Salvage Heart

Posts are few and far between right now....

Taylor Clark's Starbucked got the famous-critic critique in this week's NYTBR (and a first-chapter reprint), courtesy of P.J. O'Rourke. It's the sort of feedback that might be nice to get at a writer's workshop, for a first draft, but pretty ugly sprawled across two pages in the Sunday Times.

The lead sets us up:

"There’s a great story to be told about the success of Starbucks. But we’ll have to wait to hear it from somebody other than Taylor Clark."

then

"This is a shame because Clark is an enthusiastic young writer who has the seat of his intellectual pants hooked on the horns of an interesting conflict."

O'Rourke gradually gets around to the upshot: he likes part two of the book, he likes Clark's writing, he likes Clark. His Upfront at the beginning of the NYTBR pull-out is a somewhat interesting read on how to review books:

“I read something I’m reviewing the same way I read other things except more so. That is, I already keep a commonplace book (a file folder, really) for quotations, ideas, information, etc. If I’m going to write a review I mark the work for myself, but besides underlining what interests me I also underline what — as far as I can tell — interested the author. By the time I’m done I have an outline for the review. All I have to do is figure out a smart-aleck lead sentence and a wiseacre ending.”

But the condescension, and the hundreds of words in assault of the book's premise...ouch.

In the p.r. school of "don't read it, measure it," Clark can take heart. that while the review doesn't crack the top-10 most-emailed this week, it sits pretty at #2 in most blogged. And, while probably not the reviewer he would have preferred, it is at least one most readers will have heard of.

Being a NBCC-member (yes, Jane Ciabattari, I got the e-mail...dues were due March 1st...but I sent my membership money to avantguild...they had better party photos...), I should have some sort of critical assessment. I don't, except to say that PJ represents a sensibility for whom the book was not likely written. It is not a business book, but a culture book, and Clark does well with that.

Labels: books, New York Times, P.J. O'Rourke, review, Starbucked, Taylor Clark

Do you take the Times?

Ah, such pomposity. Such worldliness. Such implications of leisure time devoted to reading about crop rotation debates in Uganda and hot tub culture in Krakatoa. And then the inevitable, "Did you see the piece? It was in today's Times."

This far west, Times may need the preface "New York," as it could be that rubes such as we might confuse the reference with the Tigard Times, perhaps. Perhaps not.

The point is, look for Salvage Heart to throw in with that lot of ink-smudged superiority, as the daily home delivery has begun. So, not only will we have the holier-than-thou Sunday newsprint edifice adorning our porch...our porch...on the GODDAMNED PORCH please! Not on the sidewalk, because then it gets stolen by dog walkers. But, anyway, home delivery every day. And every other day.

Which brings us to a programming note: tomorrow Discovery Channel launches a 15-hour "Dirty Jobs" marathon, featuring Mike Rowe (host, above). All day Monday (Labor Day, which is better than marathon episodes of childbirth) and we're closing in on episode 150. I know this because, well....

Did you see the piece in Friday's Times?
"Gross -Out Fanfares for the Common Man"

(The Oregonian pulled a Zap2It wire story for its TV guide today.)

Fifteen hours seems like a lot. On the other hand, I can watch this all day long.

Labels: Dirty Jobs, Mike Rowe, New York Times, newspapers, television