The police report hovered, as such documents often do, between literal description and bewilderment, showing the letter of the law to be touchingly at odds with what the felon was up to. He certainly 'performed a high-wire act', but was it with 'intent to cause public inconvenience' and did he actually create 'a hazardous condition which served no legitimate purpose'? The felon in question, Philippe Petit, who in 1974 crossed on a wire from one tower of the World Trade Center to the other eight times, lay down on the rope for a while, and surrendered to the police only when a helicopter was sent after him, is the subject of James Marsh's remarkable film Man on Wire. Or rather, not quite the subject, as he certainly is of his own 2002 book about the exploit, To Reach the Clouds, but something like the energetic and amiable excuse, the protagonist overtaken by a story not at all his own.

LRB 11 September 2008 | PDF Download