Like the Critic at the Bar in Birdman
Apr. 26th, 2015 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI have this friend who's a nice guy and a cool person; but, as much as I like him, I like his publicist even more. My friend mainly translates the sort of long and ponderous graphic novels that Glen Weldon regularly creams his pants over on NPR (while the rest of us resolutely go about our business), but he's finally gotten around to writing his own book, which happens to be on a subject near and dear to my heart. I was hanging out with his publicist the other day, and she was talking up the book like it was the best thing since Beard Papa opening in Georgetown. Granted, this is her job, but she seemed genuinely excited. I love her and want her to be happy, so I agreed to accept a galley copy for review, which I almost never do.
The book sucks. It really sucks. It is a black hole of suck. It's not just terrible; it's the sewer that runs underneath the sub-sub-basement of terrible. Usually when something is bad I just pretend I never read it, no matter how friendly I am with the author or publisher. The insane thing about this book, however, is that it's bad in amazing and interesting ways, and I ended up writing a review that was liberally illustrated with beautifully appropriate animated GIFs. It took a long time, but I had a lot of fun, and I can never, ever submit it. Instead I'm going to churn out maybe four paragraphs of unembellished description of the book's scope and structure, which is stupid and boring but won't get me in trouble.
This is the right thing to do, but I resent having to do it.
One of my best friends in the entire world is a genuinely kind and good-hearted person who legitimately doesn't understand why people are mean to each other. Her reasoning goes something like this: Isn't it easier just to not be mean? Instead of going out of your way and expending effort to be mean, you can not be mean by literally doing nothing.
To this I say that sometimes it is hard not to be mean, especially when being mean is so goddamn enjoyable.
The book sucks. It really sucks. It is a black hole of suck. It's not just terrible; it's the sewer that runs underneath the sub-sub-basement of terrible. Usually when something is bad I just pretend I never read it, no matter how friendly I am with the author or publisher. The insane thing about this book, however, is that it's bad in amazing and interesting ways, and I ended up writing a review that was liberally illustrated with beautifully appropriate animated GIFs. It took a long time, but I had a lot of fun, and I can never, ever submit it. Instead I'm going to churn out maybe four paragraphs of unembellished description of the book's scope and structure, which is stupid and boring but won't get me in trouble.
This is the right thing to do, but I resent having to do it.
One of my best friends in the entire world is a genuinely kind and good-hearted person who legitimately doesn't understand why people are mean to each other. Her reasoning goes something like this: Isn't it easier just to not be mean? Instead of going out of your way and expending effort to be mean, you can not be mean by literally doing nothing.
To this I say that sometimes it is hard not to be mean, especially when being mean is so goddamn enjoyable.
