Another City, Not My Own

Rating:
Summary: Gus Bailey's latest is a MUST-READ for Simpson-trial junkies
Review: Just when we thought we'd had enough of the Simpson trial, Dominick Dunne brings us this page-turning, dramatic, often comedic, and always insightful insider's view of the Trial of the Century in his latest novel. Through the eyes of Gus Bailey, we get a sense of the personalities involved in the case and Gus (Dunne) doesn't hold back his opinions. I'd like to find out everything else that Gus scribbled down in his little green notebook! This book is a must-read for any Simpson-trial junkie.

Rating:
Summary: Another book on this case,was it worth the wait?
Review: Having enjoyed Dominick Dunne's thinly disguised fictions as sheer entertainment in the past, I found this book very disappointing. Please tell me something that was not already on Entertainment Tonight years ago! Take out the celebrity names dropped in this book and it would read like a censored letter. As it is, it reads like a Hard Copy interview before editing; rambling, requiring little cerebral activity and repetitious. THE MOST UNFORGIVABLE LITERARY SIN IS PRESENT IN THIS TEDIOUS BOOK, ENNUI.Yawn.

Rating:
Summary: O.J. Is Un-Dunne
Review: The best book yet on the trial that mesmerized America. It is told from the personal perspective of Dominick Dunne (AKA Gus Bailey) who immersed himself in all aspects of the case. Only Dominick Dunne could have written a book as entertaining or as revealing as this.

Rating:
Summary: Dunn renews interest in a topic that was becomming tedious.
Review: Just like the rest of America, I was transfixed with the OJ trial, but found the multitude of books that came out afterwards to be repetitive and boring. I'm pleased to find that Dominck Dunne's book puts you inside the trial the way t.v. was able to; Mr. Dunne makes you once more feel like a participant in American History. He renews interest in a topic that was becomming tedious and I thank him for that.

Rating:
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.

Rating:
Summary: Wow. Shockingly Bad.
Review: As a fan of Dunne's "Vanity Fair" writings, I was looking forward to reading this book about the O.J. Simpson trial. However, this book is so badly written and so vapid that it offers nothing of literary or journalistic value. Dunne has no insights into the trial or into Simpson other than musing about his flat, angry stare. Written in a breathless "I went to dinner with Nancy Reagan and then I talked about O.J. to Princess Diana and then I saw Madonna and she said hi to me" kind of prose, this reads like the journal of a starstruck eleven-year-old.

The disappearance of Dunne's (in the novel, called Gus Bailey) son is handled incredibly flatly as well. Later, after his son is found, "Gus" stops rambling on about Simpson's trial long enough to say, hey, you'll really have to tell me sometime about your five-day-ordeal and how you felt about it. But right now, let me tell you about my run-in with Frank Sinatra. This lack of interest in his son doesn't exactly make Bailey a likable, or even believable, character.

The ending, which I won't give away, is so ludicrous as to be laughable. I am really shocked by the amateur level of the writing here, and can only wonder if the rest of Dunne's books are this bad. Based on this read, I won't be finding out.

Rating:
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.

Rating:
Summary: The Joys of Name Dropping...
Review: This novel in the form of memoir is filled with thinly veiled fictional that exactly follows Dunne's life in LA during the Simpson murder trials. He even quotes his actual articles from Vanity Fair at the beginning of each chapter. Nevertheless, this book is filled with wonderful and fascinating scenes. Who knew that Nancy Reagan met Heidi Fleiss? Or that Princess Margaret found the trial to be a bore? That that Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, and Elizabeth Taylor were all fascinated by the trial? Several reviewers have admonished Dunne for name dropping. That is absurd. Dunne admits he does it, and frankly, it is fun. This isn't as much about the trial as the life outside of it and that was terrific new perspective. The ending of this novel could be called almost comic and Dunne took a lot of heat for it, but it makes an important point about celebrity in our culture. I don't want to ruin the mystery, although it becomes obivous early on. One could argue that Bailey (Dunne), who lived through celebrity gossip and stories, that he died by the proverbial sword. There is a certain poetic justice to it. Nevertheless, a juicy read for those still fascinated by the OJ trial and Dunne.

Rating:
Summary: Only a little more than you ever wanted to know
Review: I didn't devote that many hours to watching or reading about the OJ Simpson trial at the time it happened, so it was fun to gain some knowledge about what happened from one point of view. I would guess that most of the conversations and events in this book really happened, and are couched as fiction to avoid betraying confidences or risking lawsuits. No objectivity here, but if you want some interesting interpretation from the point of view of someone who was present for the trial and undoubtedly talked with many of the players, I would highly recommend this book. If you have no interest in OJ Simpson and whether or not he killed Nicole and Ronald, I'd probably skip it.

Rating:
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