When Malcolm's work first appeared in March 1989, as a two-part serialization in The New Yorker, it caused a sensation, becoming the occasion for wide-ranging debate within the news industry.
Having received a sizable advance payment for the true crime project that would become Fatal Vision,[6] McGinniss struck up a close friendship with MacDonald.
[8] As Malcolm writes in her book, "They clothed their complicated business together in the mantle of friendship—in this case, friendship of a particularly American cast, whose emblems of intimacy are watching sports on television, drinking beer, running, and classifying women according to their looks.
Malcolm quotes McGinniss's expressions of sympathy—"any fool can recognize within five minutes that you did not receive a fair trial...it was utter madness"—as well as his tacit assurances that the book would help win his release: "it's a hell of a thing—spend the summer making a new friend and the bastards come and lock him up.
As host Mike Wallace read aloud portions of the now-completed Fatal Vision, the cameras broadcast MacDonald's look of "shock and utter discomposure.
[15] McGinniss drew upon the works of a number of social critics, including the moralist Christopher Lasch, to construct a portrait of MacDonald as a "pathological narcissist.
"[16] But as presented by Malcolm, what drove McGinniss to this strategy were professional and structural liabilities—MacDonald's "lack of vividness," his drawbacks as the real-life figure who would serve as main character for his book.
"[1] Although roundly criticized upon first publication—by both newspaper reviewers and media observers like former CBS News president Fred W. Friendly, who described the book's "weakness" and "crabbed vision"—it was also defended by a number of fellow writers.
"[2] In his book A Wilderness of Error, documentarian and writer Errol Morris has found Malcolm's famous opening sentence "to be ludicrous" and takes exception to her assertion that one "cannot learn anything about MacDonald's guilt or innocence" by sorting through the evidence of the case.
"[22] "Malcolm appears to have created a snake swallowing its own tail," wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Albert Scardino in The New York Times following the publication of her original two-part series.