'This is a vile book'

Tim Rutten reviews Jayson Blair's Burning Down My Masters' House: My Life at the New York Times, in the L.A. Times Book Review:

Blair owes the readers and colleagues he betrayed a credible explanation and as sincere an apology as he can muster. "Burning Down My Masters' House" is neither.

This is a vile book, as distasteful a thing as you're likely to handle without gloves.

Despite the dust jacket pretenses to candor, it's clear that, however else he may have changed, Blair retains the con man's talent for misdirection. His memoir purports to be about insight and explanation, but it is really about shifting responsibility and settling scores.