SOURCE: Wieseltier, Leon. “Live and Let Lie.” New Republic 215, no. 7 (12 August 1996): 42.

In the following review, Wieseltier reflects on the controversy surrounding the revelation of the author of Primary Colors, concluding that the deceit was justified.

“We like to think here that those of us who have to stand here and talk to you have high and scrupulous standards for veracity,” Michael McCurry thoughtfully remarked at the briefing. And he continued that “I believe everyone in this room who works as a journalist tries to take those same kinds of standards into mind,” which came as news to everyone in that room. McCurry, the second-most skilled situationist in the White House, was deploring the corruption of American civilization by Joe Klein. “From time to time I read what Joe Klein writes and I say, ‘Yep, that's fiction.’” McCurry, of course, does not traffic in fiction. He is the man...