The grandiose title immediately attracted me when this came across my goodread's friends feed last year and the outraged reviews drew me in further. Slate covered it in an episode of their bookclub podcast (highly recomended) where, I guess in a reaction to the "all the hype", they almost panned it, or basically said that it had interesting bits but that was it. However, they mentioned that Carl Wilson (Celine Dion 33 1/3 author) was the author's ex-husband and that further intrigued me.
There was lots of stuff I underlined and really liked here. I guess it really depends on whether or not you give people the benefit of the doubt that when they say something indulgent or crazy that they are self aware enough to know how that sounds and have chosen to trust you, the listener, to grant them latitude and work with them in pursuing an interesting conversation. The preceding is almost impossible to do if you always assume you're infinitely smarter than everyone you talk to.
I think this book was supremely edited, I can't remember the last time I propelled my self through pages like I did here, wait yes I can Moneyball, but that was an audiobook : ). I've had little experience with the art school types, that the author would seem to represent, but the brushes I've had I've found to be frustrating and disappointing, however a bad argument is preferable to a bland conversation any day. I thought the character of the author seemed pretty insufferable, but still hold that there were way more than the average amount of interesting sentences being put down. I think the "Ugly Painting Contest" deserved the amount of time she gave it. I thought that I was passed maxed out on the discussion of Jewishness but she found fresh bits. The nice feel and pace of the book actually reminded me of my favorite author Leonard Michaels, maybe that's my mental flub. I could have done without the more explicit paragraphs in the book, but I guess they helped break up the prose.
Give it a chance you'll probably hate it!
