Up Front Talking With Vanessa Grigoriadis Review NYTimes.com

Vanessa Grigoriadis has written many memorable articles (she won a National Magazine Award in 2007 for a profile of Karl Lagerfeld that appeared in New York magazine), but the one that may have been the most fun to work on was a Britney Spears cover story for Rolling Stone this year.

Skip to next paragraph Joe Ciardiello

Vanessa Grigoriadis

Related 'When You Are Engulfed in Flames,' by David Sedaris: Up in Smoke (June 15, 2008)

“Every morning, I’d join the entire entertainment news apparatus of Los Angeles, which does not comprise a small number of people, as we lurched around the city covering her story,” she said in an e-mail message. “There were a lot of clandestine meetings with sources, courthouse stakeouts and highly dangerous car chases — which I found to be fun, in some sick way.” Grigoriadis had moved to California a few years earlier, and described the life of a transplanted Manhattanite: “In New York, you live your life in public, and in L.A., you’re always behind closed doors. You have a home, not a shoebox, and you slowly change from a feral urban dweller into a domesticated pet.”

Grigoriadis, who reviews David Sedaris’s “When You Are Engulfed in Flames” sees few similarities between the exaggerations of a comic memoirist and the fabrications of other writers. “I’m not repelled by the notion that Sedaris may juice his stories a little bit, but I was disgusted by the fiasco with James Frey,” she said. “Sedaris isn’t trying to become an icon of temperance or an inspirational warrior in the battle for America’s soul. He isn’t craven in any way — he’s only trying to make you laugh.”

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