June 2023 Bonus Review: In Contempt
Christopher Darden on the trial of the century, and other broken things
the true crime that's worth your time
The crime
The June 12, 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
The story
I mentioned back when you-all selected In Contempt that I looked forward to reading Christopher Darden’s take on the OJ Simpson case, not least because he’s one of only a handful of figures who declined to engage with OJ: Made in America. When that documentary came out, I felt disappointed that Darden hadn’t participated, although I understood he’d have had a range of valid reasons for declining…but he occupied a unique position in that grindingly horrible story, and I thought it might have contributed to the greater (albeit bleak) context and understanding OJ:MIA created.
On the other side of the book, though, the aforementioned unique position reminds me of that apocryphal story about George Harrison answering a pro-forma teen-mag interviewer’s question about what it’s like to be a Beatle with, “What’s it like not to be one?” It’s a perfectly good question; it just doesn’t have an answer that can be made legible to anyone outside the cone of sui generis.