If It’s April, It Must Be Giveaway
Posted by Lizzie on 03/30/08
Well, I’ve finally emerged from the flu-ish, globally warmed welter of mid-to-late winter– ready, as always, to divest myself of worldly goods as quickly as possible. First up is a lovely giveaway from journalist and author David Samuels, who does not yet have a functioning website! I find that admirable. (In the meantime, you may look him up at Wikipedia.)
Samuels, whose recent piece “Shooting Britney” just appeared on 
the cover of the Atlantic–which has its good points–is releasing two books from the New Press: Only Love Can Break Your Heart (read the title essay here), and The Runner, which began as a New Yorker profile about “con artist, thief & phony Princeton student James Hogue.” (Related: Put your archives online already, Eustace! What is this, 1902?)
Only Love Can Break Your Heart, a “disillusioned love song to the often amusing and sometimes fatal American habit of self-delusion,” was called by the Observer a “thrilling series of counternarratives to our prevailing national fantasies about luck” while Keith Gessen, reviewing The Runner for the NYTBR, declares Samuels “an elite narrative journalist, a master at teasing out the social and moral implications of the smallest small talk, of the way people turn their heads or slide into non sequitur as they try to explain themselves”–also informing us an impressive 10 to 12 times that he went to Harvard.
THE CHALLENGE: To win these two books, I am asking the following: Reader, find the best word or phrase to describe when a reviewer commences with a personal anecdote, generally of dubious relevance, that just-so-happenstancedly manages to contain certain tangential and ill-concealed references to the reviewer’s own achievements/successes. (See: “At the end of our freshman year at Harvard, my roommates and I…“) Listen, I’ll even start you off with a really bad one: The Mede.* Also: I am sure I have done this.
I’m off to improve my immune system by eating some Activia while preparing for Sense!!! & Sensibility!!!. Contest ends Friday! Good luck!
* As someone who was flu’d under for two months, I am hardly of the position to demand anything of anybody. If you want to simply email me or enter in the comments with no entry at all, that’s fine, but I reserve the right to override for cleverer responses. Unless you went to, like, OXFORD, in which case you win automatically.
Filed under: in it to win it, Lit-ish | Tags: david samuels, wordfinders |
Well, when I was interning at the Paris Review, and it’d be late at night and we’d be over at George’s, not for a party or anything, just a very small casual get-together, a nightcap really, you know, with Salman, Jhumpa, Norman we always called that …
JK… playing shamelessly off yours, how about The Mook? As in, the hook that turns you into a …
Comment by CAAF — 3/30/2008 @ 6:21 pm
Ooh, ooh! One more (bad) one: Autograf … like “he signed his autograf all over that review.”
It feels like some sort of masturbation joke should get worked in there somewhere, too.
Comment by CAAF — 3/31/2008 @ 7:23 pm
Sounds like something you might call an “I”-gression.
Or possibly The Me-me meme.
e
Comment by e — 3/31/2008 @ 11:21 pm
How about a reflexive tautologism? (But really, “I-gression” is pretty cool!)
Comment by Leslie Birdwell — 4/1/2008 @ 1:44 pm
Hard to beat I-gression…but how about Indulge-o-philes? Commonly identified by their catch phrase, “If you’ll indulge me for a moment”….
I also refer to those people as Third Questioners in Print (based on the phenomenon apparent in any public forum where the first question/comment is short and sweet, the second a little unhinged but still to the point, and the third a flailing self-propelled mess of personal information, misinformed opinions, overeducation and grandiosity)
Comment by Mkp-hearts-nyc — 4/1/2008 @ 4:10 pm
I was thinking of this: “the extrameous intro.” Extra-meous. That Harvard beginning is very meous.
Comment by Susan T. — 4/1/2008 @ 4:24 pm
How about a Line I-tem Me-too?
I can enter my own contest if it’s bad.
Comment by altehaggen — 4/1/2008 @ 4:43 pm
How about a verb: to peacock. Peacocking…
Comment by Alan Michael Parker — 4/1/2008 @ 8:14 pm
Ha-ha. Loving these. How about putzspam.
Comment by Laura — 4/1/2008 @ 9:08 pm
The “pathetic fallacy.”
Yes, I know, it’s already a lit-crit term for a very diffferent phenomenon, but I so much prefer its relevance here.
Comment by book/daddy — 4/1/2008 @ 10:25 pm
How about an “anecgloat”?
Comment by Charles Matthews — 4/2/2008 @ 1:55 am
May I suggest “egolet”?
Comment by ken abramson — 4/2/2008 @ 11:36 am
Me-metic?
Comment by Sarah — 4/2/2008 @ 11:50 am
Got it–Ivy Lede!
Comment by altehaggen — 4/2/2008 @ 1:41 pm
hmmm.
mon-sequitur?
self-induced-bust-a-nutgraf?
the onanist’s koan? the onan-koan?
needy-lede?
the arrograph?
the egopener?
self-congratulastory?
blow hard lede?
Comment by robbie — 4/2/2008 @ 1:44 pm
How about a “Me-ander”?
Comment by Gray Nixon — 4/3/2008 @ 7:42 am
I suffer from so many ailments but the two that are the most tiresome are GERD, Gastroesophageal reflux disease,and BARD, Boastfulannotatus reflux disease
Comment by christine — 4/4/2008 @ 10:31 am
Okay– “anecgloat” gets my vote, but I just wanted to say as I sat here surfing on my new, ultra-thin Mac (I know, I keep telling him to stop buying stuff for me, but you know–it fits perfectly in my Chanel hobo so I’ll just shut up) that your contest totally reminds me of this time I was at my old flatmate’s party on Lake Cuomo when this guy who was doing a one year exchange at Princeton the same year I was interning with Toni walked in and we were wearing the same Alexander McQueen skirt– I mean, there’s got to be a word for that, like jinx, you know?
Oh, shit– did I just Mickey-D you?
(Mickey-D = supersize ME to diminish you)
Comment by Elizabeth — 4/6/2008 @ 10:46 am