Random House -- hc
New York -- © 2007 -- 288pp
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6619-3
A collection of essays by Steve Almond.
"How This Book Became and Official Oprah's Book Club™ Pick (Not That You Asked)"
"Dear Oprah"
"Why I Crush on Vonnegut (Not That You Asked)"
"Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, Part One"
"Part Two"
Part Three"
"Postscript"
"About My Sexual Failure (Not That You Asked)"
"Shame on Me"
"Chestfro Agoniste"
"My First Fake tits"
"How to Write Sex Scenes: The 12-Step Program"
"Why, Upon Publication of This Book, I Will Have to Leave the City of Boston Under Cover of Night (Not That You Asked)"
"Red Sox Anti-Christ"
"Concerning the Laughable Nature of Literary Fame (Not That You Asked)"
"How Reality TV Ate My Life"
"Blog Love"
"Heart Radical"
"Pretty Authors Make Graves"
"A Recipe to Die for, A Band to Worship (Not That You Asked)"
"Death by Lobster Pad Thai"
"Tesla Matters (Dude)"
"In Tribute to My Republican Homeys (Not That You Asked)"
"Cash Cowed"
"Where'd You Hide the Body?"
"Demagogue Days"
"How I Became a Baby Daddy (Not That You Asked)"
"You're What?"
"10 Ways I Killed My Daughter Within Her First 72 Hours of Life"
"Ham for Chanukah"
Acknowledgements
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For the record...I'm a fan of Steve Almond's writing, and; I do not like most modern essays. I'm probably one of the few readers who really can't stomach Augusten Burroughs and who finds David Sedaris to be only occasionally amusing, and nearly almost always self-aggrandizing.
Now that this is out of the way, let me address this book in particular.
Almond opens this book with the rather odd, and very immature little spoof/rant. Let's write letters to Oprah, trying to knock her down a peg, and then follow it up with a batch of letters apologizing. Ooh, how clever. How witty!
How terribly freshman!
Sorry, Steve, I wrote crap like this in high school and college. Yeah, you get the bucks to have it published, but it doesn't make it unique, clever, or, well, good.
I was worried, then, if the entire book was going to be this way. If I wanted dreck, I'd read Burroughs. Fortunately, I immediately began reading the "Why I Crush on Vonnegut" which hooked me in to the rest of the book.
THIS is an essay! This is how an essay should be written! A lot of personal reflection about a very personal (to the writer) subject, but not about the writer himself.
I felt every nuance, every pain or anger that Almond expressed. I want to go back and re-read every Vonnegut book, I want to go and knock the heads of the women on the panel with Vonnegut (I'll do something better...I will actively NOT buy their books). This essay alone kept me reading through the entire book.
The rest of the book falls somewhere in between these first two essays.
Anyone familiar with Almond's fiction writing knows that he writes about sex quite well, so his essays of a sexual bent are also strong. "How To Write Sex Scenes: The 12-Step Program" is both, fun and informative.
"Red Sox Anti-Christ" didn't hit me particularly well. I'm not a huge baseball fan, and really, the essay wasn't 'about' anything, was it? It wasn't quite a personal reflection, it was more of an essay trying to be clever. The historical anecdotes, about growing up and being a fan of the A's was interesting, but trying to pin on the label of Red Sox Anti-Christ was just too much a of a stretch.
Enjoyable essays were "How Reality TV Ate My Life," "Death by Lobster Pad Thai," and "Tesla Matters." Here Almond explores a topic, again personal and with personal reflection, as an essay should be, but not really about the essayist (I would argue that "How Reality TV Ate My Life" is more about the phoniness of "reality" TV and selling out to it in general than it is about Steve Almond's absorption in it).
Of lesser interest were "Blog Love" and "Ham for Chanukah" -- two essays that I couldn't relate to and held little interest for me.
The rest were decent.
But I'd much rather read more fiction from this fine author.
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