The Moral Dilemmas Of Narrative

Bill Marvel's introduction from the 2014 edition of Ten Spurs.

"Every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible."—Janet Malcolm

So which is it? Are we stupid? Or too full of ourselves?

In the years since it kicked off The Journalist and the Murderer, her 1990 examination of the fraught relationship between writer Joe McGinniss and convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald, Janet Malcolm's now-infamous quote has gone largely unanswered, though not undisputed.

MacDonald, a former Army physician, was accused of killing his pregnant wife and two young daughters in a crime that was as widely publicized as it was bloody.…