I haven't seen it, but this book certainly piqued my interest in it. I felt like one of the things that McCann did best was capturing the beauty of what Petit did and the crazy wonder it inspired in people who saw him.
You're totally right about that "Death by..." paragraph. I felt like it was supposed to carry all kinds of emotional weight, but ended up just being a chore to read. The copy that I read had one of those "Book Club Discussion Guides" in the back, and even though I usually find those aggravating, I took a look at it. McCann made a comment there about how, in the days and weeks after 9/11, he really *felt* the interconnectedness of everyone in New York, with a few examples from his own life. And it just seemed like that one paragraph was a perfect distillation of the idea, whereas the whole 350 pages of the book just diluted it.
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Date: 2010-08-04 08:56 pm (UTC)You're totally right about that "Death by..." paragraph. I felt like it was supposed to carry all kinds of emotional weight, but ended up just being a chore to read. The copy that I read had one of those "Book Club Discussion Guides" in the back, and even though I usually find those aggravating, I took a look at it. McCann made a comment there about how, in the days and weeks after 9/11, he really *felt* the interconnectedness of everyone in New York, with a few examples from his own life. And it just seemed like that one paragraph was a perfect distillation of the idea, whereas the whole 350 pages of the book just diluted it.