Book review: Blood Will Out, by Walter Kirn

by Walter Kirn
Liveright
4 stars
Hector Tobar

Walter Kirn's profile of the serial liar and convicted killer known as "Clark Rockefeller" is no ordinary work of true crime and literary journalism.

The chronicle of Kirn's ill-fated friendship with the conman, Blood Will Out must be one of most honest, compelling and strangest books about the relationship between a writer and his subject.

Unbeknown to Kirn, "Clark Rockefeller" was the latest in a series of identities adopted by German immigrant Christian Gerhartsreiter. Kirn, a son of working-class Midwesterners, was smitten. Like many an ambitious writer, he thought the charismatic and odd Rockefeller might make a good character for a magazine article or even a novel.

Rockefeller managed to keep Kirn off balance by making use of a quality he later reveals is the key to fooling anyone: "Vanity, vanity, vanity." When Kirn had a tax problem, Rockefeller gave him "George's" private phone number - meaning then-president George W. Bush. "This isn't the White House switchboard," Rockefeller tells Kirn. "It's his private line. He'll answer personally."

The number looked real, but Kirn didn't have the courage to call it.