A biographical article in the June 25th, 2007 New Yorker seems highly ‘influenced’ by Wikipedia. Here’s the passage from ‘French Blues,’ a story by Judith Thurman on French singer Édith Piaf:

This seems to be a reworded version of this passage in Wikipedia, written April 13, 2006 by a Wiki user named Gennaro Prota:

She was born Édith Giovanna Gassion in Belleville… Legend has it that she was born on the pavement of Rue de Belleville 72, but her birth certificate states she was born at Hôpital Tenon, the hospital for the 20th arrondissement of which Belleville is part. [Link]

Who knew that to be published in the New Yorker, all you needed was Internet access? We don’t know whether this was inserted by the writer or a research assistant, but here’s a tip from the Kaavya Viswanathan manual of style: when your source is that accessible, put more effort into the massaging.

The movie this article refers to, La Vie en Rose / La Môme (Life in Pink / The Kid), is the French Ray minus the fun: two and a half hours of stultifying biopic about a singer few in America care about. The hagiographical biopic format makes it impossible to have fun with the movie. It’s like ‘Behind the Music’ stretched into Bollywood length. It’s technically well-made, but I had more fun at a trifle like Jhoom Barabar Jhoom than any of the arthouse flicks du jour.

Also, committing this…

… upon the face of the brilliant, protean Marion Cotillard…

… ought to be a crime.

Related posts: ‘A Good Year,’ a brilliant film, Bring me the subtext of Opal Mehta, Kaavya’s LiveJournal, Ctrl+V-iswanathan, The structure of a classical tragedy, KaavyaGate reloaded