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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Joe Queenan knows what a maleficent scuzz he is. In My Goodness, he admits he wrote a Barbra Streisand profile called "Sacred Cow" in his scurrilous book If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble. He apologizes for calling Sinead O'Connor "a short, bald distaff Bono" and for wishing Mr. Holland's Opus had ended "the same way as Braveheart, with Richard Dreyfuss getting his entrails ripped out while a cast of thousands cheered." Queenan figures that most of the 1,441,575 words he wrote from 1986-98 (including every word in Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler) were mean, containing "47,678 nasty remarks, or one cruel remark every two sentences."
Joe Queenan knows what a maleficent scuzz he is. In My Goodness, he admits he wrote a Barbra Streisand profile called "Sacred Cow" in his scurrilous book If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble. He apologizes for calling Sinead O'Connor "a short, bald distaff Bono" and for wishing Mr. Holland's Opus had ended "the same way as Braveheart, with Richard Dreyfuss getting his entrails ripped out while a cast of thousands cheered." Queenan figures that most of the 1,441,575 words he wrote from 1986-98 (including every word in Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler) were mean, containing "47,678 nasty remarks, or one cruel remark every two sentences."
So Queenan embraced virtue as passionately as Jackie Collins heroes embrace vice. (You'll have to read page 146 of My Goodness to get this vulgar in-joke.) He began performing "RAKs" and "SABs" (random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty). He bought the most putrid movies by Robin Williams and Kim Basinger, to support their do-good deeds. He sipped shade-grown coffee and kale-based shakes. He wrote checks on soy and hemp paper for the Dog Toy Drive and Linda Tripp. He started "The Make a Wish, As Long As the Wish Doesn't Cost More Than Fifty Bucks, Foundation." He urged Tom's of Maine to put "cuddly rats" on its toothpaste tubes in solidarity with downtrodden vermin.
After six months, Queenan went back to work as a maleficent scuzz. But you can read this book and share his one brief, shining moment as the moral equivalent of Susan Sarandon. --Tim Appelo
From Publishers Weekly
Everyone loves a funny misanthrope: Voltaire, Mark Twain, Roseanne Barr. And combative movie critic Queenan (Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon) can be funny. In this memoir of attempted self-salvation, Queenan charts his attempts to drop his disputatious demeanor and become a nicer, if not better, person. As he admits, it's a hard journey, since his "financially remunerative niche as one of the handful of hired guns" who can "turn out a fast, efficient hatchet job" ostensibly hangs in the balance. He's at his best when contemplating how bad he has actually been, and when he measures the "obviously satanic people I have made fun of" against "unlikely people I have defended." His "Short History of Goodness from Jesus Christ to Sting" crackles with the gleefully barbed and insouciant tone that has made him famous as an insult-meister. But even when Queenan takes seriously his project of living more ethically, he continues to score easy points, such as making fun of the Body Shop's overly pious self-promotion. His self-mocking tone keeps the book focused on the larger subject of grappling with moral issues in a less-than-perfect world. But too often the balance is off-kilter between his riffs on the absurd commodification of self-help and liberal causes (i.e., "Practice Random Acts of Kindness" bumper stickers) and his more serious philosophical offerings. In the end, Queenan's journey doesn't quite satisfy, not because he goes back to being a slightly kinder "son of a bitch," but because those more serious aspirations get lost in all the easy humor.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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