AMERICAN CANTO, by Olivia Nuzzi

When the journalist Olivia Nuzzi was let go from New York magazine following revelations of her affair with an interview subject, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (who has denied it), I was seriously bummed.

Hers was a byline I’d always looked forward to, the prose that followed conveying access to some of most powerful people in the world — including President Trump — with uncommon verve and detachment. Though Nuzzi is only 32, she has for years reminded me of old-fashioned New Journalists like Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese.

And hey, Talese slept with subjects while researching “Thy Neighbor’s Wife,” right? Sure, Kennedy’s profile as a presidential candidate and then his appointment as secretary of Health and Human Services was a tad more consequential than suburban swinging habits, but nonetheless … I defended Nuzzi against all detractors scoffing she’d violated a central tenet of our profession. Let’s hear what she has to say, I said.

Turns out what she isn’t saying may be more significant. In blog posts calibrated for maximum gasp just before the release of her regrettably self-serious new book, “American Canto,” Nuzzi’s former fiancé, Ryan Lizza, has shared the most X-rated lines of Kennedy’s love poetry — not so much purple as amber waves of grain. He wrote that she had also tangled romantically with the former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, suggesting not a forgivable coup de foudre but a pattern of ethical breaches.

Then we learned that an abstract painting of Nuzzi unclothed, by the portraitist Isabelle “Izzy” Brourman, would appear in the Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair, where Nuzzi is, pending review of this mess, West Coast editor. At one point contracted to write a book together, Nuzzi and Lizza seem conjoined in rivalry for custody of their story. And we’re trapped in a digital-age Dickensian serial.

Lizza’s third installment showed up like a naughty uncle at our Thanksgiving tables. In it he accused his ex of catch-and-kill operations; sending Brourman to record Trump secretly during a session at Mar-a-Lago; and becoming Kennedy’s secret campaign handmaiden.

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