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THE BABY BOOM

“Our genius is being funny,” writes the author of his generation, but such genius is in short supply here.

What should have been easy picking for the satirist isn’t nearly as funny or perceptive as his best work.

O’Rourke (Holidays in Heck, 2011, etc.) has made a career out of skewering his generation’s liberal pieties and high-minded self-regard. Perhaps he has used up too much of his material or figured that the generational topic was so ripe for caricature that the book would write itself. Yes, the baby boomers are narcissistic, hypocritical, as materialist as they are idealist and obsessed with whatever stage of life they happen to be passing through. “We speak from the heart, and that’s not half of it,” he writes. “We speak from the gut, from the spleen, from the liver’s bile ducts, out our butts, through our hats, even our T shirts can’t shut up with the things we have to say, never mind social media and talk radio talk show call-in callers.” Point made and taken. O’Rourke’s long-windedness reinforces rather than punctures that tendency, as he describes the typical baby boomer’s (i.e., his own) family, maturation, sexual awakening, radical acculturation, substance experimentation (though he continues to prefer beer to illegal drugs), and ultimate need to cut his hair, buy a suit and get a job. He spends a surprising amount of time stuck in the 1950s, though it was the ’60s that would define this generation, and about which he belabors some obvious points: “It was not, of course, a decade. The Sixties as they are popularly remembered…was an episode of about 72 months duration when the Baby Boom had fully infested academia and America’s various little bohemian enclaves…and came to an abrupt halt in 1973 when conscription ended and herpes began.” He has the same memories of not attending Woodstock that so many others have, and he even recycles the ancient joke about what the Grateful Dead fan said when he ran out of pot.

“Our genius is being funny,” writes the author of his generation, but such genius is in short supply here.

Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-8021-2197-4

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly

Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013

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DYLAN GOES ELECTRIC!

NEWPORT, SEEGER, DYLAN, AND THE NIGHT THAT SPLIT THE SIXTIES

An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...

Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.

The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.

An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.

Pub Date: July 25, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

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