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Title: A Deeply Dishonest Book
Review: Moody has always been the most narcissistic and cynically careerist of the younger American writers, and this book -- the memoir of a man to whom nothing of special consequence has happened -- makes explicit what was implicit in the fiction. The Black Veil might be subtitled In Search of Credibility, as Moody documents, apparently without realizing how silly it is, his endlessly self-aggrandizing attempts to add weight to an essentially weightless life and body of work -- first by turning a minor drug and alcohol problem into an extended bout of slumming and melodramatic recovery-mongering, then by trying to link his work to that of one of the great Yankee masters. Neither effort yields much. Moody is the John Favreau of American fiction: not the real thing, but close enough to pass. The book is shallow, opportunistic, creepy-cold, and, finally, nauseating. For those of you wondering why his career has taken him so far, I offer two words: Ang Lee.
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