Customer Reviews

Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: A Memoir

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

David Goodwillie's memoir of life in New York City after college is the perfect read for anyone aged 21, 51, or 81 that doesn't know what they want to do when they grow up but truly loves trying to figure it out. Reading David's book, which is chock full of episodes that are at once poignant and humorous, took me back to a time in my own life after college when the world was less about the daily grind and more about exploring and experiencing what's out there. My favorite authors have always been the ones who take me by the hand and invite me into their world, and Goodwillie is a truly inviting and engaging host. Thanks for the trip, David, and keep on writing!

I really enjoyed this book. I couldn't put it down and I read it in two days. There was a TV show years ago called "Time Tunnel" where characters were sent back in time to a specific time and place in history. This book reminds me a little of that show, with David Goodwille the character who has been "beamed" into a time and place to navigate the cultural landscape. The time is the 1990s. The place is New York. Only this is not fiction - this is real. You love this book if you have any interest in the world of baseball collectibles or big time auctions. You will also love this book if you have even a passing interest in the cultural changes of the 1990s and the "dot-com" boom. And you will love this book if you have any interest in laughing - because this is a VERY funny book. It is also a book that has many other dimensions. I remember reading a commentary regarding recorded history that noted that ancient history was easy to appreciate. It's in books, it's taught in schools, and everyone sort of agrees about so much of the distant past, which has little to do with our day-to-day lives. "Future history" that is current news - all that goes on around us today in real time - is readily available to us by TV reporting, newspapers, magazines, the Internet, etc. We see it and we live it. But the recent past - that is different. That is our blind spot, and the significance and context of relatively recent history can often be lost. A talented and perceptive writer can sometimes hit the mark and bring this recent history into focus, and David Goodwillie has done just that, using his own life experiences as a vehicle. This book is a treat. At different times it reminded me of "Catch Me If You Can," "Wall Street," and "How To Succeed In Business," and at other times it was more like "Seinfeld." It is time capsule of the 1990s, a great read - and VERY funny!

Goodwillie's memoir is one of the better ones I've read. It's more than just a memoir..its a struggle to find meaning and authenticity in a mundane world. The story is that of his struggle to become a writer. Of his successes and failures, his loves and losses..of his screw ups and sell outs. All are told in a way that makes Goodwillie seem endearing and naive to a reader.

We follow Goodwillie through 1990's New York City; through various jobs, lifestyles and girlfriends. We stay with him as he makes bad calls and learns valuable life lessons. After six years of molding himself to fit with current trends and putting his dreams on hold, Goodwillie succeeds in fulfilling his lifelong dream of writing. The result, "Seems Like a Good Idea At the Time" is his honest and beautiful first contribution to the literary world.

Two thumbs way up. If you enjoy memoirs, check this one out.

This is an excellent look at the challenges and uncertainties and opportunities and longing that make being 20-something so interesting and painful and exciting. By examining many of the questions that are universal to that age, this memoir has brought me back to that era of my life.

David, thanks for the memories; yours and mine, the good and the bad.

I can't say enough good things about this book. Goodwillie is a massively talented writer, and his ability to expertly distill the energy and pitch of New York in the late 90s is astounding. This is the first book I've read that attempts to make some sense of that era -- when kids just out of college were earning more than their parents and it seemed like the good times really never would end -- and it does a magnificent job. I moved to New York about a year after Goodwillie did, and while I can't claim to have held the same variety of exciting jobs he did, I found a number parallels between our New York experiences, and it's a testament to Goodwillie's abilities as a writer that I think the same will be true of anyone (of any age) who's ever dreamed of making it in the big city -- in any big city.

Highly recommended. Goodwillie's writing paints a detailed, vivid portrait of New York in the 90's. The book details his struggle to change life from something that randomly happens to him to something in which he takes an active role. Funny, absorbing, and entertaining.

I expected to pick this book up, read a few pages, and abandon it. I wasn't interested in reading about a young unfocused guy who graduated from Kenyon, had a short unsuccessful stint as a semi-pro baseball player, then spent some aimless years in New York in various low-paying jobs while he worked his way through several girlfriends, roommates, apartments. But I was wrong. I was interested. In fact I was mesmerized. This is Sex in the City with brains from a guy's point of view. Ultimately, Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time reads as deeply true. Goodwillie has a talent for recreating characters that we want to know better, for spotting humor, trends, or hollowness in the people and situations around him. I loved this book.

Experience is what makes great writers, but not the kind gathered from classrooms or the great indoors. Oh, and sometimes that experience gets in the way of writing. "Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time" chronicles its author's leap from a small college in Ohio to the metropolitan lightning rod of New York City, and the odd jobs and mistakes amassed along the way. He has an unnerving knack for capturing characters: these are the same people I encounter every day, but he made me see them as if for the first time. The story is the coming-of-age of a city as much as it is the coming-of-age of its author. It's a memoir of an imperfect, work-in-progress life, but underneath the calculated cleverness and snappy comebacks is a love song to the past, the present, and the unfurling future of NYC, center of the universe. It's pretty solid proof that with enough work, life sometimes lets itself be written down. Plus, it's not a bad piece of writing. Definitely worth it. Now I want to move to NYC.

David Goodwillie's Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time takes the reader on a captivating journey not only through New York City in the 1990's, but also through the universal search to find one's true calling. Goodwillie was like so many who, after college, took job after job to get by or get rich, but did not find any of them fulfilling. His is a humourous and honest account of how quickly life can sweep you up and carry you on its own path and how, with a little determination, you can find your bearings and your old self. It is a story that reminds us of this, at any stage of life.

As a young person who has recently moved to NYC, I've naturally sought out essays and short stories about NYC---an organism, alive and breathing. I read Joan Didion's "Goodbye to That" and after E.B. White's "Here is New York". And-like everyone who moved here before me said it would-NYC has entered my life as a character. I've had to make room for another relationship. Like Didion and White, David Goodwillie's memoir "Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time" encapsulates all that has been running through the mind of a self-aware young person. All the anxieties, moments of bliss, philosophical contemplation, and moments of pure superficiality. And those moments are, it seems, okay. He survived to write a book of depth. Goodwillie captures the struggle to find footing in NYC, to maintain substantive relationships, and he speaks to the constant battle between transience and permanence. He has an insatiable hunger for curiosity, and inspires the reader to go forth and live until something (here, an event) thrusts "purpose" on the self. Selfishly, this book has assuaged my worries that acclimating to such an animal will be hard (perhaps impossible) while inspiring me to experiment (occupationally, romantically, and personally) as Goodwillie did. Brave and bold, this book reads effortlessly because it reads as honestly as memoirs can read. Spectacular. A great writer. Thoughtful is this book.