An unsentimental comic depiction of our inability to recognize our own short-sided logic.
A collection of humorous—albeit pessimistic—essays on humankind's incalculable foibles.
“Positive emotions may, of course, relate to good things,” writes This American Life contributor Rakoff (Don’t Get Too Comfortable, 2005, etc.), “but there is no necessary relationship.” Throughout the book, the author hones in on this disconnect, debunking the myth of the power of positive thinking while arguing that “the bleak” (not the meek) will most likely inherit the earth. Rakoff manages to make pessimism sexy, whittling optimism into little more than an irresponsible fad, a modern opiate of the masses. While his first essay confronts this issue directly, the remaining pieces explore similar terrain. His subjects range from kosher diets and dying therapists to the author's own struggles with cancer. On occasion, Rakoff's work reads like off-the-cuff freestyle riffs, though most readers will trust him to return to his work's primary cause, even if he does so by the most circuitous route. The author regularly employs non-sequiturs as a literary technique, casting his arguments to the fringes of possibility before reeling them back in. His droll humor proves an asset when describing humankind's failures, allowing readers to roll their eyes while empathizing with the argument. After being ordered to read 2,000 manuscripts as part of his duties as the low man on the totem pole at a publishing house, he wearily admits, “They asked me to eat shit, and all I did was request a bigger spoon.” While Rakoff seems to revel in his role as a modern-day Thomas Hobbes, it’s evident that he remains responsible in his critique, never trouncing a subject without provocation while simultaneously opening the reader's eyes to everyday lunacy.
An unsentimental comic depiction of our inability to recognize our own short-sided logic.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-52524-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There's a Faulkner market — no question of that. But for those on its outskirts, watching eagerly for growth, development, maturity in his work, there is disappointment, here as in Pylon. There is more in the sinister, sultry atmosphere to recall Sanctuary. But the story is indirect to the point of artificiality; the style marred by hyphenated words, manufactured words, until you lose the sense in the glut of verbiage. A depraved story of degenerates in a Southern family gone to seed — of Colonel Sutpen building his tribe by incest, perversion, miscegenation and lust. There is tragedy here, but the drawing is so out of scale that the effect is weakened. — In spite of all this, the book — on Faulkner's name — will sell, and rent.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1936
ISBN: 0679600728
Page Count: -
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1936
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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