Customer Reviews

My Goodness: A Cynic's Short-Lived Search for Sainthood

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I was taken a bit aback when I read the jacket of Joe Queenan's latest book. Had Joe taken flight of his senses, buried that hatchet he wields so well, and become a (gasp!) kind and decent person? Would the name Queenan soon join those of Baldwin, Sarandon and Browne atop the pantheon of Famous People Who Do Good Things?

The book leads us, hilariously of course, through Joe's quest to become a Very Good Person. Much of Queenan's work consists of brutal hatchet jobs on the inexplicably rich, the undeservedly famous, and the formidably underbrained, a harsh task that he is extremely well-qualifed for (he was born and raised in Philadelphia). So one could look on this book as a tale of a man trying to atone for his misdeeds, a pilgrim seeking the path of enlightenment.

As you might expect, the change doesn't occur overnight. Queenan spends six months trying to turn over a new leaf, and ends up eating lots of organic matter not too far removed from leaves, including Edensoy, St.John's Wort tortilla chips, and wheatgrass. He lobbies for the rights of labratory rats and personally accounts for a 5% spike in sales at the Body Shop. As he does in so many of his books, Queenan doesn't just tell us what we should do--he actually blazes the trail for us to follow.

I won't go into great detail about Queenan's trials and tribulations, but I will say that one chapter of the book focuses on his noble and lengthy quest to find a rare Elvis Costello CD for a fan who wrote to Queenan and asked if he might have a copy of it. I am a huge EC fan and to my mind this clinched the book as one of the most inspirational I have ever read. The sacrifice, the effort, all to spread the music of Elvis across the land...I was moved.

I'll leave it to you to read the book to learn how Joe arrives at his eventual state of grace, one that allows him to once again pick up his cudgel and start smashing again at overripe egos. All I can say is that as usual I ended up hyperventilating because I laughed too hard too many times. Queenan proves that sometimes you not only have to be cruel to be kind, you have to be cruel to be good. And few are as cruel, or as good, as Joe Queenan.

While this book is not the funniest thing that I have ever read by Queenan, it is still head and shoulders above much of what passes for "humor" on the printed page today.

Quite simply put, Queenan is the closest thing our current era has to H.L. Mencken. And as the book opens,this fact is beginning to bother him. As he sinks deeper into middle age and becomes more concious of his own mortality, he worries that he has been too mean to to too many people over the years, not only hurting their feelings but damaging his own soul in the process. He resolves to change his life, and over the course of about a year he attempts to transform himself from a "cynical effete snob", and "a nasty curmudgeon" into "a good person - like Sting, or Susan Sarandon."

Despite his valiant efforts,in the end, "sainthood" doesn't take. Lucky for us. Even as he exhausts himself performing numerous SABs and RAKs (to find out what these acronyms mean you'll have to buy the book)Queenan manages to skillfully eviscerate numerous icons of ostentatious public virtue (giving new meaning to the phrase "killing with kindness"), as well as some old celebrity targets who even despite his conversion to tenderheartedness, he simply WILL NOT apologize to.

My only real problem with the book (other than paying full hardcover price for something that is a bit on the skimpy side), is that some readers who come to this book without reading any of Queenan's previous work may inadvertantly end up taking this whole tongue-in-cheek exercise seriously, and actually be disappointed at the end when Queenan gleefully returns to his vicious ways. As for the rest of us, it's good to have you back Joe.

Joe Queenan is the only reason I subscribed to MOVIELINE; of course I bought MY GOODNESS as soon as it was available. The reviews by Tim Appelo and Gene Bromberg do such a magnificent job of analyzing this ground-breaking Queenan Opus that there's little left for me to say -- except that this book made me laugh out loud, and also proves that nothing is meaner or funnier than the truth.

Now, if only the UnHoly Trinity -- Florence King, P.J. O'Rourke, Joe Queenan -- would start a new Algonquin Round Table....

"If You are Talking to Me, Your Career Must be in Trouble" was so funny. Everything else Joe has done is a letdown. Joe tries to be "good", but takes the process of deciding to do so as an opportunity to regurgitate all sorts of nasty things he has said about people. Then he sets up a straw man set of "good" (but really, as he knows, ridiculous) lifestyle choices, such as drinking shade grown coffee and giving money to the right (i.e. liberal) causes, and tries to live by them (all the while subtley ridiculing them). Yes, the scorn parts are funny. But the sad thing is that with a few exceptions he seems to equate being good with spending money; writing checks to organizations and people. It means he was never sincere in his attempt to be good in the fist place, or he has been so mean for so long that money is the only thing of value he thinks he has to give to anyone. Maybe if he had spent time talking to old people in a retirement home or playing with children in a children's hospital, the book would not have reached its predictable conclusion. Then again, us fans of Joe's nastiness would have nothing to look forward to. My expectations get lower with each book, though.

I have not read Joe's work before but it is clear that he is a gifted enough writer to make a decent living at it. I imagine that writing directly about yourself is much harder than doing a hatchet job on another author's work. (So few writers, so many Amazon reviewers...) Joe swings the axe like the tough kid from Philly, but his search for Sainthood by embracing shade grown coffee and cruelty free products just isn't genuine enough to be funny. I am sure any of his other articles that he excerpts indirectly in a long list of apologies for former misdeeds are much better. Save your money and read Joe's next hatchet job in Playboy or Rolling Stone. Joe is a gifted writer, but this is not a good book.

This was the first thing I have read by Mr. Queenan (and somehow I sensed that most readers of this book were already quite familiar with his work). I thought he was an excellent writer and there were a number of amusing moments in the book. The one thing that gnawed at me for the entire book however was my inability to decide whether the author's "conversion-to-goodness" experience was, on one hand, (1) simply a one-time lark--i..e gist for new comedy material that he would "try" for as long as it took to write the book, and that he never really believed in for a second, or (2) meant as a permanent life-altering experience, at least when he started out on this new approach to life. There seemed to be some evidence in the book supporting both answers, although on balance, it seemed as if the first alternative comes much closer to the truth, even though he never comes right out and admits that. He just seemed to be tongue-in-cheek way too often, not to mention the dozens of references to Ben and Jerry's, Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, etc., and his "non-apology apologies" to various people. Anyway, I would recommend the book.

And of course fails miserably while learning that which he knew all along, namely that moral goodness is just another of life's many delusions.

This was my first encounter with Joe Queenan, and he is a very funny man. There's a lot of laugh-out-loud, self-deprecating/self-promoting verbal hijinks in this thoroughly enjoyable comedic romp through do-gooder land. Queenan assures us that he is the kind of guy who would tear the wings off the backs of flies and feed them to his pet rat while keeping the juicier parts for himself, and laugh while he was doing it, the kind of miscreant that would mock Mother Teresa for dressing dowdy or Jesus Christ for having a bad temper or Ramakrishna for liking the boys a little too much. In other words, the man's a moral degenerate.

So what to do about it? How about a complete moral make-over? How about emulating the vapor-headed targets of his mean-spirted satire, bleeding-heart liberal mush heads like Susan Sarandon, Jimmy Carter and Paul Newman? How about BECOMING that which he trashes? How about actually committing "random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty" and writing a book about it?

Oh my. Sounds pollyannaish at best, downright pinko at worse. Rush Limbaugh and the editors of various right-wing rags are sticking sweaty fingers under their necktied collars in clammy anticipation of such a sell-out. Fear not. Bottom line is there's a book contract to fulfill, and anyway the title assures us that Queenan sees the light long before he descends too far into that tunnel of delusion. All philanthropy is, after all, just advertisements for oneself, demonstrating for the huddled masses that one has the wherewithal to afford such largess. And all do-gooders are at heart just guilty consciences seeking cheap redemption.

Joe starts with an inventory of his "personal vileness" and finds that over the past twelve years in various publications he has penned "47,678 nasty remarks...2,537 ad hominem attacks, 1,123 gratuitous asides, 342 cases of pure slander, and 564 examples of unconscionable cruelty" (p. 19). Then he recalls "A Short History of Goodness, from Jesus Christ to Sting" in which he employs one of his primary comedic devices, the incongruous juxtaposition of the names of the holy and revered with the assorted targets of his discontent, e.g., Mahatma Gandhi with Ben & Jerry of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Desmond Tutu with Kim Basinger, and the cute commingling of Albert Schweitzer with Julia Roberts. (He didn't actually make this last coupling, but I'll do it for him, since such a joining is entirely within the spirit of his intent.) Then he throws out the toiletries manufactured by companies that use animals in experiments and buys himself some socially conscious Tom's of Maine toothpaste, etc. Here he employs another of his very clever comedic devices, namely that of damning by exaggeration (a neat variation on the time-honored damning by faint praise), e.g., mentioning Ben & Jerry's opus, "Double-Dip" with the "Bhagavad Gita."

Then he regales us with tales of actually acting out random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty, which he abbreviates as "RAKs" and "SABs." Particularly poignant was his search for a subway minstrel whom he would help by improving the poor man's faulty rendition of Schubert's "Ave Maria." His experience with the Harvard-educated Indian-American physicist who wanted Queenan to send him a pro bono copy of an obscure Elvis Costello CD is a tale almost too redeeming for the otherwise ironic tone of this book, and incidentally a tale all writers will particularly enjoy. Additionally, because Queenan is a particularly splendid example of that very rare creature, a successful free-lance writer, all those who aspire to write for a living will benefit by reading between the lines here for tips on how to write magazine articles for fun and profit. I would guess that Queenan's secret (aside from being a truly gifted wordsmith) is a consistently energetic self-promotion on all fronts. Either that or buying Microsoft when the Dow was at 3700, as he reports, and then faking it.

Queenan is also a master of the unexpected and ironic congruence. A nice example is his giving "Krispy Kremes, shrink-wrapped" to a dissident in Washington D.C.'s Lafayette Square only to notice that the protester had not yet actually partaken of his heart-felt gift, occasioning Queenan to optimistically observe that "in the fullness of time he might see fit to open them."

I must admit I laughed out loud several, maybe even numerous, times while reading this very clever put-down of the icons of pop culture, and enjoyed it all thoroughly, especially the part where he sends Linda Tripp a care package of organic groceries. What I want to do is go back and find his earlier work of social satire, Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon and see what nasty things he has to say about the once-adorable Brooke Shields, et al.

This is a hilarious account of Queenan's efforts to become a better person. He explores such diverse and hypocritical role models as Susan Sarandon and Sting (who better to model yourself after?) and ties himself in knots trying to "do the right thing." Highly recommended for talking yourself out of any ill-advised self-improvement efforts.

After fourteen years of writing vicious articles and novels, Joe `Darkside' Queenan feels jaded. He decides to stop persecuting secular saints such as Sting and Susan Sarandon and begins to emulate them instead, by embarking on a diet of spiritual regeneration, which he outlines in this amusing account. Queenan sheds nastiness along with several pounds, but in the end, being mean makes more cents.

Joe Queenan normally has a terrifically dry sense of humor. As I began reading this book, I realized that he was choosing to be even drier than normal. Then he became drier still. Then I realized that he was not approaching this book with a dry sense of humor--he was approaching it with no sense of humor.

We all assumed this book would be a subtler hatchet job than usual, but with the same targets. Queenan throws away his animal-tested cosmetics and buys everything at the Body Shop. And then...?

Nothing. That's it, he just buys those environmentally-sound shampoos and soaps, marvels at the price, and goes home. He doesn't poke fun at what he's doing, and were it not for the introduction, you wouldn't realize that this is only a poker face.

This book boils down to a long shopping list. Queenan not only fails to crack a smile, but he doesn't even hint that this is anything other than homework for him, which has been assigned by an advance-wielding editor just as some teachers give out book reports.