Toby and Matt

Toby wrote up a review of Curtain Bluff, the place where we honeymooned in Antigua. You’ll also find some pictures that both Toby and I took.

Is this next for the Toby & Matt homestead:

Here’s a video from the work place:

“What is Grandparents.com? We’re glad you asked. Take a minute to watch our welcome video with Betty Woodward, our Grandparent-in-Residence.”

Toby and I spend a good amount of time in Atlantic City and I can tell you it’s almost as exciting as this Stan Gilmer song makes it out to be.

Listen to: Atlantic_City, That Big Time Town

How I spent my summer vacation…

Press Release: Grandparents.com Launches First Online Community for Modern Grandparents

“There are more than 78 million grandparents in the U.S. and every 20 seconds, someone new joins the club. Today’s grandparents, more than half of which are baby boomers, are looking for new and interesting ways to expand upon the grandparent-grandchild relationship. Launching today, Grandparents.com is a destination for active grandparents that helps enhance the bond between grandparents and their grandchildren through expert editorial and easy-to-use communications
tools.”

More coverage:

Advertising Age: Media Players Go After Free-Spending Boomers

Mediaweek: Grandparents Gets Active With New Online Venture

So on our last weekend of free New York Times, courtesy of our European travelin’ neighbor, I pick up the book review to find a sketchy picture of a former professor of mine, Denis Johnson. Oh goodie! I think. A new book — and since it’s on the cover, it’s probably good. I was a sucker for Johnson’s work even before he came into class and told us, after riffling through jumbled pages for the key advice he had written down to advise us, the eager, hungry writers, to ‘write naked. Write in blood.’ Later he cried in class. Which seemed sweet, until I learned he did it in his other class too. Anyway, that’s beside the point and makes it seem as if I didn’t value him as a teacher, when in fact I enjoyed his first class so much I came back for seconds. Anyhow.

I learned from the review that it was a capital M capital N Major Novel, and the reviewer definitely liked it, but more than anything else, I came away with a sense of the massive laziness and weird opinions of the reviewer, as I have in past weeks.

For instance: The 6-paragraph review of last week of “Bad Monkeys” that spent a full two paragraphs on how disappointed the reviewer was in the over-lengthy acknowledgements. Jonathan Ames, the reviewer, had ‘a real quibble’ with them. A two-paragraph quibble. Really, Ames? You think anyone gives a shit what you think about the acknowledgements? Has anyone in the history of book buying ever bought or not bought a book because they were turned off by the ‘elaborate acknowledgements’? Did you just read the first and last pages and try to cobble a review together, realize you needed two paragraphs more and go for the acknowledgements, man? I mean, I was in college too, once, and I know about padding out a paper to a book I never read, but I never sunk to criticizing the dedication. Sure, I changed the font to courier, but I stuck to the meat of things.

Which brings me back to the review of Johnson’s new book. Jim Lewis does, in fact, review the book. And he likes “Tree of Smoke,” which will, he predicts, “secure Johnson’s status as a revelator for this still new century — a prediction I voice confidently but reluctantly, and with a little disappointment and dismay.” Why the dismay? Because in his view, Johnson is ” an elusive figure, one of the last of the marginal masters.” And how does he come to this conclusion?: “He’s not a recluse, but he’s not out humping his ego, either: I’ve never read an interview with him (though I haven’t looked very hard), or seen a picture of him that wasn’t on one of his book jackets.”

Hey Lewis, here’s an interview and another one and wouldn’t you know, they both have pictures. And look at this! And This! I did have help finding them from my personal research assistant, Mr. Google. But dude, he was IN ‘Jesus’ Son,’ The movie of his book? Which you seem to have read. It’s not a walk on cameo. He’s the guy with the knife in his eye. Knife. Eye. Hard to miss. Jack Black was in that scene?

Mr. Lewis continues, “I can’t help hoping that it leaves his status unchanged. We don’t need any more novelist-performers or novelist-pundits or novelist-narcissists, but we very badly need more novelists who can write this well.” On reading a sentence like this, I cringe. Why does it matter if Denis Johnson wants to be a novelist-performer (he plays a mean guitar) or writes political essays or nonfiction (he has), and more importantly, why should I care that Mr. Lewis has this hope/fear and what does it matter to whether or not it’s a good book? It’s not that I don’t understand putting the personal into a review (look at this blog post) but 1) I’m not writing for the Times and 2) this is a blog. I’ve read some great reviews in the Times that have advised me well to buy or not buy books, but reviews that call attention to the reviewer or call attention to whether they are fans of google or don’t know how to use the Internet do nothing but distract. We don’t need any more reviewer-pundits or reviewer-narcissists, but we sorely need reviewers who can write good reviews.