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

~ Joe Queenan (Author) "Since I started out as a writer many years ago, I have built a reputation as an acerbic, mean-spirited observer of the human condition..." (more)
Key Phrases: frugal philanthropist, random kindness, nicest man, New York, Joe Queenan, Ave Maria (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion; 1st edition (February 2, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786865539
• ISBN-13: 978-0786865536
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,037,581 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

103 of 103 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Say it ain't so, Joe!, February 2, 2000

By	Gene Bromberg (Pittsburgh, PA USA) - See all my reviews

I was taken a bit aback when I read the jacket of Joe Queenan's latest book. Had Joe taken flight of his senses, buried that hatchet he wields so well, and become a (gasp!) kind and decent person? Would the name Queenan soon join those of Baldwin, Sarandon and Browne atop the pantheon of Famous People Who Do Good Things?

The book leads us, hilariously of course, through Joe's quest to become a Very Good Person. Much of Queenan's work consists of brutal hatchet jobs on the inexplicably rich, the undeservedly famous, and the formidably underbrained, a harsh task that he is extremely well-qualifed for (he was born and raised in Philadelphia). So one could look on this book as a tale of a man trying to atone for his misdeeds, a pilgrim seeking the path of enlightenment.

As you might expect, the change doesn't occur overnight. Queenan spends six months trying to turn over a new leaf, and ends up eating lots of organic matter not too far removed from leaves, including Edensoy, St.John's Wort tortilla chips, and wheatgrass. He lobbies for the rights of labratory rats and personally accounts for a 5% spike in sales at the Body Shop. As he does in so many of his books, Queenan doesn't just tell us what we should do--he actually blazes the trail for us to follow.

I won't go into great detail about Queenan's trials and tribulations, but I will say that one chapter of the book focuses on his noble and lengthy quest to find a rare Elvis Costello CD for a fan who wrote to Queenan and asked if he might have a copy of it. I am a huge EC fan and to my mind this clinched the book as one of the most inspirational I have ever read. The sacrifice, the effort, all to spread the music of Elvis across the land...I was moved.

I'll leave it to you to read the book to learn how Joe arrives at his eventual state of grace, one that allows him to once again pick up his cudgel and start smashing again at overripe egos. All I can say is that as usual I ended up hyperventilating because I laughed too hard too many times. Queenan proves that sometimes you not only have to be cruel to be kind, you have to be cruel to be good. And few are as cruel, or as good, as Joe Queenan.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Funny but Phony, December 10, 2002

By	Chris Hiester (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Goodness: A Cynic's Short-Lived Search for Sainthood (Paperback)

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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Vintage Viciousness From a Master, July 20, 2000

By	Ken J W Baker (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada) - See all my reviews

While this book is not the funniest thing that I have ever read by Queenan, it is still head and shoulders above much of what passes for "humor" on the printed page today.

Quite simply put, Queenan is the closest thing our current era has to H.L. Mencken. And as the book opens,this fact is beginning to bother him. As he sinks deeper into middle age and becomes more concious of his own mortality, he worries that he has been too mean to to too many people over the years, not only hurting their feelings but damaging his own soul in the process. He resolves to change his life, and over the course of about a year he attempts to transform himself from a "cynical effete snob", and "a nasty curmudgeon" into "a good person - like Sting, or Susan Sarandon."

Despite his valiant efforts,in the end, "sainthood" doesn't take. Lucky for us. Even as he exhausts himself performing numerous SABs and RAKs (to find out what these acronyms mean you'll have to buy the book)Queenan manages to skillfully eviscerate numerous icons of ostentatious public virtue (giving new meaning to the phrase "killing with kindness"), as well as some old celebrity targets who even despite his conversion to tenderheartedness, he simply WILL NOT apologize to.

My only real problem with the book (other than paying full hardcover price for something that is a bit on the skimpy side), is that some readers who come to this book without reading any of Queenan's previous work may inadvertantly end up taking this whole tongue-in-cheek exercise seriously, and actually be disappointed at the end when Queenan gleefully returns to his vicious ways. As for the rest of us, it's good to have you back Joe.