Thursday, July 28, 2016

Beyond the Beret


I was obsessed with Patty Hearst as a young boy in the suburbs of Detroit -- it all seemed so glamorous, what with the publishing fortune! the kidnapping! the beret! -- and have always taken her at her word that she was brainwashed by the Symbionese Liberation Army and acted accordingtly. (I remember using my babysitting money to buy her memoir, "Every Secret Things," when I was about 13 and reading in in two days!) But Jeffrey Toobin's new book, "American Heiress," sheds new light on the case that symbolized the turbulent '70s better than any other and has me looking at it in a whole new way -- that Hearst might actually have just been an attention-starved girl who used the media as her personal Instagram account. (Many suspected that, but he offers some actual proof.) Titillating as the premise is, though, I probably won't be buying the book seeing as Janet Maslin's review in The Times is so fascinatingly thorough I don't need to. Read HERE.


Order HERE.

3 comments:

Steve said...

I grew up in SoCal, near LA. I remember the entire ordeal. I have vivid memories of watching the shootout on TV live.

Just Jacque said...

One of my favorite "Karen" (the one and only) lines:

"Honey, I thought we talked about the beret. Patty Hearst couldn't even pull it off, and she had money and a gun."

Bob K said...

Patty and fiance lived down the block from where I had lived two years before. We were still in the day when nice college girls did what guys wanted.