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Accidental Billionaires
For me, what's troubling isn’t Mezrich's penchant for fabulism—he's written a 285-word forward ensuring his right to be fast and loose with facts. As his publisher has said, “This book isn’t reportage. It’s big juicy fun.” More disturbing is Mezrich’s outright laziness when it comes to the facts he chooses to deploy.
Mezrich globs on information—dates, locations, proper names—in order to give Accidental Billionaires a sheen of authenticity. Why else tell us the exact street address of the social club Saverin frequented? But if you're going to do that, you might as well get it right. (Don't want those young readers in the Class of 2013 getting lost this fall.) Mezrich botches the name of another social club. He bungles the name of a Harvard Square restaurant. He changes the gender of the author of one of the few secondary sources he cites. The writer's name is Bari, not Barry. Of course, why sweat the small stuff when Aaron Sorkin is already working on the screenplay?
These errors may be worse than whatever composite characters or fabricated scenes Mezrich creates because he can make no claim to any kind of fidelity to higher narrative truth or even lowly fun. Mezrich likes to clear his throat before potential concoctions with phrases like, "we can imagine," "we can picture," "we can surmise." Some things take no imagination at all, as the tech whiz kids who he portrays might have told him. All it takes is a little Googling.
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ben mezrich sucks, bringing down the house was good, he's been pumping out overdramatized garbage ever since. i have no doubt he's developed the most overblown ego and undeserved success of any modern author from all his 'thrillers'
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