so, I went to college with brett martin and was friends with him, although we are not in touch these days. (everytime I write a review of a book that says (Goodreads Author) next to the title I worry that that means the author just trolls goodreads looking for reviews of their book. because I'm not always nice. but brett, if you're reading this, hi!



but anyway, let's pretend brett's not reading this so it can be unrestrained, just like I pretend nobody reads my journal. well, hopefully no one do

so, I went to college with brett martin and was friends with him, although we are not in touch these days. (everytime I write a review of a book that says (Goodreads Author) next to the title I worry that that means the author just trolls goodreads looking for reviews of their book. because I'm not always nice. but brett, if you're reading this, hi!



but anyway, let's pretend brett's not reading this so it can be unrestrained, just like I pretend nobody reads my journal. well, hopefully no one does.



ok, first of all, this book was totally not about what I thought it was going to be about. the title is not misleading, but I mislead myself. I thought it was going to be about a new kind of character, the difficult man. about walter white and tony soprano and how they were different from male protagonists we've seen before and what that says about men in society. I "majored" in sociology and popular culture, so that's what I wanted it to be about.



what it was actually about was the "third golden age" of television, this moment of cable and dvds and streaming and the rise of big long dramas making social commentary through the lens of a story about a high school chemistry teacher turned meth dealer, or baltimore, or a contemporary jersey mob boss. it was about the showrunners/writers for the sopranos and the wire and mad men and breaking bad, and how they got their shows made. which is a much less interesting subject for me, but ok, I know the author.



and I'll tell you what, it's really well written. I've been in this phase of reading a book in a day or taking three weeks, and nonfiction is more in the three week camp, but I read this in a week, and I enjoyed it. brett is a great writer. my only complaint is that he's not transparent about his authorship. maybe part of this is because I just read underground, where murakami goes on at length about why he wrote the book and his process, and sometimes you see the questions he asked in an interview. brett obviously did a ton of research and interviews, but it's all invisible. he did that thing of "so and so shows up to an interview and takes the reporter on a tour of his vegetable garden" where you have to think about it and realize oh, the reporter is the author. which is a traditional, normal way to write, and it makes it read more like a history by an omniscient narrator. sometimes, though, there will be a detail and I want to know, how does he know that? how did he come to know that simon's memos are legendary? did simon tell him, did everyone who knew simon tell him, did he read a bunch of them?



so, a pleasure to read. it made the content seem more interesting than it seems like it should have been to me. my other beef with it was that every once in a while brett sort of throws feminism a bone. yes, they are mostly difficult men because men still hold most positions of power, including in the entertainment industry. it's sort of this aside of, "of course that's unfair, but anyway, these dudes did this cool shit and I want to talk about it without getting too much into the gender dynamics of it all, because that's not what I'm talking about". which, I get it. you want to write the book, you have to work with the realities that are there. but part of me still bristles against the glorification of a bunch of dudes romping around on their unfair playing field. like I said, this isn't what I thought the book was about and I guess I would have read it anyway, because I came across it in the thrift store and I know the author, but if I hadn't known the author and if I had known it was about what it was about, it wouldn't have been my scene at all.



also, this was published and in the thrift shop before the #metoo movement became big and that is a pretty big shadow while you're reading it. there's a part where one of the more assholeish show runners gets busted for domestic abuse (choking his girlfriend in public, etc.) and loses his job and I was relieved to see that at least in there because that's another aspect of not the story that's being told, but knowing what we know about the entertainment industry I'm sure at least some of these dudes were sexually harrassing or assaulting. which at this point adds to my feeling of here are a bunch of men, who operate in a world of male privilege, so who knows if things were more equal if they would even be where they are telling the stories they are telling, and it's likely that some of them were abusing women (that one we know for sure) in the meantime, but we're not going to talk about any of that, and it feels like a glorification.



I mean, that's not an attack on the book. you have to narrow the scope of what you're writing, you can't write about the female showrunners who aren't there. it's more of a comment about me, reading my friend's book all disloyally late after it came out and not even paying full price for it and now it happens to fall against a different historical backdrop.



again, very well written.



so there was this one part, about matt weiner, who created mad men, and his worldview. "I'm constantly putting on my armor," he said. "It's all about what you think you're entitled to, what your ambition is, what's in your way. I'm not somebody who tries to destroy people, but I am very conscious of these things. It IS combat. Do YOU ever want to give up feeling sexually viable? I don't. Do you ever want to give up feeling powerful? Do you want to look at a twenty-year-old kid and say, 'He can beat the shit out of me?' It's all combat." which I just find sad. first of all, it's insanely privileged to start with, it's this very aggressive competitive way of looking at the world, which I guess got mad men created but mad men is also about a world even more unfair than our world is now, in the end. I don't think it's a good way to live, frankly. but even past that, it's just stupid. it's a refusal to come to terms with the way things are. because hello, dude, you live long enough, you won't be "sexually viable". you might be able to delude yourself that you are, but actually, that's being "financially viable". because what dude is on about is feeling like he can score an attractive woman as an older dude. if you want to be having sex throughout your life, your best bet for that is through relationship, not putting on your armor and competing. I mean, yeah, you can be a rich guy and find someone hot to have sex with you, but s/he is actually competing with you. what can I get for what I'm giving you? it's all so empty. and the 20 year old IS going to be able to kick your 75 year old ass, sorry. that's going to happen. your whole worldview is delusional and empty and sad. you're basically operating at the level of a lion who rules the pride until he gets taken down by a younger lion. I mean, why even be human? you're a lion who made a show about other lions.



anyway, nice job brett. I'm going to give this to my boyfriend to read because he's much more into what the book was actually about than I was and he'll probably fret less about the glorification of the privileged and I bet he won't even think "aren't they all?" every time he looks at the title.