Customer Reviews

Personals: Dreams and Nightmares from the Lives of Twenty Young Writers

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book reassured me that my own self-involved musings on temp work, thwarted attempts at pursuing career and personal passions, and fascinations with dubious pop-culture items could be published, too...thanks, Thomas Beller!

Thomas Beller compiles a strikingly honest, painfully earnest collection of essay with "Personals: Dreams and Nightmares from the Lives of Twenty Young Writers." In a time when overly indulgent fits of angst are all the rage, Beller and his writers present a tempered, wise view of their youths. Yes, there is regret, there are growing pains, there are the travails of young love, but somehow they seem different in this light. These writers know themselves and they know the time in which they live. This allows them to write with such an incisive nature and clear-eyed depth of character, that one cannot help but be compelled by their tales. Some are humorous, some are painfully morose, but all are little life lessons worth paying attention to.

Personal essays are the bane of many a college career. Often tedious, or stupidly confessional, or arch, most personal essays are a drag. The essays here in Personals aren't. Yes, many of them are from New York writers, and their appeal is primarily aspirational, but even these essays are polished and intriguing. Others, detailing the first daily newspaper in Cambodia or brother-sister roadtrip or a Kentucky election campaign are superlative.

Check it out. You'll be hearing from many of these writers again.

finally a collection that is generationally specific that doesn;t totally suck. The subject matter is varied but tends toward young educated types in the big city. There's some funny stuff, there's some serious stuff. The writing is excellent and the whole of the book gives off a cool vibe of unpretentious intellectualism. This book will do for these young writers what Debra Spark's 20 under 30 did for the preceding generation.

I'm not talking about the people featured in this book, but the people who are ripping it to shreds under the cover of assumed names and email addresses. Just try emailing exp@paper.com, for example. If you feel your opinion is so valid or important, at least use your real name. Or just be anonymous for god's sake. Or find something better to do with your time. Amazon has become the elementary school bathroom wall for failed writers to vent their frustrations....too bad. The reader reviews here used to actually seem to mean something.

self-indulgent, poorly written, lacking artistry, largely white, rather boring. this kind of literature reminds me of how paradoxically provincial, the megalopolis of ny can be when seen through the eyes of those who were cacooned there.

then again, we can take this collection for what it is: another desperate attempt on tom beller's part to be deep. look, writing is an art form. either you have it or you don't. clearly, these people don't. he certainly doesn't.

this book is so disappointing, that i can not do it the courtesy of capital letters.

Twenty young nobodies who think they have talent talk about themselves because the Uber nobody, Tom Beller told them to do it. Literature these days is beyond contempt: instead it is rather sad and bizarre. But things are bound to change, no?