Closing Time: The True Story of the Goodbar Murder

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Closing Time: The True Story of the "Goodbar" Murder was a 1977 non-fiction book by Lacey Fosburgh about the murder of Roseann Quinn, the story of whose murder was the basis for the 1975 novel and 1977 film Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

Closing Time was nominated for the 1978 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime book. However, the book met with some controversy in the press for mixing fact and fiction in a technique Fosburgh described as "interpretive biography": she told the New York Times in 1980 that she had "created scenes and dialogue I think it is reasonable or fair to assume could have taken place, perhaps even did." The upshot, however, is that the book is neither fish nor fowl: not factually accurate enough to be considered reliable reportage, and not far enough away from the facts of the case to be considered fiction, but an uneasy mixture of both.

Given the fact that the Quinn family and many of Quinn's friends would not cooperate with her research, and the killer's family bent over backwards to accommodate her, Fosburgh had to speculate and invent merely to get her story told. Also, in what she describes as a gesture of sensitivity towards both victim and killer, facts are freely adapted and invented: Roseann Quinn becomes "Katherine Cleary." John Wayne Wilson becomes "Joe Willie Sampson." Other details, such as the town where Quinn was raised and the state where Wilson grew up, are changed. Long passages of dialogue are made up to give a sense of verisimilitude where no one living is in a position to say what really happened.

Closing Time, although the fact that it has remained out of print for nearly three decades would seem to indicate that it is not quite the "first-rate achievement" that author Truman Capote would claim in a blurb that ran on both the front and the back of the dust jacket), is a relatively factually accurate account of Roseann Quinn's short life and tragic death.


[edit] References

  • Fosburgh, Lacey (1977). Closing Time: The True Story of the "Goodbar" Murder. ISBN 0-440-01371-2
  • Mitgang, Herbert (October 5, 1977). How Ethical Is the 'Page One Novel'? New York Times
  • Staff report (December 4, 1977). A selection of noteworthy titles: autobiography & biography. New York Times
  • Kakutani, Michiko (January 27, 1980). Do Facts and Fiction Mix? Faction. New York Times


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