You know the feeling you get when you see someone leave the bathroom with toilet paper stuck to the bottom of his shoe? That
s how Boston Globe columnist Kate Bolick felt after reading New Yorker film critic David Denby's memoir, American Sucker:

he hurls his individual experience at the zeitgeist, as if making his shame communal will make it grander, though really it only obscures his inability to come up with any meaningful personal observations. His shame over his wife leaving him is what fuels his book, yet his references to his failed marriage and limping private life are cursory. Witnessing his thrashing about as an amateur investor isn't nearly as painful as watching him try to get ahold of his real subject. His failure to do so is a minor spectacle.

Surprisingly, Bolick doesn
t feel embarrassed for name-dropping New York mag columnist Michael Wolff in Autumn of the Moguls:

Wolff's exuberant interest in the world of media, his heightened awareness of where he falls in its cut-throat hierarchy, his easy admission of his own envy and social jockeying, are what make his story appealing. ''Why do we need the approval or the affirmation or the acknowledgment of the rich?" he asks himself at a party. ''Almost everyone here . . . needed that approval and affirmation. And if I was aware of everyone's need more than they were aware of it . . . did that reflect on the further tenuousness of my relationship here?" Undeniably. The difference is, he isn't derailed by the thought. He's in control of his subject. Saving this reader, at least, from that unpleasantly proprietary sensation that comes with feeling embarrassment for a stranger.

Tune in next week, when we find Ms. Bolick in a public restroom with toilet paper caught on her heels, Bo-licking Wolff, with a sulky Denby watching from the wings.

Getting poor quick; among media kings [Boston Globe]

American Sucker

Autumn of the Moguls