I finally got around to reading John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and I'm glad I waited for the library copy. Not a bad read, but not quite what I'd hoped in either literary or entertainment value. Perhaps I'm being snobbish, but I suspect I'm responding to the difference between an Esquire writer like Berendt and the New Yorker and Granta writers I'm more accustomed to.
One thing that struck me was how little of himself Berendt put into the book. He writes as a participant-journalist, and mentions how he came to divide his time between New York and Savannah, but his background, his New York life, and how he is seen by the Savannah characters remain pretty much opaque. That's his prerogative, of course, but I like it when a writer of reportage fesses up to his effect on the story he's telling. Such an approach is not only more honest but it's usually more interesting, the current glut of memoirs notwithstanding.
This point has bearing on the art of blogging. Fact is, the most interesting bloggers usually indulge in quite a bit of kiss and tell. That's easier for young and/or single people with a streak of recklessness; since I've got a wife and kids who I don't want to embarass, I'll always be more restrained and so will remain in the lackluster herd of mediocre linkbloggers (as my Weblog Review entry notes).
Back to Midnight. To be fair, the book did hold my interest to the end, and there was at least one knee-slapper of a scene (when Chablis crashes the debutantes' ball). But having lived in another isolated hysterical historical town, I suspect that Berendt underused his material. I need to rent the movie to see what sort of life Eastwood, Cusack, Spacey and company could breathe into it.