There are moments when it frightens us, threatening to expose us as inauthentic. Well, the big-time impostors we read about in literature run this risk constantly, flirting with destruction, not just humiliation or embarrassment. It's a spectacle that we can't help but find compelling, and it involves a certain level of courage that we sneakily admire, perhaps.
Walter KirnRequesting permission from someone to be honest is really a way of accusing the other person of being so demanding or overbearing that you couldn't be honest all along.
Walter KirnIt's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one.
Walter KirnI disagree that Blood Will Out is a memoir in the conventional sense. It's the story of a relationship, primarily, not an individual. The "me" in the book is a specialized version of me, the person who Clark manipulated and fooled. I could cover the same years of my life from an entirely different perspective in another book, by concentrating on my experience as a husband, say. But I was selective. I focused on my duping.
Walter Kirn