Excerpts from Village Voice Article on 2nd Malcolm-Masson Trial

Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, smoking cigar. Español: Sigmund Freud, fundador del psicoanálisis, fumando. Česky: Zakladatel psychoanalýzy Sigmund Freud kouří doutník. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Malcolm lost the first trial badly, and it was only the jury's inability to agree on the damages Masson had suffered-their proposed awards spanned from $1 to several million-that forced a
mistrial. In answering a detailed questionnaire, the jury found that all five quotes were false, and that two of them fulfilled the additional requirements needed to find that Masson had been
libeled (those requirements being that the quotes defamed him and were published with "reckless disregard for the truth"). Malcolm was shocked by the outcome, since going to the trial she had the confidence (some would say arrogance) to believe that her journalistic
methods and general credibility were beyond question. After all, she wrote for The New Yorker-the citadel of American journalism, whose reputation for factual accuracy was virtually unassailable. Much to her surprise, she found that the jury was extremely skeptical about many aspects of her defense: they doubted the accuracy of the four typed pages, on which three of the five disputed quotes appeared; they believed that the quotes had been
deliberately altered; and, in the end, they couldn't come up with a reason why Masson would have said the damaging things he had denied saying.

                                                                            ***

Borrowing a strategy from Bostwick's own playbook, Masson used the theme of "a friend
betrayed" to press his case. In Jeffrey MacDonald's suit against Joe McGinniss, Bostwick had
made a lot of the fact of McGinniss's blatant dishonesty in pretending to be MacDonald's friend
long after he believed he was a crazed killer. Now it was Masson's turn to play the role of
betrayed intimate, as he complained that he had never expected Malcolm actually to use much
of the unflattering personal information he had shared with her. Although a huge portion of
their interviews centered on his sex life, Masson claimed he had believed Malcolm's article
would confine itself to his scholarly work, and that his personal revelations had been little
more than friendly, off-the-record chitchat. He was shocked, shocked, that she went ahead
and printed them.

                                                                           ***

Examining the three massive, unedited volumes of transcripts made from the taped
interviews, it seems obvious that their relationship was fated to end tragically. Their
expectations were tremendous: In Masson, Malcolm thought she had found the perfect,
completely uninhibited subject; in Malcolm, Masson believed he had an all-forgiving confessor.
"You are the absolute, the most open person I've ever met in my life," Malcolm gushes
gleefully of the suicidally compromising material Masson so obligingly offers. "I'm perfectly
prepared to say anything - including my sexual feelings for you," he responds. "I really feel
that I've committed myself to you," he adds.

                                                                    ***

The third, and most effective, part of  Bostwick (her lawyer's) plan required that he trick Masson into
opening up a line of inquiry Masson would just as soon have avoided. Since Masson was
complaining that Malcolm had made him look foolish by taking only the most unflattering
information from their interviews, Bostwick wanted to show that she had used some of the
really damaging information Masson had told her, the article could have been much, much
worse. The notion that Malcolm had actually spared Masson's feelings will come as a surprise
to anyone who has read "Trouble in the Archives," but this is precisely what Bostwick set out
to prove.

                                                                   ***

For Malcolm, whose practice of "compressing" quotes and rearranging scenes has been
questioned, The Silent Woman (her book published just before the second trial)  sometimes reads like a response to her critics. As if to reassure suspicious readers that no scenes were concocted she tells us exactly where everything happens–"on a train to Cornwall, "in the Indian restaurant," - documenting each step of her journey. In a finale of stupendous literary circularity, Malcolm concludes with a scene that shows her taking the notes she will later use to write the book. "I would want evidence that Ihad not merely conjured it up for the purposes of my plot but had seen it as well," are the book's final words.

The fact that Masson agreed to be interviewed and talked so freely fails to alleviate Malcolm's
dilemma. In her uncompromising moral universe, the moment the tape started to record, so
too began the betrayal. Her legal vindication, while significant, does nothing to resolve the
murky ethical quandary that is at the heart of all journalism. Her refusal to flinch in the face of
our moral chaos is unnerving. "The freedom to be cruel," she reminds us in The Silent Woman,
"is one of journalism's uncontested privileges."