In the Sunday NY Times Book Review, the conservative satirist PJ O'Rourke reviews Taylor Clark's Starbucked, an investigative and sociological look at the rise of America's most prominent coffee chain.
For Clark (a fellow Dartmouth grad) and contributor to an Oregon alternative weekly, a review at the NY Times is the much hoped for catalyst to gain attention and acclaim for his first book. Unfortunately, O'Rourke has other ideas. In the hands of the skilled satirist, the review itself emerges as much better than the book and O'Rourke lets you know it.
Back in June, I wrote about the editorial process in choosing reviews at the NY Times. In this case, Clark ends up on the losing side of both random and systematic bias.
The full review is a must read and will be full of at least a half dozen "laugh out louds," but for a taste, consider below how O'Rourke ends the essay:
I never came to like "Starbucked." But I grew very fond of its writer. Most books about social and business phenomena give the reader something to think about. This book gave the author something to think about. Reading "Starbucked" produced an odd reversal of roles and left me, at least, feeling less like a student of the subject than a teacher. Not that I mean to instruct Clark. But I experienced the pleasure a teacher must feel when he watches a kid with promise outgrowing the vagaries and muddles of immaturity (and the jitters of too many coffee-fueled all-nighters) and coming into his own as a young man of learning, reason and sense.
I lift a cup -- of something stronger than Frappuccino -- to you, Taylor Clark. Now go tackle Microsoft.
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I love P.J. O'Rourke. As a writer. In a manly way. I don't always agree with his politics, but damn, he is good with words, and usually good for a laugh or two.
"The full review is a must read..."
which would be easier with a link
Fixed.
Eh. Usually, PJ O'Rourke has me blowing milk out of my nose. This was okay. O'Rourke liked the writer in spite of himself, which tells me that Clark did at least a decent job.
As I suspected before following the link, O'Rourke's review was largely about himself. Funny, of course, but it could have been about any book. I have to admit that the last half of the review redeemed it somewhat. At least we got a smattering of what the book was about. It appears that O'Rourke was prepared to dislike the book because of what he expected the politics to be. Because the author's views were somewhat like his own, O'Rourke decided it was OK, despite the fact that someone might actually read that book instead of something O'Rourke had written.
I'm gonna call BS on the factoid he cites from the book that "in 1989 there were 585 coffee houses in America." Really? That would be an average of roughly 11 coffee houses per state. Really? I can think of 11 coffee houses around Harvard Square and Central Square in Cambridge alone back then. Maybe in 1949, but 1989? That's kind of absurd.
R.O. wrote: "I can think of 11 coffee houses around Harvard Square and Central Square in Cambridge alone back then."
Which just shows that the Cambridge area was an outlier.
I don't recall any in Philadelphia in 1989.
C'mon. Every college town in America has at least one coffee shop going back to the sixties. That's a few thousand right there. 1989 just wasn't that long ago. Bush was president. Bush is still president.
Randy,
I admit the estimate seems low, but I do have to say that in college at Dartmouth, a coffee shop didn't open in Hanover until 1995, and I can remember saying to my guys: "A coffee shop? Who sits in a coffee shop eating a croissant?"