¶ Janet Maslin gives Ben Mezrich’s new book, Sex on the Moon, a review that seems both doting and frosty. Yes, Mezrich writes cinema-friendly page-turners. But perhaps it’s time for him to confine his literary effort to scenarios that don’t take an age to read. If the passage that Ms Maslin quotes is any indication, Mezrich ought to leave his paintjobs to the cinematographer.

Nowadays Mr. Mezrich displays the confidence of someone on a roll. He no longer pretends to be telling true stories. He fakes and pads so excitably that his own tricks are better than his characters’. What is “an angry whirl of gargantuan white flakes”? Mezrich snow. What is “thick and dark and ominous, like the intertwining ropes of an immense fishing net cast across the sky, swallowing up every inch of visible air, obscuring everything, even the muted glow of the nearly full moon”? A Mezrich cloudy night. What is “Hollywood’s next big thing?” Mr. Mezrich himself, according to this own Web site.

We don’t think that we’d have liked David Fincher’s The Social Network more if we had read the book of the same title.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 14th, 2011 at 8:00 pm.