Customer Reviews

Another City, Not My Own

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

I just finished listening to the book on tape for the SECOND TIME. I listen while I walk for exercise...and this made it easy. (added 30 min. to each walk) I loved the gossip and name dropping, and thought the inclusion of Andrew Kunanin was clever. For those of you who "bashed it"...lower your expectations and enjoy it for what it is...a GREAT RIDE! Long live the works of Dominick Dunne...he never fails to entertain me.

I have read every word Dominick Dunne has ever written (at least the published ones). I simply devour this man's books like fine chocolates. This book was perhaps the most interesting of all the "O.J." books. It is vintage Dunne: a juicy, gossipy read that really gives you an idea of the atmosphere in Los Angeles at the time of the trial, and bemoans that fact that somehow Ron and Nicole got lost in all the hoopla. The ending has an unexpected twist. Very enjoyable--I can't wait for his next one.

While at first glance, ANOTHER CITY, NOT MY OWN, seems to be a barely fictionalized first-person report by a writer covering the O.J. Simpson trial, it actually is far more significant than the news event it purportedly documents.

There is no escaping that this "novel" (in the form of a "memoir," the cover of the book tells buyers) is a personal anecdote about author Dominick Dunne. As a result, it is self-revelatory in the extreme. Dunne does not spare himself when he recounts his life. The story of his marriage, and of his daughter's murder, inescapably are touching. Once this novel--or memoir--has been completed, these are the details which stay with a reader, not the additional account of the Simpson trial.

There is no escaping that Dunne was born under some combined influence of stars and planets which has planted him, over and over, in places which allowed him to witness, from the inside, some of the most important social events of the 20th century. As a result, his memoir makes for fascinating reading.

I was enjoying the book greatly and would have given five stars until the ending. The book suddenly completely changes tone and almost turns into another book altogether. I can't say more without giving things away. It was good though, and gave an interesting perspective on the Simpson trial. I was especially affected by his admiration for Simpson's family... When the trial was happening I guess I lumped them all in with OJ and considered them as evil as he was. But the book made me realize they were trying to be a loyal family and support him no matter what. Dunne speculates on the deep denial they must have been living in through the trial. Maybe even now. The name dropping seemed to irritate some readers, but I love that stuff!

I had never read anything by Dominick Dunne before this book and I only dimly remember seeing him on TV news/talk shows during the OJ trial but I've become quite enchanted with him as a result of reading this book. He certainly seems to lead a charmed and very interesting life, green leather notebooks and all.

As far as OJ goes, I really liked the excerpts from Dunne's "Vanity Fair" columns and I wish I had read these throughout the trial. The mixture of these serious expository pieces with the day-to-day gossip and name-dropping that the rest of the book employs creates an interesting combination. The book is 400+ pages long but it goes very quickly, it's a fun book to read. I appear to be one of the few people who didn't mind the ending -- I figure it's Dunne's time to move on to other things and what better way to accomplish this than by writing the ending he did. Sometimes fictional characters get too busy and involved in real life for the writer's own good and the only way to alleviate the problem is to send that fictional character some place else. Btw, did we all notice Dunne's mentioning that he is a close friend of Lucianne Goldberg's? But maybe he's saving that for another book.....

Only Dominick Dunne could combine truth, fiction, frivolity and fury in one novel. Or is it a memoir? Along with enumerable tales of dinner seated between the rich and famous Dunne, who had a front row seat for the length of the Simpson trial, unleashes his anger at a system that sentenced his daughter's killer to less than two years in prison. People talk to Dunne (or his alter ego, Gus Bailey - whoever you choose to believe). Folks not willing to "get involved" in the trial tell him their secrets, be it bloody sheets found in the garbage or Simpson's gift of a bag full of knives. Gus knows things, and soon we are privileged to know them, too. They are gossipy and delicious, and learning these inside stories along with Gus's friends Nancy (Reagan), Liz (Taylor) et.al. gives a vicarious thrill.

How this frivolity mixes with outrage over the murder (and Dunne's unwavering believe in Simpson's guilt) is a tribute to Dunne's talent. Only a weak and tacked on ending mars Dunne's juggling act. Not Dunne's best work, but certainly one of his most interesting.

I personally loved this fictionalized "true" story of the OJ trial. I read Dunn faithfully in Vanity Fair and really don't mind all his name dropping. (I think it adds a bit of reality and glamor) The use of "Gus" as his alter ego was a neat twist as well and could make the ending even better than the real thing. The city of LA really becomes another character in this book as well. I'd recommend it to round out any OJ-Trial collection.

...Dunne has a bespeckled elfinlike quality about him which makes you feel that he ought to be made a mystery hero ala Nero Wolf, Ellery Queen or Christie's Hercule Poirot. His alter-ego, Gus Bailey, could have created a mystery franchise, but this novel/memoir probably was more of a catharsis for Dunne. After all the frustration of his work for the Vanity Fair coverage of the Simpson case, the loss of his daughter and just trying to maintain, he needed to write. And the fact that he's been outcasted from Hollywood high society--not really outcasted, but he's switched from being Hollywood producer to Hollywood correspondent--he's been privy to many a high scandal in high society story. Like the Bulows story, the Menendez Brothers mystery and this, which is about the OJ Simpson trials, essentially.

Here's a blue brint on how Dunne/Gus Bailey gets the goods, and the dirty business of the real stories behind any crime or scandal. He talks to gas station attendants, waiters, bartenders, legal assistants and ex-wives of the famous, ex-husbands of the famous wives, wanna be models, second string actors and actresses and those recently introduced--ie, thrown into--fame and celebrity. He as well knows the already famous and powerful he somehow gets the scuttlebutt on what happens thru they seem to be talking about. It makes this novel a name dropping, jaw dropping, fast paced, page turner. Who in America is not obsessed with celebrity and their excesses? And how could you not be rivetted to this drama--Gus said himself, he could not have made a better fictionalisation what was enfolding to him in real life from the Simpson case.

And the ins and outs Dunne chooses to toss at the reader--Andrew Cunanan shows up at a function where Marcia Clark is rubbing elbows with Kirk Douglas, Rich Pryor scolds his caretaker/ex-wife not to talk about OJ because it would just be just another thing that would make it harder for Rich and that minority of 'cool' black Hollywood icons, how Mrs Lance Ito's relationship with Fuhrman may have influenced the out come, and Faye Resnick(!?!)--little snippets of infobytes, makes for compelling reading whatever you feel about the Simpson trials.

Check out Mr. Dunne's commentation on a series of high society crimes on Court TV. Some folks say he may be a kindred spirit in the Capote mode, but I put him closer to John Walsh. He's easily one of my favorites...

Gus Bailey returns to a city from his past, Los Angeles, to cover the OJ trial for Vanity Fair. A native of Connecticut, Gus has behind him a failed career as film producer in tinseltown, as well as the trauma of a murdered child and a trial of her killer which he felt betrayed the principle of justice. Arranging his accommodation at the Chateau Marmont, Gus finds copies of a previous novel of his displayed in a vitrine in the lobby; as homage he's put up in the room of the hotel which he featured in that novel. And so the recursive mirroring between life and fiction that structures this novel begins. Gus has remade himself as a quality journalist, a kind of tabloid Proust who eavesdrops at the tables of the rich and famous and retails his information in suavely persuasive opinion pieces. In fact, it was Dominick Dunne who chronicled the trial for Vanity Fair, and indeed it was Dominick Dunne who experienced just about everything Gus Bailey experiences in this novel.

Dunne calls Another City, Not My Own "a novel in the form of a memoir," and the book clearly relives one chapter of the Dunne life saga. Bailey has Dunne's past and predilections, although the novelistic frame makes it unclear what purports to be truth and what is subject to the laws of fiction. Bailey carries a notebook with him to record encounters as they happen, often describing their planned appearance in the novel he is writing about the case - a novel called, appropriately, Another City, Not My Own. Fiction becomes the repository of what may not be said in journalism - libel, gossip, rumor - as well as of a poetic truth in events which real life often fails to achieve, although there's much to be thought poetic and uncanny in the story of the trial.

Dominick Dunne writes of Gus Bailey's living room: "the orchid plants, the Chinese export porcelain, the leather-bound first editions of Anthony Trollope and Edith Wharton." It's interesting to speculate on Dunne's own debt to the two novelists mentioned, authors each responsible for exhaustive chronicles of a mode de vie. Social comedy and satire are Dunne's tools of trade, although at times the book reads something like a cross between the Warhol diaries and Truman Capote with a bug up his ... The cavalcade of names dropped, connections traced, and glittering social occasions works because the book is intensely readable: compelling for those who wish to imagine themselves one step closer to the "truth" of the trial, even when it is cast in ambiguous fiction. Few of the characters of this novel are fictional, and few of the events, one suspects. Its conclusion is necessarily contrived, a rather abrupt and melodramatic reminder of how unreal fiction may become. I liked, though, Dunne's urge to expand his chronicle with this gesture to the improbable, a moment of satirical invention that finally severs

I'm appalled by the torrential name dropping which goes on in this book. It is all the author seems to be capable of doing.

Gus Bailey is a gossip columnist, a pathetic form of gutter sniper. But he pretends to be everybody's good old buddy, otherwise no one would contact him anxious to spill the beans.

The events surround the O.J. Simpson murder trial, or rather the rich and famous people around and about it. And what a shallow bunch they turn out to be. It is obvious that Dominick Dunne is the Gus Bailey character who strongly believes O.J. to be guilty of murdering his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her companion Ronald Goldman.

The novel, if it can be called that, is narrated by a third person, but since there is much dialogue, such as, Gus said, "Blah, blah ..." I found it difficult to separate the first person from the third. It is too obvious that Dominick Dunne is the big "I" here. There is much plugging of books written by Gus Bailey, and wouldn't you know it they carry the same titles as those written by Dominick Dunne in real life. Everything is plug or drop throughout this silly book.

From time to time Gus says, "This would be a terrific scene in a novel..." or something like "I'll have a character say ..." or "... He's going to be a wonderful character for my novel ..." after he's already described relevant scenes in conversation with one of his many famous characters. Much of this is a device to circumnavigate the fact from fiction problem, but grates when said too often which is the case here.

The sheer audacity of the name dropping becomes lengthy and irritating, and the dialogue fails to carry any weight other than to further increase the length of the book. What's more, the corpus becomes bitty and lacks the coherence of continuity. The swath of "names" one stumbles through is enough to choke the mind, it's Kirk Douglas this or Nancy Reagan that or Marcia Clark or Michael Jackson or Hillary Clinton or Barbara Streisand or Warren Beatty or Dustin Hoffman or Sean Connery or Goldie Hawn or Elizabeth Taylor or Heidi Fleiss or Dan Rather or Don Ohlmeyer or Mark Lonsdale or Frank Sinatra or Annette Bening or Kurt Russell or Tom Hanks or Claus von Bülow or Fergie or King Hussein or Queen Noor or Princess Diana, and Andy Cunanan is thrown in for good measure, on and on and on ... Dunne will chisel in a name anywhere. On page 89 "..."Is that the restaurant owned by Michael Jackson's son? I don't mean Elizabeth Taylor's friend Michael Jackson that Johnnie Cochran represented in the child molestation case," said Gus." And on page 159 "... Tina Sinatra, Frank's daughter, was there at another table ..." is a typical example of how the author overdoes it. Why bother to say "Frank's daughter"? It's not necessary and it's redundant.

What the novel does show, if it's to be taken in the least bit seriously, is the condition of our society, and in particular that of the rich and famous who are seen to be a shallow bunch of people. They strive to be seen in the court room or at dinners or functions given to discuss the O.J. case. All this to promote themselves. The fact that two people were brutally murdered is shunted to the sidings and the court case comes over as another arm of the entertainment business.

Chapter 21 contains a family crisis when Gus's son Zander goes missing while hiking in the Santa Rita Mountains of Arizona. Here is the strongest and most moving writing in the book. Gus is sitting with his crippled ex-wife Peach, who suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, trying to tell her about their missing son. In doing so Gus covers everything the book has to say and more. He does it well and in a few pages.

But despite this outbreak of decent writing Dominick Dunne fails to pull this one off. His writing is contrived and stiff, the dialogue sounds false, and each paragraph is staged simply to slip a name or names into it. Because of it his attempts at being amusing are irritating, and his attempts at being serious fail too because Dunne allows his biased outrage to smother him.

At the beginning of the book it is made clear that Gus Bailey is found murdered. Who did it? At the end it is revealed, and comes as no surprise. This is certainly no who "dunne" it. The supposed twist is an unnecessary cheap shot that adds nothing to an already boring book.