Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Books / Phillips Eat Me, Jonathan Safran Foer: Ostensibly a Post About Books
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 5:48 AM
Comments (18)
Showing 1-18 of 18
Interesting post. However, I think the "Oh, hello" is pretty obviously a joke from late-night TV infomercials--the same joke used in the Yacht Rock series to make fun of those old infomercials that would have you believe that you really just interrupted some dude smoking a pipe and reading by the fire before he tells you about the Time Life music collection featuring all your favorite tunes from the '70s.
Secondly, I know anyone who lives in Park Slope right now is public enemy no. 1, but I wasn't remotely offended by the trailer, or Safran Foer's stance on meat--and I'm not a vegetarian or a Brooklynite. I think it's an honest way of looking at those kinds of lifestyle-altering decisions. So much of our best memories and family lore are often tied to food, and for many, that food has meat as its centerpiece. And while it's true that being able to buy hormone-growth free milk is a luxury most folks can't afford, I still think that the decision to become vegetarian is no less complicated intellectually because of all of meat's attendant, often positive, associations. Plus, Foer's inclusion of his grandmother in this complicated choice is an interesting one--rejecting her meat dishes becomes a kind of rejection of her--particularly if you read his first book, which attempted to trace the life of his grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, for whom food would have taken on an entirely different meaning. And, as he explains, he wrote it upon taking fatherhood very seriously. So, the book really IS about family. About how difficult it is to extricate yourself from the tie-binding elements of family when you come to realize the ways those positive, tie-binding elements are actually harmful in some way.
And I don't know a thing about book publishing, but my guess is Safran-Foer doesn't need this book trailer to save his book--it's already stirred up quite the controversy.
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All right, but here's the thing. You are not Safran-Foer and you have done more in three paragraphs to make his book seem interesting and thoughtful than he accomplished in three minutes.
And you're right. He probably doesn't need a book trailer.
Those two factors make the existence of this particular trailer even more befuddling.
Anyway, I thought we were all supposed to hate on Williamsberg now, not Park Slope.
Wednesday: Betsy gripes about a blog entry from Utah by a gay teen complaining about parental pressure to join the church.
Friday: Betsy gripes about a Scottish news anchor's on-air diatribe about not getting to wear a kilt on holiday broadcasts.
Monday: Betsy gripes about the Al-Jazeera report on Dubai hotel patrons who complain about noise from a nearby airshow.
What you’re describing works in reverse as well. Publishers have mined less literary-minded websites for breezy novelty books that can be published quickly and displayed near the checkout at Barnes & Noble. Television Without Pity, I Can Haz Cheezburger, Stuff White People Like, Look at this Fucking Hipster, and Texts from Last Night are all blogs (some of them just photo & caption sites) that have all had major publishing deals. The guy who has the Twitter “Shit My Dad Says” is developing a sitcom for CSB. And these are just examples off the top of my head. I’m not going to argue that Look at this Fucking Hipster is the next Ulysses, but I think the publisher/author/reader/marketing machine is, for a lucky few, more symbiotic than anything.
At the very least, think of it this way: that video cost what, no dollars to make? And it’s being posted and linked to on blogs all over the internet, including blogs associated with real printed content (like this one). I haven’t checked, but I’m willing to bet Little, Brown and Company did not buy any ad space in the paper to promote his book. We did it for them, for free.
So, you're arguing that this video is the book advertising equivalent of Pabst? I'll buy that.
Good point. After all, it's not like Nashville has any interest in the publishing industry, or any stake in its future.
So Provincial, if you're going to make snarky comments, it needs to be clear what you're snarking on. Does it make one provincial to mock New Yorkers, who practically invented provincialism? Is it that anyone would dare mock the book trailer? The gallows humor? What?
The snark was aimed at So Nashville and the (apparent) idea this topic couldn't be of interest to anyone local. Carry on.
I wish that self-indulgent douche would get out of the way and give Grandma more face time. In fact, I'd read anything she wrote sooner than I'd ever read pansy-ass JSF. He proves the rule that you can read a book by its cover, or at least by its pretentious three-named author's name.
Too bad. He took a good idea and ruined it. I so wanted to like him, if only for his grandma's sake.
I'm not sure big publishing is in danger because of small publishing. Readers are not loading up on self-published books to the detriment of Houghton Mifflin's and Random House's efforts. They're either not reading because they get their stories from video games or otherwise have no interested in books.
Anyone who has spent an hour sifting among self-published books learns quickly the value of the gatekeeper. There's a lot of bad stuff published by the big houses, but the worst of it is good compared to what's being produced without adult supervision. Editing and criticism is a stage writers need to go *through*, not around.
Isn't that video a rip-off/take-off of the video from that Winona Ryder movie, Reality Bites - you know where she gets all mad because Ben Stiller tries to make her stupid video more "edgy", so she goes for Ethan Hawke? Ok, I am old.
I thought the video was intelligent and innovative. Writers once prided themselves on not knowing anything more about technology then the QWERTY system. We live in a new age now. Foer was born into a family where excellence came easy, and has expanded on it. His father is the editor of the New Republic. His mother Esther Safran was, like grandma, a Holocaust survivor. They are both fascinating women. Stop whining; start writing.
Probably, for me at least, the most unsettling thing in the video is the music choice at the beginning, Sonata For Cello And Piano In F Minor by George Enescu. I don't know how well known that piece is on its own, but the only reason I know it is because it's used prominently in the Royal Tenenbaums. The movie, if you haven't seen it, is about a quirky, lovable family with three precociously-successful genius siblings. Which, you know, sounds a lot like the three Foer brothers, all precociously successful Ivy Leaguers. I'm not quite sure I can articulate why that bugs me. It wouldn't surprise me if Foer's marketing people chose the music to evoke the whole Royal Tenenbaums atmosphere. But either way, likening the two families (via musical choice) probably does a disservice to both the movie and the Foer family.
Roslyn rightly points out that editing & critiques are processes writers should go *through*, but how do they do that if they can't get offered a contract for, you know, writing an actual *book* when, as Ashley Spurgeon points out, publishers are handing contracts to semi-literate bloggers who've never written an entire Post-It note in their entire life, let alone an actual book?
I thought this was an utterly crap, amateurish-looking video that didn't really tell me much of what the book was about (except that it sounded an like an awful lot of *other* imminent fatherhood books) but it was a nice attempt at doing something different. And love it or hate it, it got people talking, which is more than happens to a lot of new authors who are already written off as "risky" by their publishers and given little to no money or guidance for promoting their own work. And shouldn't that be the responsibility of the publisher's marketing department, anyway?
What you think about news - GOPers Hold 'Prayercast' to Ask God to Stop Health Reform ?
Wanna hear your opinion
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