Customer Reviews

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

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That's my three word synopsis of this book and the other Queenan book that I read, Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon.

There is no question that Queenan is funny. I continually drew attention to myself on a cross-country flight by laughing out loud, uncontrollably at certain points.

But in the end, Queenan's journey into the world of do-gooders is so transparently disingenuous that I wanted to throw the book into the recycling bin when I was finished laughing--just like I would do with one of his magazine articles. Queenan plays with the behaviors of do-gooders, but never probes the beliefs or motivations of his subjects. A true satirist would find humor in the self-righteousness of some environmentalists, social activists, etc. and not just in the products that they consume.

There is a long section where Queenan apologizes for being cruel. He apologizes to Sinead O'Connor for lambasting her in public while privately owning and enjoying all of her records. However, when he recants his pledge to be "good" at the end of the book, is he also taking back his apologies? Were they also a phony exercise designed to get laughs?

He claims to drag his family along on these adventures. What do they think when they discover that it was all a ruse and that nothing really changed?

If you want read a book that will also provide uncontainable whoops of laughter and genuinely satisfying content, try David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day.

I first made Joe Queenan's acquaintance as a writer in the late, great SPY magazine and in the fiercely conservative "The American Spectator." At last, here was a book reviewer and journalist who could match "National Review" columnist Florence King in wit and savagery of expression. When you read a Queenan book review, you knew there wouldn't be anything left of the author but a grease-spot on the floor. At the same time he was gaining a reputation in "Movieline" magazine as a slaughterer of sacred cows ("Sacred Cow" actually being the title of his evaluation of Barbra Striesand's acting career.) In short, he became the walking combination of the words "cruel" and "hilarious." In "My Goodness", Joe attempts to repent of all this. Expressing guilt at all the dented feelings of his many victims, he goes on a quest to remake himself into the very model of today's secular, politically correct saint--Alec Baldwin, in other words. Queenan fails spectaclarly of course, but you will fiendishly enjoy his attempt.

I'm often astonished by critics of Joe Queenan's books. Yes, he is mean. Yes, he is cruel. And yes, he is hilarious. If people are so offended by his material, why read it? Oh well, that is a subject for one of Queenan's own articles. I could not put this book down. This is third Queenan book I've read (along with Cineplex Heckler and Red Lobster) and this is as good or better than the other two. He makes many of the same points that Nick Hornby tries to in "How to Good." The difference (besides the fact that one is fiction) is that Queenan nails it. He tries hard to be good and fails. Of course he does. Neverthless, the journey is fascinating. He is one of the few writers who doesn't give a damn and tells you how he feels. You don't have agree with everything he says to enjoy his work. I admire a guy with those kind of guts (and who grew up on the mean streets of Philly--they grow guys like this there on trees). In addition, several critics have commented on his "right wing" writing--which is hilarious because Queenan slams the right wing many times in his book. He also dares to take on the leftists. He tries to learn about their culture and realizes that is filled with some good ideas--but is also subject many hypocritical failings. I laughed outloud countless times. Ok, so maybe I'm just the kind of Yuppie trash that Queenan is, but he really hits the nail on the head. As a photograph of America at the turn of the century and all it's absurdities, Queenan hits another home run. He wins again--which is better than he beloved 1964 Phillies did.

The mildly right-wing curmudgeon writes about his attempts to practice random acts of kindness, support dozens of charities, and just generally act in a ecologically sustainable way. Obviously, he did this because he got a book out of it; whether there was any genuine impulse to be a nicer guy, or regret at attacking fatuous, self-important leftists like Alec Baldwin, I can't tell from reading the book. On the whole, it was vaguely amusing, especially the parts where he apologized to famous people for his various catty remarks. But most of the book was just a recital of all that is Extremely Left; Queenan quotes classified ads from environmental papers, or talks about manatees and wheatgrass or saving lab rats as if they were inherently funny things. In some ways I guess they are; but you have to be a mildly right-wing middle America mass media curmudgeon to think it's funny just to point and laugh.

Synopsis is as follows: Cynical journalist feels guilty for being a cynic so decides to repent, by being cynical. Of course it is just an opportunity to get into print everything he has ever thought and every letter he has ever written. Therefore satisfying his quite frightening ego. A man of talent would have the ability to convert the everyday into a book, a journalist can merely report, and unfortunately does not know when to stop.
However, it was enjoyable in its pointlessness and no doubt gave Queenan the autodidactic comfort in knowing a tree has been destroyed to immortalise his senseless ego further.

If You're Talking To Me, Your Career Must Be In Trouble, Joe Queenan; Hyperion (DK); also, Red Lobster, White Trash, Blue Lagoon (Hyperion 1998) & My Goodness (Hyperion 2000)


With the exception of one torturous column, Joe Q's hilarious critiques of films & actors in "IF" constituted a smash hit (& to this day have stood the test of time, after 20+ years!).

Unfortunately, when Joe branched out into "Lobster" & "Goodness," he tossed the column format in favor of lengthy, facetious narratives.

Bad move. Zingers & acerbically funny put downs of bad actresses, over-the-hill singers & moronic social causes can't "carry" a book by themselves (for a primer in how to do this effectively, go to the source - H. Allen Smith's hilarious 1941 bestseller, "Low Man On A Totem Pole").

For every excellent punch line, the preceding set-up material in both L & G was too often tedious, strained, or incoherent (in Goodness, much more so than in Lobster). Apparently, it didn't occur to the author & his editors that pace in a comedy narrative is just as important as the punchlines.

The immortal Jackie Gleason despised inept comedians. He wrote a classic article (in Life magazine?) categorizing the various types of these pests.

Not overlooked was "the indefatigable laborer, who usually has some success because by the time he's three sentences into his joke, you're so numb that almost any finish is acceptable..."

And "the fighting-uphill type, who has to untangle himself from a million roadblocks. By the time he gets to his point, you've forgotten what he was trying to tell you in the 1st place. So has he..."

These liabilities in Lobster diminished its potential. They flat-out ruined Goodness.

Lobster made the cut (just barely). It stays on the shelf. And with its fleeting brilliant moments, I hated tossing Goodness (no vintage taped-in New Yorker cartoons were harmed in the straight-edge razor disassembly of this failed effort).

Not all is lost. Retrieved from the Guardian (UK) were his most recent columns (2002-09; of which until recently, I had had no idea existed). They were printed & assembled into binders & will be rewarding reading in the evening hours to come.

This very funny little book spoke to me on multiple levels -- not all of which were intended by the author -- with the result that, notwithstanding my passing enjoyment of the current title, I am not likely to look for his work elsewhere. The premise here is that Queenan decides to turn over a new leaf. He had apparently made a name for himself, and a great deal of money, as a literary hatchet man -- one who has cut a wide swath through popular culture. Either sincerely or as a pretense (he did, after all, obtain an advance for this book), he spent 6 months trying to mend his ways. Everything from his diet (nothing with eyes, shade-grown organic coffee), to his musical selections (only artists who supported charitable causes) and videos (ditto), to his apparel (tees with uplifting slogans) and bumper stickers (ditto) underwent a sea change. He started practing Random Acts of Kindness (RAKs) and Senseless Acts of Beauty (SABs). He wrote letters of apology to offended readers (he had saved the critical missives over a decade) and finally set up a Web site to apologize to the rich and famous he had savaged. He even tried to clean up his investment portfolio. And he is undeniably funny. While he engages in his RAKs and SABs and acts of contrition, however, he manages back-handed slaps at all of the good causes he embraces and worthy individuals he extolls. On one level this works for me as good humored poking at many of the causes and behaviors I embrace: after all, every saint has feet of clay (or genes of carbon, for the more literal reader) and if you can't see the flaws in your beliefs you are simply pie-eyed. On another level it lends the book a sense of untruth. One gets the sense that the whole undertaking was simply another avenue for a hatchet man done up in angel drag. The fact that I am approximately as widely-read as any person I know and have managed to miss Queenan's previous work says worlds about the vastness of modern literature. While I quite enjoyed his letter of apology to Jackie Collins for slamming her writing in a review (which amounted to almost no apology at all), I neither read Collins nor would be likely to read a review of Collins. The same is true of many of his other favorite targets: John Tesh, Garth Brooks, Geraldo Rivera, etc. and etc. Sorry, not interested. Of the magazines which evidently regularly hire this writer: GQ, Movieline, TV Guide, Spy, Barrons, Playboy, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chief Executive, Commonweal, Venture, Philadelphia and Amtrak Express, I read approximately none, with the very, very, occasional exception of the Post front page news online. Many of his favorite targets are TV personalities, and he himself is a frequent TV guest, but I haven't watched much TV in the past few decades. I don't offer this as snobbery (to each his own) -- we just don't seem to have overlapping cultural interests, and this despite our evidently confluent political views. There is doubtless some level of writer-envy working here. Queenan is paid handsomely to knock down the famous, or to famously knock down the obscure, and I can't pretend that it wouldn't be nice to be paid the $800 he gets for a book review or the $3000 he gets for longer pieces. (Even now, a decade later.) But neither Queenan's targets nor his brand of marksmanship much interest me, making this book great but easily forgetable fun.