The Record (Bergen County, NJ) 03-27-1997 FATAL VISION -- MEADOWLANDS TRAIN CRASH WAS AVOIDABLE Date: 03-27-1997, Thursday Section: OPINION Edition: All Editions -- 5 Star, 4 Star, 3 Star, 2 Star, 1 Star THE NEWS that the engineer who caused the fatal...

Theatre Macbeth (Albery) Michael Moore: Live! (The Roundhouse) Falling (The Bush) Fatal vision Toby Young There was a telling moment during the press night of Macbeth when the actor Julian Glover, an RSC veteran, suddenly dropped his broad Scottish accent and spoke in...

One trouble with Joe McGinniss's true-crime anatomy, Fatal Vision …, is that it's 663 pages long. If the prose is a little wooden and the insights less than electric, that's like forever. This isn't the Rosenberg case. The book's great length testifies to the author's earnestness, as well as (perhaps) to commercial savvy; but it's insensitive to the enjoyment of true-crime. Another trouble is that the central mystery of the book, the engine of suspense...

Even murder should have dignity. How can we justify the passage of brutality from the police blotter or tabloid to the permanence of a book, except as a necessary step toward restoring meaning and individuality to the victims or the killers? Murder books such as Meyer Levin's Compulsion, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, or Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song have looked for meaning even in the unprovoked or random murder of strangers, furthering our awareness of murder as a cris...

Joe McGinniss, who had set out to chronicle a case of unjust prosecution [in Fatal Vision], changed his mind. But he didn't tell MacDonald. How in the world could he? McGinniss had lived with MacDonald during his murder trial, and later, during one of MacDonald's preliminary stints behind bars, McGinniss lived in MacDonald's Southern California condo, drank his beer, watched his sunsets and went through his papers. He changed his mind—and went on writing. Consequently, we have he...