Customer Reviews

The Thing Itself

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

 

 

I loved this book and want to read it again. When I first read it, alone in my living room, I nodded, grunted, and laughed out loud. A few sections made my eyes fill with tears. I kept thinking, "I've got to buy a copy of this for so-and-so."

Todd begins with an anecdote about buying a lovely antique. When this item turns out to be a fake, Todd wonders why this should even matter. After all, the object is still beautiful; it hasn't changed. He then goes on to explore both the nature of authenticity and the history of our yearning for it.

He follows a meandering path, which is a large part of the book's charm. I loved the asides and byways, many of which left me with a desire to travel further along them. I also loved the details contained in these asides. I'm grateful, too, for the specific titles that Todd mentions. Most of all, though, I loved the tone: kind, thoughtful, inclusive, and deeply human. Todd does not make this an abstract discussion. He personalizes it in ways that will help every reader know just what he means.

I read this quickly so I could pass on my copy to my brother. Now I need more copies to give as gifts. I guess the first person to get one will be me.

I am the brother who received the gift of Mr. Todd's book . Its excellence and wit has produced within me, among flushes of admiration and enjoyment, a few ominous polyps of envy; the sneaking suspicion that Mr. Todd is simply "better" than I am. Because my sister and I are both writers, "better" in this case, maps not only the geography of witty and elegant prose; but also a writer's envy of ideas so admirably turned as to make one suspect that Mr Todd possesses the sole example a lathe designed to express them as perfectly appropriately as the leg of a fine Queen Anne chair. An idea appears, is isolated for examination, and then twirled and turned around and upside down, until every perspective and permutation has been considered. Other readers, like myself, undoubtedly hold opinions about kitsch, Disneyland, authenticity, antique fairs, Yuppie suburban interlopers, wilderness, personal failings and cultural collapse, but I'll wager that by the end of this book those opinions will have been revised and certainly better articulated. Mr. Todd's genius is that he can make you laugh while he forces you do this. I'll think better of myself because I have bought and shared copies of this book with friends and resisted the temptation of inserting his observations into conversations as my own. Yet having admitted that, I can see that even this dishonorable impulse, is part of the terrain this wonderful book maps.

The prevailing style in these reviews seems to be personal confession. So here's mine. Dick Todd is a friend of mine too. Not a good one, mind you. What is it Gore Vidal used to say when good fortune befell another writer? "Whenever a friend succeeds a little something in me dies." However, I was so excited to see Dick's book make it into print (finally) that I literally jumped up and down and gave the author a huge embrace. To say Dick is not a man prone to hugging other men is like saying the nation is experiencing a little bit of a credit situation. (I should add that in his self effacing manner Dick always finds a way to make clear that the awkwardness is all his.) Dick eschews such reckless acts of sentimentality. We would expect nothing less from the man who just wrote the book on authenticity. Nevertheless, ignoring Dick's obvious discomfort, that's exactly what I did. I hugged him. What's more, I didn't let go. "Okay, okay, that's nice. Thank you. Alright, I appreciate that. Truly," said Dick tapping me on the back and looking at his wife with a desperate expression on his face--the way you might look if a friend excited about showing you his pet Boa constrictor, suddenly turned and threw the reptile into your unsuspecting arms and said, "Here, you take a turn!" But what Dick didn't realize is that I wasn't so much hugging him as trying to hold onto him. Because when Dick Todd goes (and I hope that doesn't happen anytime soon), we will be losing one of the best American writers and thinkers in a generation.

I read THE THING ITSELF (for the first time) while on vacation with several other families. Eleven of us packed into these tiny decaying bungalows on a pond in the woods. Dick's book was passed around from reader to reader. The next person in line was giddy with delight when handed the treasured object. It was like a literary Woodstock. When one of the people who hadn't had his turn yet asked two of us who had which authors Dick's writing is most like, we looked at each other and simultaneously replied, "E.B. White and Wendell Berry."

When my ten year-old son finished the last installment of Harry Potter he broke down and sobbed and said he was never going to read another book so long as he lived. Well I'm not saying it was that hard a fall after I finished THE THING ITSELF, and, of course, my son lived to read another day. Still, I found myself feeling more than a little abandoned when I finished Todd's beautifully crafted masterpiece. Another 247 pages would have killed him?

THE THING ITSELF begins with an essay on the author's experience of purchasing an antique box, which he quickly discovers is not the real thing. It is a fake. The box becomes Todd's Rosetta stone which he uses to unpack his--and our--hunger for authenticity in objects and places, in politics and ideas and, most important, in ourselves. David Sedaris hasn't written anything funnier than Todd's chapter on his trip to Disney World in Orlando Florida, while Todd's lyrical prose on life in rural America is full of deeply human truths. The author knows full well that he is a member in good standing of the culture he criticizes. Todd looks with equal skepticism at his own follies and illusions as a citizen of the world, longing for the elusive prize of authenticity. On a more personal note, I couldn't help wondering if I was the only person (besides Todd's analyst--if he has one) to recognize what a sign of incredible progress it is that it only took the author 247 pages to write the following passage:

"Where do they come from these gifts? How resistant I am to the unseen! Others are on better terms with it; in the end we must all succumb to mystery: But I think within these sheltering walls I may sometimes understand another meaning of what it can be to 'live in the moment.' Not that striving, self forging, abyss-staring quest--not that at all, but instead something more like acceptance. It happens at a table at night with the closest people and you feel not unpleasantly that you are no more or less real than the candlelight. That they have your substance, your very self in their hands. That it is their gaze and their laughter, their unspoken and inexplicable affection that give you substance, that you are held there like a fallen leaf on an invisible updraft of air."

I am currently writing a proposal for a book on fatherhood. I hope I finish it soon. Needless to say, reading THE THING ITSELF isn't helping any. I'm sure I'm still capable of producing a sparkling, feelingful book but I find myself entertaining thoughts I imagine some of the New England Patriots must have had as they contemplated a season without their MVP Super Bowl winning quarterback Tom Brady--why bother? Whatever. Where I was going with this is that if I got another title out sooner than later I might find myself being asked by some radio host or news reporter "What is your favorite book?" I would answer, "Anything by Anne Lamott--but my favorite classic is Dick Todd's THE THING ITSELF, which just hit the shelves in August!"

Jonathan Diamond Ph.D.

Author of Fatherless Sons: Healing the Legacy of Loss

A very thought provoking exploration of what is authentic and what is false masquerading as real. Todd's style is engaging, scholarly, humorous at times and always compelling. In a society mesmerized by celebrity and preoccupied with money and status, it's a good book to read in this time of economic readjustment.

Background: I am neither a writer nor a philosophy student so I'm in no way qualified to judge whether the analysis and conclusions are novel or unique. That out of the way I really enjoyed the book. With a kaleidoscope of loosely connected chapters it does a great job exploring concepts of authenticity, reality, self, society, and values in a creative, relevant, and enticing way. It certainly made me stop and think. The book is at its best when the author's humility, inquiry, and sprit of curiosity shine through. It is a fast read, which is good all the way to the end (actually I think it picks up intensity mid-way through). I can see myself coming back to re-read it. I recommend it!

Two years after reading this book (I'm here because I'm buying it, again, as a gift) I can recall more than a few things I took from it. That's saying something. It's a little loose at times, but more than worth the occasional digression for its takeaway value.

If there is is point to this collection of words, I can't find it. I kept reading, searching for something that made sense, but was left with the feeling that there is no there, there.

In these postings I have occasionally stated that I want my money back for a bad book, but this is the first time I want triple the cost of this formless glob of warmed-over mush to compensate me for my wasted time. Punitive damages should also be imposed on the publisher for printing this, this -- misshapen thing? -- too kind a description. Pastiches can be fascinating but this one is just lazy. There is not an original thought -- not one -- in this entire waste of trees, and what is contained therein is poorly expressed. The author would not dare disagree with any position taken by the New York Times or NPR and can make even potentially interesting subjects suicide-inducingly tedious. This is a poor fifth-rate imitation of Alain de Botton, whose books you should buy instead. Avoid like the plague.

Good undergraduate senior thesis level. Professional journalistic writing and structure. Cites appropriate ideas from English language works at the proper places. The phrase "ding an sich" does not appear. All downhill after the sublime Wallace Stevens poem at the beginning.