John Freeman

The only thing Americans love more than a scoundrel is a reformed one. If Bonnie & Clyde were alive today, they'd rob banks in the morning, shed a tear with Oprah in the afternoon, and then peddle their anguished memoirs over late-night TV.

In recent years, this cycle of expiation has drawn participants from what ought to be a bastion of truth: the nation's newspapers. Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass concocted false stories in The New York Times and New Republic and had books out before the ink of their correction stories had dried--or so it seemed.

Michael Finkel is the latest shamed journalist to go from fabulist to apologist, but unlike Glass and Blair--who blamed the institutions that indulged them--the only person Finkel blames is himself. Except it's not the Michael Finkel who falsified a New York Times Magazine story about slave labor in Ivory Coast cocoa farms.

No, the Michael Finkel he shifts blame to was apprehended by FBI agents in Cancun, Mexico. Several weeks prior, this Michael Finkel (whose real name was Christian Longo) had murdered his wife and three kids, stuffed them in suitcases, and dropped them into Yaquina Bay in Oregon. Upon fleeing the country, Longo just happened to adopt the name of a journalist about to be defrocked by The New York Times.

It's hard not to marvel at what a stroke of luck this was for the real Michael Finkel. Without Longo, he would be stumbling humbly before the altar of forgiveness. Instead, we have this strange, bizarre, and grimly compelling Jekyll & Hyde story. By telling his own story alongside that of a sociopath, Finkel leeches sympathy from the reader without their even knowing they've given it.

The book opens with Finkel learning of this strange identity theft. He quickly puts away thoughts of going into a deep hibernation, pounces on Longo and seduces him into a casual friendship. They trade letters, sip martinis over the phone (actually only Finkel does the sipping, his pal is in jail), and within no time Finkel has a sketchy outline of what brought a preppy, charming and seemingly harmless father to the brink of murder.

Sadly, what emerges from their collusion is just another mundane story of a man living beyond his means. Longo was desperate to provide a lifestyle for his wife and kids that he could not maintain. When he cracked, he cut corners. And then he stole. It started with filching from a cash register at work, but progressed to forging checks, lifting credit cards, ripping off identities, even driving a minivan off a car dealer's lot so his wife would have something smart to drive.

Loosening this story from its moorings leads to a host of bizarre scenes. Their irony seems to escape Finkel, though. Again and again, the one-time liar has to question the veracity of his subject: "Everything you've written to me is true?" Finkel asks at one point. And then he asks again. "There's nothing you want to take back?"

Of course, not all of it was true, and even Longo's trial failed to elicit the mea culpa his wife's family wanted. Finkel, however, is more than willing to offer his. "And so the last thing I want to say about my Times article is this," he says. "I'm sorry."

It's hard not to feel Finkel is being sincere here. You even want to believe he will never betray our trust again. But Longo's story teaches us another lesson. People tell us what we want to hear at a point when it serves them, and sometimes--as in the case of this odd memoir--that just so happens to be the truth.

True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa

By Michael Finkel

HarperCollins, $25.95, 312 pages

(2005-05-31)

Also by John Freeman

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The Hubba-Bubba pink cover art on her new book notwithstanding, Camille Paglia is courting a lower profile these days
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Fiction Review
A private detective fueled with booze and soused by desire falls for a dangerous dame in Kevin Young's new book, "Black Maria," a noir in verse that will give Raymond Chandler's best a run for its money
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Fiction Review
(2005-03-08)

Nonfiction Review
(2005-02-22)

Fiction Review
(2005-02-08)

Nonfiction Review
(2004-12-21)

Poetry Review
(2004-12-07)

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