HIGH BUTTON MAN AMONG MEN
Neil Strauss, in this week's episode of 'The Dilettante'
Here's another for your bookshelf devoted to schlock for the gilded age demographic, repackaged as something everyone might need in time for the fall: Neal Strauss's 'Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life.'"
As part of a piece of hagiography in today's Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times, readers are told "Strauss [a former ghost-writer for books on Motley Crue and Jenna Jameson] has learned to do over the past three years [what to do] should society collapse."
With reporter Susan Carpenter present, he buys a shotgun -- a 900 dollar Remington Wingmaster. The reader is told all the manly things Strauss has learned. It reads as clueless found humor, the book supposedly survivalist lit from an ex New York Times rock-critic instead of the usual white American neo-Nazi. You know, stuff for people who were never in the Boy Scouts of America, in a sports training camp, at pigeon shoots or taken to stay at a military base for a few weekends a year.
"[He] lived in a shelter made of leaves and made fire using nothing but sticks and his shoelaces," writes Carpenter. "But it is also empowering. Strauss has only done what a lot of people might consider if they had the time and money." Seriously?
"[Strauss] has even secured citizenship in another country. It took more than a year and half a million dollars, but now he's a citizen of ... St. Kitts. (Really, the publisher paid for that? Or is it just a tall tale for effect? And who would actually pay half a million, anyway, if it was their money?)
"Strauss has also taken edible plant walks and learned how to fish and sail a boat."
By this point the reader is ready to hear that Strauss was also taught how to dig a slit trench and empty a bag of lime into it after doing his business.
"[Strauss's] goats paw the refrigerator, roaming and defecating freely inside the house and around the slate patio that rings his swimming pool," it reads.
Related:
DD has bagged on previous Carpenter articles, too. See here and here.
Neil Strauss, in this week's episode of 'The Dilettante'
Here's another for your bookshelf devoted to schlock for the gilded age demographic, repackaged as something everyone might need in time for the fall: Neal Strauss's 'Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life.'"
As part of a piece of hagiography in today's Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times, readers are told "Strauss [a former ghost-writer for books on Motley Crue and Jenna Jameson] has learned to do over the past three years [what to do] should society collapse."
With reporter Susan Carpenter present, he buys a shotgun -- a 900 dollar Remington Wingmaster. The reader is told all the manly things Strauss has learned. It reads as clueless found humor, the book supposedly survivalist lit from an ex New York Times rock-critic instead of the usual white American neo-Nazi. You know, stuff for people who were never in the Boy Scouts of America, in a sports training camp, at pigeon shoots or taken to stay at a military base for a few weekends a year.
"[He] lived in a shelter made of leaves and made fire using nothing but sticks and his shoelaces," writes Carpenter. "But it is also empowering. Strauss has only done what a lot of people might consider if they had the time and money." Seriously?
"[Strauss] has even secured citizenship in another country. It took more than a year and half a million dollars, but now he's a citizen of ... St. Kitts. (Really, the publisher paid for that? Or is it just a tall tale for effect? And who would actually pay half a million, anyway, if it was their money?)
"Strauss has also taken edible plant walks and learned how to fish and sail a boat."
By this point the reader is ready to hear that Strauss was also taught how to dig a slit trench and empty a bag of lime into it after doing his business.
"[Strauss's] goats paw the refrigerator, roaming and defecating freely inside the house and around the slate patio that rings his swimming pool," it reads.
Related:
DD has bagged on previous Carpenter articles, too. See here and here.
posted by George Smith at 11:58 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home