Those interested in the modern television landscape should turn to Bill Carter’s Desperate Networks (2006), a fine work of...
Hit-and-mostly-miss collection of 50-plus New Republic essays over-intellectualizing the boob tube’s not particularly intellectual output.
As the magazine’s television reporter from 2003 to 2006, Siegel (Falling Upwards, 2006, etc.) was paid to spend hours parked in front of the TV (watching cop shows, game shows, made-for-TV movies, you name it), then preach about their virtues, or lack thereof. Many of the programs the New Republic asked Siegel to dissect—e.g., Joey, The O.C., Deal or No Deal—do not merit the author’s time or energy, as the shows are A) mindless entertainment and B) will be soon forgotten. Another problem with this anthology is that Siegel spends too much brainpower on product that’s created strictly as escapism. Writing about the goofy but entertaining food-as-sport show Iron Chef America, he notes that, “In Soviet Russia, revolution, counterrevolution, endurance, and dissent all were hatched in the kitchen.” He might be right, but the pronouncement is misplaced and off-putting. Collection highlights include thoughtful articles on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Extras and Deadwood, providing a spotlight on shows that justify sharp analysis.
Those interested in the modern television landscape should turn to Bill Carter’s Desperate Networks (2006), a fine work of straight-up journalism that offers critical insight into today’s television scene—and Carter wasn’t even trying.Pub Date: July 2, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-465-07810-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2007
This early reader is an excellent introduction to the March on Washington in 1963 and the important role in the march played by Martin Luther King Jr. Ruffin gives the book a good, dramatic start: “August 28, 1963. It is a hot summer day in Washington, D.C. More than 250,00 people are pouring into the city.” They have come to protest the treatment of African-Americans here in the US. With stirring original artwork mixed with photographs of the events (and the segregationist policies in the South, such as separate drinking fountains and entrances to public buildings), Ruffin writes of how an end to slavery didn’t mark true equality and that these rights had to be fought for—through marches and sit-ins and words, particularly those of Dr. King, and particularly on that fateful day in Washington. Within a year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been passed: “It does not change everything. But it is a beginning.” Lots of visual cues will help new readers through the fairly simple text, but it is the power of the story that will keep them turning the pages. (Easy reader. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-448-42421-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
Sedaris’s sense of life’s absurdity is on full, fine display, as is his emotional body armor. Fortunately, he has plenty of...
Known for his self-deprecating wit and the harmlessly eccentric antics of his family, Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day, 2000, etc.) can also pinch until it hurts in this collection of autobiographical vignettes.
Once again we are treated to the author’s gift for deadpan humor, especially when poking fun at his family and neighbors. He draws some of the material from his youth, like the portrait of the folks across the street who didn’t own a TV (“What must it be like to be so ignorant and alone?” he wonders) and went trick-or-treating on November first. Or the story of the time his mother, after a fifth snow day in a row, chucked all the Sedaris kids out the door and locked it. To get back in, the older kids devised a plan wherein the youngest, affection-hungry Tiffany, would be hit by a car: “Her eagerness to please is absolute and naked. When we ask her to lie in the middle of the street, her only question was ‘Where?’ ” Some of the tales cover more recent incidents, such as his sister’s retrieval of a turkey from a garbage can; when Sedaris beards her about it, she responds, “Listen to you. If it didn’t come from Balducci’s, if it wasn’t raised on polenta and wild baby acorns, it has to be dangerous.” But family members’ square-peggedness is more than a little pathetic, and the fact that they are fodder for his stories doesn’t sit easy with Sedaris. He’ll quip, “Your life, your privacy, your occasional sorrow—it’s not like you're going to do anything with it,” as guilt pokes its nose around the corner of the page. Then he’ll hitch himself up and lacerate them once again, but not without affection even when the sting is strongest. Besides, his favorite target is himself: his obsessive-compulsiveness and his own membership in this company of oddfellows.
Sedaris’s sense of life’s absurdity is on full, fine display, as is his emotional body armor. Fortunately, he has plenty of both.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-316-14346-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004
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