Jump to content

Talk:Murder of Roseann Quinn

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Joseph A. Spadaro (talk | contribs) at 01:22, 1 February 2008. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

WikiProject iconBiography Unassessed
WikiProject iconThis article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography
???This article has not yet received a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

Question re: "Closing Time"

I just finished reading the book mentioned above. I am curious why you label it as "fictionalized." My impression, after reading the preface and the entire book is that only portions were fictionalized. That is, portions that remain a mystery were created by the author since she--or anyone else for that matter--had no other information. For example, the author states that no one will ever know what Roseann (called "Katherine" in the book) and her murderer spoke about during their time together in both Tweeds and the other bar they supposedly went to. As such, she creates a dialog that, she believes, could have taken place, based on her research. Additionally, the author informs the reader that she changed names and certain "identifying characteristics." She believes those individuals deserved privacy.

Overall, I appreciate your article. It is very interesting and has been helpful in my new-found curiosity in this particular crime. However, I do not fully agree that "Closing Time" by Lacey Fosburgh could be considered, in its entirety, fictionalized.

Thank you for your time.

Cna34 09:08, 26 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]


I call the book "fictionalized" because it is in my opinion more fiction than it is fact -- actually, in many ways it's just as fictional as "Looking for Mr. Goodbar." But you can't tell that from just reading the book and taking it at face value -- you have to compare the book with the newspaper accounts of the time to see just how many details Ms. Fosburgh changed (from the name of the town Quinn grew up in to the disease she suffered from as a child to the apartment number of the studio apartment she died in).

This is not to impugn Lacey Fosburgh in any way. She was writing not long after the murder. The Quinn family and many of Quinn's friends would not talk to her on the record. She had a limited amount of information to work with. Under the circumstances she did the best she could. But as a factual account of the case it leaves a lot to be desired (and critics at the time said as much). And there's no denying that it's fictionalized, and the more I investigate the case the more fictionalized I see that it is.

Feuillade 03:56, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Talk:Murder_of_Roseann_Quinn&oldid=188285169"