One of the biggest stories of the twentieth century, big enough to displace Watergate from the front pages of newspapers nationwide, takes the form of a novel in an attempt to use fiction as a vehicle to expose the truth of this media spectacle. Journalist and author Roger D. Rapoport joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to discuss the case of Patty Hearst and how Rapoport's new book, “Searching for Patty Hearst,” ventures into fiction in order to reveal the true story of how Patty Hearst wasn’t a victim in the end but was made a revolutionary.
“[T]he book attempts to give equal time to all vantage points in the story … the problem with the nonfiction accounts is no matter whose account you read, you're only getting one side of the story, so that by fictionalizing it, I think we get much closer to a realistic picture of what actually happened in this story,” Rapoport tells Scheer. The two dive into the details of the story, including the fact that Hearst’s radicalization came largely from reflecting on her own upbringing and her family’s reaction to her kidnapping.
“[I]n ‘Searching for Patty Hearst,’ I try to deal with that, that the radicalization was the absolute failure of her family to pay the ransom,” Rapoport said.
Rapoport goes on to explain the gaps that are often present when dissecting the Hearst story, including bias from family members, the manipulation of facts at the hands of other storytellers and other miscues. His approach to the story includes the inconvenient truths and details that may have otherwise been omitted as well as the use of fiction in order to tell a more fulfilling story and get into the heads of all the characters.
“[T]he problem with a lot of what's been written is it pretty much mirrors what one person's thinking… [but] by presenting all these different vantage points, I think it's a much clearer picture of all the different things that were going on in this case.”
