New York Times columnist Frank Rich’s new book, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth From 9/11 to Katrina, has been getting the kind of press any author would kill for, with the New York Times and the Los Angles Times running glowing reviews while mega-outlets like the Today Show and Don Imus have had Rich on to hawk the book in feature segments.
The Los Angeles Times‘ Tim Rutten positively gushed over the book, saying that Rich “writes what is surely American journalism’s smartest and most original newspaper column for the Sunday New York Times. Its organizing principle is a deceptively simple one: Draw the connections between and among popular culture, mass media and our politics, and chart the way these increasingly indistinct spheres of our national life act one upon the other.”
There’s not much to argue with there. Rich’s insights are keen, his grasp of pop culture voluminous and his prose crackles — it’s just that lately, when I get to his column at the back of the Week in Review section of the Sunday Times, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that I’ve heard it all before. But that’s not Rich’s fault, in a column that’s designed to be once-weekly rundown of the major story or stories of the past seven days, he is forced to play catch-up with events that have already been chewed-up and spit out by the 24-hour cable networks, blogs, and dailies. Given this constantly churning culture mill that produces commentary and criticism by the gigabyte, Rich’s Sunday column has become the final bit of piling on each week — but by time he gets to a story, there often isn’t a whole lot left to say about it. Despite this, he gamely holds his own, producing a wry cultural mash-up of politics and prime time TV trash in which he runs the news through his high-speed, anti-administration, OC-referencing Cuisinart. But that’s also part of the problem. At this point, his conceit is clear, and his column has become such a predictable exercise in lefty posturing and pop culture winks that you know exactly where you’ll end up from the very first sentence.
Despite all this, I gave his book a go, but after getting to the end of page 91 (the end of “Part I” of the book), I threw in the towel.
It’s not that the book is poorly argued, or poorly written — just the opposite, in fact. It’s a revealing trip back through the past five years of history moving at hyper-speed, as seen through a crib-notes version of Rich’s columns.
As in his column, Rich never stops to take a breath, and he writes with an economy of style that relies more on reference and quotation than it does on narrative. The result is a relentless stream of quotes, clips and quips that quickly becomes a charmless mélange of White House press conferences, cable news shows, PR stunts and books that stirred up controversy among the chattering classes that attend these very same press conferences and appear on the cable news shows. As reviewer Scott McLemee wrote awhile back in Newsday, “Rich never makes any historical reference earlier than the Vietnam War … Is this an antidote to the present administration’s depthless disconnection from reality? It seems to me like a symptom of the same condition.”
Because the book is written like a 228-page version of Rich’s weekly column, it fails to ever build any momentum, construct an engaging narrative or rhythm, or become anything more than a robotic retelling of recent history.
But there’s still something about the book — and about Rich’s work in general — that makes these criticisms somewhat hard to admit. Rich manages to place the news where it belongs — inside the overall din of the culture industry — better than any other writer currently working, but his machine-gun delivery and essential predictability also make him a less interesting read than his talents might suggest.
Still, I’ll hold on to Rich’s book for those moments in the future when I need to quickly pull up some obscure Scott McClellan quote (he gets fourteen mentions in the tome) or a Jon Stewart quip (six mentions). In fact, the index in Rich’s book may be the only one to feature the subjects, “Million Little Pieces, A (Frey),” in between “Miller, Zell,” and “Mineta Norman.”
But that quirkiness isn’t nearly enough to save this book from itself — and from Rich’s penchant to let research trump his writing.
Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.