybe not so very important in this book, which is surely mostly about the PLACE of Cunanan's mind & our collective minds reacting to Cunanan. It's a weakness for Indiana to claim, as he does, that he's invented a new approach, 'cause that's just not true, all the way back to 'In Cold Blood.' Nor is it true if you know anything about the much discussed 'new journalism' of people such as Tom Wolfe. The prose is overblown, but this might be deliberate, since it reflects the sort of overblown verbiage one would have heard from Cunanan & also it is, frankly, beautifully queeny, really evocative of the way some queens present themselves, really well done. So maybe it's intentional. Certainly Indiana has a hypothesis & that's all it can be, but it rings a good deal truer than Orth's, where hers collapses in her apparent inability to grasp that a sociopath might kill for the sake of killing & for no other reason. People seem to think there's no way Indiana could know much of what he writes. I beg to differ. It's astonishing how much one can get from court records, investigative reports, etc., including entire conversations essentially reconstructed & perhaps people don't realize that. I strongly suspect the big surprise if we all knew a lot more about this book would be how much of it is NOT fictionalized. ... But the bottom line is that SOME people CAN put themselves in certain other people's minds. Sure, every detail won't be accurate. But the general sense of things will feel chillingly true, as it does here. I suspect Indiana has as much right as anyone to do what he did. Most of us couldn't imagine Cunanan's viewpoint, but I think Indiana can & he does it very well ... & he's very honest about it all & we're free to disagree if we wish, just like we're free to turn off the TV if we don't like it. ... This is a well-written, really thought-provoking, compelling, mostly very convincing, brave book. One final question: Would you rather read YET ANOTHER formulaic, poorly written, newspapery 'true crime' book or would you rather read something different, fresh, more challenging? If your answer is the latter, buy & read Indiana's book (preferably in hardback ... I can't imagine why the paperback of this not very long book is abridged).