July 21, 1996

“Outrage: Five Reasons Why OJ Simpson Got Away with Murder” by Vincent Bugliosi

Reviewed by Mark Lindquist
New York Times Book Review

Most prosecutors in the United States believe they could have done a better job of trying the O. J. Simpson case than Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden. Vincent Bugliosi is sure of it.

A former prosecutor with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office who won a conviction against Charles Manson (and the author of a book about the case, “Helter Skelter”), Mr. Bugliosi declares that he has “put people on death row — and this is not an exaggeration — where the circumstantial evidence was one hundred times less powerful than in this case.”

In “Outrage,” he characterizes his former office’s handling of the Simpson case as “the most incompetent criminal prosecution I have ever seen. By far.” Mr. Bugliosi criticizes virtually everyone involved in the trial at every stage of the proceedings, even into the aftermath.

Personal responsibility is a favorite theme of prosecutors, who routinely insist that people should be held accountable for their actions, but one of the many ironies of the Simpson trial is that the prosecutors — District Attorney Gil Garcetti, Ms. Clark and Mr. Darden — have shifted responsibility for Mr. Simpson’s acquittal to the jury, the news media, Judge Lance Ito or the defense lawyers.

Mr. Bugliosi puts the blame where it belongs, and explains how the case should have been prosecuted. His well-informed analysis is in welcome contrast to much of the insipid or pointless commentary about the Simpson trial.

December 20, 1998

“The Gates of Eden” by Ethan Coen

Reviewed by Mark Lindquist
New York Times Book Review

Ethan Coen and his brother, Joel, have made some of the more interesting movies of the last two decades: ”Blood Simple,” ”Raising Arizona,” ”Barton Fink” and ”Fargo.” Ethan Coen writes and Joel Coen directs. And while Ethan Coen isn’t quite as stylish with language as his brother is with a camera, he does have a distinctive voice and an offbeat worldview, both of which come through with varying degrees of success in his first collection of stories.

”Have You Ever Been to Electric Ladyland” is a brilliant monologue by a record executive trying to figure out who had a motive to castrate his dog. But ”Johnnie Ga-Botz,” composed of nothing but dialogue and stage directions, is the sort of exercise that talented, undisciplined creative writing students pound out at 3 A.M. The title story is a good example of what the Coen brothers are known for: a leap into an off-kilter yet fully imagined world in which a bureaucrat with the California Department of Weights and Measures thinks and acts like a hard-boiled detective.

All of these stories take place in Coen Brothers Land, a parallel universe similar to our own — except it’s weirder, funnier and better edited.