World Famous Comics: My Goodness: A Cynic's Short-Lived Search for Sainthood
My Goodness: A Cynic's Short-Lived Search for Sainthood
By: Joe Queenan Publisher: Hyperion Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Hyperion Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 208 Publication Date: July 11, 2001
Product Description: Years upon years of being unspeakably nasty to icons as diverse as Jimmy Carter, Barbra Streisand, and even Mother Nature herself had taken its toll on Joe Queenan. The man all editors turned to when they needed a book, film, or tv program savaged was tired of being so mean. He wanted to be more like Susan Sarandon. Or Sting. Determined to mend his ways, Queenan embarked on the most difficult task of his career: he decided to become a nice person. Now available in paperback, My Goodness is the side-splitting result of Queenans attempted transformation: from his use of animal-friendly Body Shop goods to his letter of apology to Jackie Collins after a scathing review of her latest book; from his quest to save the whales to his quest to save Linda Tripages.
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."
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
Funny but forgetable This very funny little book spoke to me on multiple levels -- not all of which were intended by the author -- with the result that, notwithstanding my passing enjoyment of the current title, I am not likely to look for his work elsewhere. The premise here is that Queenan decides to turn over a new leaf. He had apparently made a name for himself, and a great deal of money, as a literary hatchet man -- one who has cut a wide swath through popular culture. Either sincerely or as a pretense (he did, after all, obtain an advance for this book), he spent 6 months trying to mend his ways. Everything from his diet (nothing with eyes, shade-grown organic coffee), to his musical selections (only artists who supported charitable causes) and videos (ditto), to his apparel (tees with uplifting slogans) and bumper stickers (ditto) underwent a sea change. He started practing Random Acts of Kindness (RAKs) and Senseless Acts of Beauty (SABs). He wrote letters of apology to offended readers (he had saved the critical missives over a decade) and finally set up a Web site to apologize to the rich and famous he had savaged. He even tried to clean up his investment portfolio. And he is undeniably funny. While he engages in his RAKs and SABs and acts of contrition, however, he manages back-handed slaps at all of the good causes he embraces and worthy individuals he extolls. On one level this works for me as good humored poking at many of the causes and behaviors I embrace: after all, every saint has feet of clay (or genes of carbon, for the more literal reader) and if you can't see the flaws in your beliefs you are simply pie-eyed. On another level it lends the book a sense of untruth. One gets the sense that the whole undertaking was simply another avenue for a hatchet man done up in angel drag. The fact that I am approximately as widely-read as any person I know and have managed to miss Queenan's previous work says worlds about the vastness of modern literature. While I quite enjoyed his letter of apology to Jackie Collins for slamming her writing in a review (which amounted to almost no apology at all), I neither read Collins nor would be likely to read a review of Collins. The same is true of many of his other favorite targets: John Tesh, Garth Brooks, Geraldo Rivera, etc. and etc. Sorry, not interested. Of the magazines which evidently regularly hire this writer: GQ, Movieline, TV Guide, Spy, Barrons, Playboy, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chief Executive, Commonweal, Venture, Philadelphia and Amtrak Express, I read approximately none, with the very, very, occasional exception of the Post front page news online. Many of his favorite targets are TV personalities, and he himself is a frequent TV guest, but I haven't watched much TV in the past few decades. I don't offer this as snobbery (to each his own) -- we just don't seem to have overlapping cultural interests, and this despite our evidently confluent political views. There is doubtless some level of writer-envy working here. Queenan is paid handsomely to knock down the famous, or to famously knock down the obscure, and I can't pretend that it wouldn't be nice to be paid the $800 he gets for a book review or the $3000 he gets for longer pieces. (Even now, a decade later.) But neither Queenan's targets nor his brand of marksmanship much interest me, making this book great but easily forgetable fun.
In which Queenan attempts to morally upgrade his personality And of course fails miserably while learning that which he knew all along, namely that moral goodness is just another of life's many delusions.
This was my first encounter with Joe Queenan, and he is a very funny man. There's a lot of laugh-out-loud, self-deprecating/self-promoting verbal hijinks in this thoroughly enjoyable comedic romp through do-gooder land. Queenan assures us that he is the kind of guy who would tear the wings off the backs of flies and feed them to his pet rat while keeping the juicier parts for himself, and laugh while he was doing it, the kind of miscreant that would mock Mother Teresa for dressing dowdy or Jesus Christ for having a bad temper or Ramakrishna for liking the boys a little too much. In other words, the man's a moral degenerate.
So what to do about it? How about a complete moral make-over? How about emulating the vapor-headed targets of his mean-spirted satire, bleeding-heart liberal mush heads like Susan Sarandon, Jimmy Carter and Paul Newman? How about BECOMING that which he trashes? How about actually committing "random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty" and writing a book about it?
Oh my. Sounds pollyannaish at best, downright pinko at worse. Rush Limbaugh and the editors of various right-wing rags are sticking sweaty fingers under their necktied collars in clammy anticipation of such a sell-out. Fear not. Bottom line is there's a book contract to fulfill, and anyway the title assures us that Queenan sees the light long before he descends too far into that tunnel of delusion. All philanthropy is, after all, just advertisements for oneself, demonstrating for the huddled masses that one has the wherewithal to afford such largess. And all do-gooders are at heart just guilty consciences seeking cheap redemption.
Joe starts with an inventory of his "personal vileness" and finds that over the past twelve years in various publications he has penned "47,678 nasty remarks...2,537 ad hominem attacks, 1,123 gratuitous asides, 342 cases of pure slander, and 564 examples of unconscionable cruelty" (p. 19). Then he recalls "A Short History of Goodness, from Jesus Christ to Sting" in which he employs one of his primary comedic devices, the incongruous juxtaposition of the names of the holy and revered with the assorted targets of his discontent, e.g., Mahatma Gandhi with Ben & Jerry of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Desmond Tutu with Kim Basinger, and the cute commingling of Albert Schweitzer with Julia Roberts. (He didn't actually make this last coupling, but I'll do it for him, since such a joining is entirely within the spirit of his intent.) Then he throws out the toiletries manufactured by companies that use animals in experiments and buys himself some socially conscious Tom's of Maine toothpaste, etc. Here he employs another of his very clever comedic devices, namely that of damning by exaggeration (a neat variation on the time-honored damning by faint praise), e.g., mentioning Ben & Jerry's opus, "Double-Dip" with the "Bhagavad Gita."
Then he regales us with tales of actually acting out random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty, which he abbreviates as "RAKs" and "SABs." Particularly poignant was his search for a subway minstrel whom he would help by improving the poor man's faulty rendition of Schubert's "Ave Maria." His experience with the Harvard-educated Indian-American physicist who wanted Queenan to send him a pro bono copy of an obscure Elvis Costello CD is a tale almost too redeeming for the otherwise ironic tone of this book, and incidentally a tale all writers will particularly enjoy. Additionally, because Queenan is a particularly splendid example of that very rare creature, a successful free-lance writer, all those who aspire to write for a living will benefit by reading between the lines here for tips on how to write magazine articles for fun and profit. I would guess that Queenan's secret (aside from being a truly gifted wordsmith) is a consistently energetic self-promotion on all fronts. Either that or buying Microsoft when the Dow was at 3700, as he reports, and then faking it.
Queenan is also a master of the unexpected and ironic congruence. A nice example is his giving "Krispy Kremes, shrink-wrapped" to a dissident in Washington D.C.'s Lafayette Square only to notice that the protester had not yet actually partaken of his heart-felt gift, occasioning Queenan to optimistically observe that "in the fullness of time he might see fit to open them."
I must admit I laughed out loud several, maybe even numerous, times while reading this very clever put-down of the icons of pop culture, and enjoyed it all thoroughly, especially the part where he sends Linda Tripp a care package of organic groceries. What I want to do is go back and find his earlier work of social satire, Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon and see what nasty things he has to say about the once-adorable Brooke Shields, et al.
Funny but Phony 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.
Queenan is an American Treasure I'm often astonished by critics of Joe Queenan's books. Yes, he is mean. Yes, he is cruel. And yes, he is hilarious. If people are so offended by his material, why read it? Oh well, that is a subject for one of Queenan's own articles. I could not put this book down. This is third Queenan book I've read (along with Cineplex Heckler and Red Lobster) and this is as good or better than the other two. He makes many of the same points that Nick Hornby tries to in "How to Good." The difference (besides the fact that one is fiction) is that Queenan nails it. He tries hard to be good and fails. Of course he does. Neverthless, the journey is fascinating. He is one of the few writers who doesn't give a damn and tells you how he feels. You don't have agree with everything he says to enjoy his work. I admire a guy with those kind of guts (and who grew up on the mean streets of Philly--they grow guys like this there on trees). In addition, several critics have commented on his "right wing" writing--which is hilarious because Queenan slams the right wing many times in his book. He also dares to take on the leftists. He tries to learn about their culture and realizes that is filled with some good ideas--but is also subject many hypocritical failings. I laughed outloud countless times. Ok, so maybe I'm just the kind of Yuppie trash that Queenan is, but he really hits the nail on the head. As a photograph of America at the turn of the century and all it's absurdities, Queenan hits another home run. He wins again--which is better than he beloved 1964 Phillies did.
Joe is a gifted writer, but this is not a good book I have not read Joe's work before but it is clear that he is a gifted enough writer to make a decent living at it. I imagine that writing directly about yourself is much harder than doing a hatchet job on another author's work. (So few writers, so many Amazon reviewers...) Joe swings the axe like the tough kid from Philly, but his search for Sainthood by embracing shade grown coffee and cruelty free products just isn't genuine enough to be funny. I am sure any of his other articles that he excerpts indirectly in a long list of apologies for former misdeeds are much better. Save your money and read Joe's next hatchet job in Playboy or Rolling Stone. Joe is a gifted writer, but this is not a good book.
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