RFD: Nik Cohn's 2001 Odyssey

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Everyone knows the story - journo visits Brooklyn circa 1975, sees Guido fops in the midst of the no-shampoo decade, discovers world of dance contests and music better than the crap white people were listening to at the time, movie w/ John Travolta gets made, disco goes overground, etc. Also, I assume everyone knows that he later claimed to have made the whole thing up, and that the whole 'Saturday Night Fever' thing sprang from a fantasy in his head. Question - do you believe the 'fabrication' story - or, do you WANT to? (I know I don't! The dialogue in the original piece rang true enough that I believed it, and perhaps gullibly, I still do!)

― dave q, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"Hey, don't touch the hair!" new answers

― dave q, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I think Cohn is STILL making stuff up (or at least re-writing reality to make it read better.) A lot of the essays in his British 'travelogue' bk 'Yes We Have No' certainly come across as embellished 'truth'. He can get away with it 'cos he's such a brilliant stylist and besides, does it really matter either way?

― Andrew L, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Isn't the story that Cohn just took a previous piece he had written - about mods living for the weekend in some northern English town - and just changed the names, presuming the basic details would still hold true? I like to believe this.

― Edna Welthorpe, Mrs, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Blimey! Welthorpe has become so thoroughly South-of-the-River that she thinks of Shepherds Bush as a Northern town!

Pedantry aside, I understand that is the story (as re-told in Kevin Pearce's fabulous "Something Beginning With O")

― Tim, Friday, 8 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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