Walter KirnRezensionen

Kirn becomes involved with a man claiming to be a Rockefeller by delivering a rescue dog to his New York apartment from Montana. Years later the man is on the run with his kidnapped daughter and the FBI links him to an unsolved murder in California. Clark Rockefeller is revealed as a German man with multiple identities, a serial imposter and liar and is convicted of the murder of a man. Kirn examines both the case and the ways in which he was fooled by and interacted with this strange personality.

BLOOD WILL OUT, though a true murder mystery, is not the murder mystery you would expect. Although there is a murder and many mysteries, particularly about the man who committed it, the author, Walter Kirn, plays a big part in this story, too. Not only that, but Kirn theorizes about the mysteries, and his theories are good, almost certainly correct.

Kirn does not begin with the murder or even what led to it. Instead, he begins with how he met the murderer, Christian Gerhartsreiter. Except Kirn thought he was meeting Clark Rockefeller, yes, of THE Rockefeller family. Turns out, "Clark Rockefeller" was only one of Gerhartsreiter's many aliases. (Kirn makes, in my opinion, the mistake of calling him Clark throughout the book because, Kirn says, that's how he knew him for a long time.)

Other books have been written about the man known as "Clark Rockefeller," but it looks like Kirn was careful to be different. He begins with his drive from his home in Montana to "Clark's" home in New York to bring him a crippled dog he wanted to adopt. Upon their meeting, "Clark" started dropping several clues that his stories were not true. And Kirn berates himself for not catching the lies at the time, with just being impressed with his new friend. For friends they did become. And Kirn continues to berate himself for that.

But good people tend to trust that most people are good. Most people ARE good. Gerhartsreiter is the exception. I hope Kirn has stopped being angry with himself for being one of the good ones.

A unique tale of grief and the way you can see signs towards better times in your life during the aftermath of someone integral's death.

An interesting look at "Clark Rockefeller", the con man, murderer and then also kidnapper of his daughter, The author details the years they were 'friends'.

While there were some moments I enjoyed in this book, it didn't pull me in. It's never a good sign when you have the option to read a book for a few minutes or fold laundry, and you go with the laundry option. I'll be interested to see how the movie turns out - this may be one of those cases where it's actually an improvement.

The Stones, The Crows, The Grass, The Moon is the third story in the Missing Collection from Audible/Amazon Originals. This tale is the story of grief and wonder Author Walter Kirn experienced following the death of his mother. Kirn and his brother had to make medical decisions for his mother when she was in a coma. She had a Living Will that expressed her will to die if she was incapacitated, but Kirn still had to sign the medical papers to ok the use of morphine and other drugs that allowed her to slip away. It was emotional and heart wrenching. He felt responsible....guilt, sadness, anger.... And he kept having recurring images of a Native American holy place pop up in his head. They had been talking about visiting it before his mother's death. He took his family there after suffering with the mental anguish of ending his mother's life...and it helped to heal him and his family.

Lovely story! Very emotional and mystical. I have never had to make end of life medical decisions for a loved one....but I can see how it would be traumatizing, even if there was a DNR, living will or other legal paper stipulating that's what the person wanted. I can only imagine that sense of responsibility and guilt adding to the top of grief and loss. But, there was a sense of hope, forgiveness and healing in Kirn's story as well. Overall, a lovely listening experience.

The Missing Collection gathers six stories about accepting loss. I've listened to two of them so far. Both enjoyable. I will be working my way through the rest of the collection bit by bit. The stories are emotional and raw.....and I can only handle a bit of that at one time. They are all short, easy length stories....under two hours. I hope they are all as enjoyable as the first two I've listened to. So far, Kirn's tale of the loss of his mother and how it affected him is my favorite of the collection. This was a sad, but spiritual, story. Loved it! Full stars from me.

Ryan Bingham's job as a Career Transition Counselor–he fires people–has kept him airborne for years. Although he has come to despise his line of work, he has come to love the culture of what he calls "Airworld," finding contentment within pressurized cabins, anonymous hotel rooms, and a wardrobe of wrinkle-free slacks. With a letter of resignation sitting on his boss's desk, and the hope of a job with a mysterious consulting firm, Ryan Bingham is agonizingly close to his ultimate goal, his Holy Grail: one million frequent flier miles. But before he achieves this long-desired freedom, conditions begin to deteriorate.

I still want to spend my life in the air and in airports, just nowhere near these people.

The backstory was interesting... and the book could have been better if Clark Rockefeller was the topic of the book. The true topic was the author's attempt to find out why he fell for the ruse for so long. It seems he wanted to prove it was because he was vain... not "stupid".

Started out dubious, and got worse from there.

Un ejemplo en el que el libro no es mejor que la película. De hecho la película no toma del libro más que la profesión y el estilo de vida del protagonista. En el libro asistimos a páginas y páginas de paja queriendo simular el tren de pensamiento desmadejado del protagonista, al estilo último capítulo del Ulises. Hay, todo hay que decirlo, varios diálogos que me gustaron mucho en el libro:

-Vamos a la sala VIP. Tengo que hacer unas llamadas.
-A la sala VIP?
-Ya verás, allí las revistas son gratis.
-Ryan, tengo que irme a casa
-Mañana. El jueves.
- Estoy defraudando a mucha gente- dice Julie
-No te preocupes. Seguirán allí cuando vuelvas.
-Eso no es siempre verdad.
-En Minnesota sí.

No recomiendo el libro. Es demasiado aburrido.

More a personal essay about dealing with his mother's death than anything.

We meet Justin Cobb as a fourteen year-old whose parents are trying to break him of his thumbsucking. The local dentist also practices hypnosis, and his session with Justin is successful, but without his thumb it's revealed that Justin has an addictive personality. Over the next few years, he jumps from being a drug addict, to fly-fishing, to aggressively competing on the school speech team, then involving the family with the Mormon church. He convinces himself that his mother is going to leave the family for Don Johnson, causing him to ruin her chance to meet the actor. It turns out that Justin's need to throw himself into the next thing is nearly matched by his parents, who deal with their own desires to mold themselves into better people.
Darkly funny, sometimes disturbing. I picked this up after reading Up In The Air by Kirn. His strange characters are almost haunting, good people who are nearly beaten by their dysfunction yet keep trying.½

I absolutely love this book. Justin Cobb has a problem with sucking his thumb and after visiting his dentist who hypnotizes him, Justin develops new obsessions to replace thumbsucking. He experiments with sex and drugs, joins the debate team, becomes a Mormon, fly fishes, just about anything. Also central to the story is Justin's dysfunctional family.
The novel is endearing and engaging. Also the basis for the movie of the same name, starring Lou Pucci. Loved the movie, but as usual, the book reigns supreme.

A good read with a turn at the end that is predictable, but not too.

Ce livre ébluoissant dissèque la psychopathie, les tendances perverses de la génération Internet, l'art, l'argent, et la nature même de la croyance.

I'm not really sure how much I can say about this book. Kirn did a really great job of making me dislike him (Kirn, not Rockefeller). And not because of him being duped by someone like Rockefeller. I thought Kirn handled his own betrayal in a fairly straightforward manner, without asking for pity or sympathy. However, he did write a few offhanded remarks that really got under my skin. It's a little hard to explain without delving into dangerous territory. Suffice it to say, I enjoyed the story behind this and thought it was well-written, but won't be reading anything else by this author.

I didn't actually read this book, but I did read the essay of the same name in the Atlantic and if there's one thing Kirn taught me, it's that that entitles me to fake it. With that in mind, allow me to pronounce this the apotheosis of young-provincial-freshman-finds-feet-and-dupes-rich-kids-at-elite-school literature (a surprisingly limited category: Jim Dixon? Prof at a red-brick. Michael Pemulis? Second fiddle. Felix Krull? Didn't even go to university, fleecing your way into the elite back then was more about hanging out in hotel lobbies and faro games I guess?) in English.

"We'd been discussing books, at his request. He'd looked me up that night for this very purpose. While I'd been off at Princeton, polishing my act, he'd become a real reader and also a devoted Buddhist. He said he had no one to talk to, no one who shared his interest in art and literature, so when he'd heard I was home, he'd driven right over. We had a great deal in common, Karl said.

But we didn't, in fact, and I didn't know how to tell him this. To begin with, I couldn't quote the Transcendentalists as accurately and effortlessly as he could. I couldn't quote anyone. I'd honed more-marketable skills: for flattering those in authority without appearing to, for ranking artistic reputations according to the latest academic fashions, for matching my intonations and vocabulary to the background of my listener, for placing certain words in smirking quotation marks and rolling my eyes when someone spoke too earnestly about some "classic" work of "literature," for veering left when the conventional wisdom went right and then doubling back if the consensus changed.

Flexibility, irony, class consciousness, contrarianism."

Ryan Bingham, an executive with the ISM corporation, flies all over the country as a Career Transition Counselor, which means he meets with executives immediately after they've been fired. His job is less about helping the often stunned newly unemployed, and more about making sure they aren't angry enough to file a lawsuit. Bingham never wanted the position, and has picked up signs that he's being headhunted, so has left his resignation on his boss's desk and planned out his last week with ISM with precision: his boss will return from vacation the following week, read the resignation and cancel Bingham's corporate privileges immediately, but Bingham will be already be employed with the mysterious MythTech and have his coveted million miles frequent flyer miles, a goal he prizes above everything else.
The reader travels the country with Bingham, a man who is isolated, yet seemingly content. He explains his happiness in "AirWorld", a name he gives to the life of the constant business traveler. He enjoys the exclusive airline club rooms, the employees who recognize but don't know him, the mutual understanding that in-flight friendships end when the plane lands, and that he doesn't actually have a home because he isn't anywhere long enough to merit one. While Bingham effortlessly maintains his professional persona in the air, on the ground he comes up against things he can't run from, like the unstable sister or the potential mentor who turns out to be pretentious and weird. The growing feeling that Bingham may not be as calm as he appears, that he may in fact be dangerously paranoid, creeps in very slowly.½

Prose-wise it's a masterpiece.

High-schooler Justin still sucks his thumb. Hypnosis seems to do the trick but it also leaves a void in his life which he fills with various activities such as discovering a talent for forensic speaking, joining the Mormon church, fly fishing, smoking dope, uncovering his mother’s supposed affair with a celebrity in rehab, and a job as a gas station attendant. It was aiiight...

Read by Sean Runnette. I saw the movie before being intrigued enough to want to listen to the book. The book is way different! Ryan's story meanders and unfolds as he heads towards his million-miles goal, meeting old and new colleagues along his travels. In the book, Ryan is weary and jaded, somewhat rootless except for his goal of publishing a book and getting hired on at Myth Tech (spelling??). No great tension or climax, just a traveling businessman going along doing his thing. The abrupt ending and revelation was odd.

Based on the trial of Clark Rockefeller who was arrested after an attempted kidnapping of his daughter and was then discovered to be a fraud and murderer of 1 or 2 victims in California twenty years earlier.

Based on the trial of Clark Rockefeller who was arrested after an attempted kidnapping of his daughter and was then discovered to be a fraud and murderer of 1 or 2 victims in California twenty years earlier.

Walter Kirn wrote Blood Will Out following the trial and conviction of his seemingly friend, Clark Rockefeller. I found the book very disappointing as the story centered on Walter Kirn, and not Clark. I thoroughly understand that Walter needed to impose himself in the story in order to tell about his relationship with Clark, but Walter's story monopolized the book. Also, the book seems to follow no sequence of events, I felt lost at times and wondered where the story might go. My mind remembers little of the story, as each event falls into a discussion involving Walter. I realize that most individuals are gullible, but pieces of the story go beyond naivety.