I gotta admit, seeing the NYT review in print is really different
Saturday, February 14, 2009 at 5:10AM Sean's first take was that is was overwhelmingly positive, with the usual nits and arrows buried deep into the text.
When I read it over the phone, my take was more like Michal Schapiro's: snarky and condescending.
Mark Warren and my wife said the same thing: guy seemed seemed intimidated by the material so he did a style review--with too much on me personally.
I have to admit: reading it online is really different from the print presentation, and it's strange. But there--on paper--is the presentation being split across two pages and the reality of those packed little paras that gives it a different flow.
I read it for the first time in print today (no, I didn't get one Wed while on the road--too much going on) and I really don't have much of a problem with it.
Yes, the NYT felt the need to explain why they've ignored my first two books but especially PNM. And the reviewer feels the need to make the thumbnail presentation of PNM's core idea (for him, the map, but for the community, it's really SysAdmin (PNM)-segueing-to-Department of Everything Else (BFA)-segueing-to-Development-in-a-Box(tm)(GP)).
Then he presents ideas and quotes approvingly and you jump to the jump page, and it's still positive until you hit that point near the end when they always need to zing a bit (can't be a critical review without some carping, come on) and he does some over the structure, which a lot of people like but he finds a bit too precious.
Along the way he lands a few: on having too many ideas and the book being too ambitious, and he imagines the PPT presentation behind it (his projection), arguing that I seem personally too ambitious in spreading my ideas and that, in doing so, I don't lack self-esteem (Wow, you mean a guy who tries to deconstruct Bush, put America back on track in its grant strategy, present an 85-page history of the United States AND give you five separate models for looking at global change strikes you--the reader--as one confident SOB? Somebody call Dr. Phil!).
All carping aside, the review does a decent job of catching me, my career, my books, the big ideas, my weaknesses (which I maintain are occupational hazards, but then, I'm a world-class rationalizer) and ambitions, etc., and there was the cover art and that shot of me that Neil likes but I'm not so hot on (actually, that was the only thing that really sticks in my throat here).
So, in the end, not a lot to complain about. Bit light on substance and a bit heavy on me, but given the catch-up requirement here, that's was preordained in this small-format review. Bigger reviews can cover more, but I am--again--hard-pressed, once the emotion passes, to be unhappy with this review.
In the end, Sean was right.
Now, the joke here is that I told Sean to intercept ANYTHING about the review until . . . well, I actually told him to just plain kill anything I wrote. I expect that he expected I would write something downstream once I got past the whirl of the tour, and that time is now.
But I write it now because this afternoon I have to move onto new writing (based on the book) and--like always--I am someone who has to process things before moving on. So I take the opportunity to look at the actual paper in the light of day, with my morning coffee, and I get over myself on that basis, applying a bit more objectivity and a little less home-team thinking.
So the train moves on ....
Reader Comments (3)
Like I've said before, the effect of spitballs against your battleship of ideas.
Another plus side, this is 2009 and not 1989 and the attention economy effect is in play. Any kind of review in the NYT brings way more attention to a book in a crowded, noisy, online, culture than not reviewing it at all. Even bad reviews there helps authors (unless maybe they write exclusively for liberal, political partisans - that might be a dealbreaker) and yours was pretty good.