Nonfiction writers often have to go scrounging for their dream subject. They may buy themselves a ticket to some far-flung place, or join an Iditarod team, or start researching a historical figure who seems to have led a colorful life. Sometimes, writers are fortunate enough to already have a personal passion for one subject, and writing a book about it seems only natural.
But it's rare to stumble on an idea for a book that's so exciting and unusual it practically bears a sign saying write me. Yet that's pretty much what happened to Walter Kirn. At the time his book begins, Kirn is a writer living in Montana, and his then-wife, working for an animal charity there, tasks him with the job of hand-delivering a disabled dog to a dog lover in New York City. As it turns out, the dog lover is a pretentious and socially unpleasant guy named Clark Rockefeller. But as it further turns out, Clark Rockefeller probably isn't a dog-lover at all. And, more to the point, he isn't even Clark Rockefeller, who actually doesn't exist.
[,,,]
Blood Will Out is the page-turning story of the highly improbable friendship that develops between these two men. "Clark" — I'll call him that here to make things simpler — comes off like an empty, creepy husk of a person — both the writer of and a character in his own life. And Kirn, while a calmly riveting and eloquent narrator, is flawed too, as he's the first to admit. He's gullible, which can be endearing, and he becomes highly excited in the presence of this kind of money and pedigree.
Book Review: 'Blood Will Out' By Walter Kirn : NPR
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