Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Starbucked II
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
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Starbucked
Not exactly hot off the press at this time, but I profiled Taylor Clark, author of Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce and Culture in last(!) Sunday's Oregonian. Clark worked for Willamette Week for a couple years before striking out on his own.
We talked about his book and life as a freelancer sitting in the lone Starbucks of Beaumont Village; he drank Earl Grey by Tazo and I, the Grande Americano With Room that I no longer drink twice daily. Two better coffee shops sat nearby, but Clark didn't write books about them.
This piece happened to coincide with another coffee piece that I figured would have run last Thursday (but is instead buried somewhere in the Oregonian's pipes). More on that (and the photos that were too dark to use) maybe Thursday. Hold your collective breath, Reader.
We talked about his book and life as a freelancer sitting in the lone Starbucks of Beaumont Village; he drank Earl Grey by Tazo and I, the Grande Americano With Room that I no longer drink twice daily. Two better coffee shops sat nearby, but Clark didn't write books about them.
This piece happened to coincide with another coffee piece that I figured would have run last Thursday (but is instead buried somewhere in the Oregonian's pipes). More on that (and the photos that were too dark to use) maybe Thursday. Hold your collective breath, Reader.
Labels: authors, coffee, Oregonian, Portland, Starbucked, Taylor Clark
