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• Saturday, August 16, 2008 05:07 AM

  @prytania

  I think that line meant "in the more openly autobiographic later novel Poole was exactly as McInerney had described her in his earlier work"

  It could have been more explicit perhaps but I got the idea. The "well-coiffed" line was sort of crappy, but what are you gonna do?

  However this is my real question: So you think the fact that this article connects the character and a real person is somehow being hidden? Craftily camouflaged?

  What part of "this article is about Rielle Hunter" is hard to grasp? The title, with Hunter's name in it? The lines about how several authors based their characters named "Allison Poole" on Hunter?

  That Bright Lights novel was a bit of 80s fluff to be sure, but I found it funny. I see it very much like Tom Wolfe's fiction, bad fiction writing that nonetheless chronicles a world I didn't know, which makes it more interesting than a lot of other fluff out there. Both Wolfe and Mcinerny would be better off just doing journalism, something that Wolfe used to do very well before he became a bad novelist.

  I don't think there was any notion in anyone's mind except yours that the writer here was using sneaky and snarky tricks to describe Rielle Hunter while pretending not to. I can't speak for others, but her photo at the top of the page was the first giveaway for me.

  —Bill E Pilgrim Read Bill E Pilgrim's other letters
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