For Joel, a sentimental writer is bidden
Posted by Josh Friedlander | 10 Comments
Hey, I have a love/hate thing with Billy Joel, because I grew up on Long Island, love his music and my mom teaches piano in a state-of-the-art “piano lab” that he finances, but I also remember how I put “Billy Joel” as one of my favorite musicians in a college questionnaire that was used to pair me with an uber-WASP roommate with whom I had something of a cold relationship.
The New York Times was probably making up for its horrendous, but very funny, profile of Billy Joel written by Chuck Klosterman in 2002 (“The Stranger“) by assigning Dan Barry to write something of an update today. Barry’s piece is as fawning and accepting as Klosterman’s was incredulous and sardonic.
Barry’s article, “Just the Way He Is,” (retch), doesn’t have any new information about Joel, and it’s very difficult for me to say why I think it’s leagues less accomplished as a piece of profile writing than Klosterman’s. But take these passages side-by-side:
“The Stranger”
Our conversation continues in this vein for most of the afternoon, and after a while I find myself in the peculiar position of trying to make Billy Joel feel better. I point out that many things in his life have gone amazingly well; I remind him that he’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. ”That’s a cold comfort at the end of the day,” he tells me. ”You can’t go home with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You don’t sleep with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You don’t get hugged by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and you don’t have children with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I want what everybody else wants: to love and to be loved, and to have a family. Being in love has always been the most important thing in my life.”
Just the Way He Is
He may be one of the most successful performers in the world, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an extraordinarily gifted musician who can move from rock to ballad to soulful doo-wop, who can capture with a few spare words the dreams and disappointments of clerks and secretaries rocking their lives away on the Long Island Rail Road.
But he acts as though he still worries what the guys standing outside some 7-Eleven in Hicksville might say, because the worst that they can say is:
He forgot where he came from. He’s full of it. A fake.
Barry’s piece isn’t a full-on profile the way Klosterman’s is, but more of a thin slice of Joel, but it manages to neglect just about all the interesting points Klosterman raises about Joel’s obsession with subject matter relating to love and loss and why people connect so strongly to him, instead taking that attraction for granted. It’s like an article about box office sales that doesn’t discuss the movie (in this case, the music) that people are going to see and why.
It got me interested in who this Barry fellow is. Apparently, he’s quite accomplished (in that he’s won loads of awards, as our own Ignatius (Confederacy of Dunces) commenter noted below) and his current specialty is the short-form profile. WHILE NOT A CASTIGATION OF THE MAN PERSONALLY OR OF HIS ENTIRE CAREER (though idiots tend to think a single critique equates to a wholesale putdown), a view of Barry’s recent headlines is pretty amusing:
Through Decades of Change, a Core Crew Remains
Every weekday, workers from the Southbury Training School, a residence for people with mental retardation, head off to work at a rest stop welcoming people to Connecticut.
June 30, 2008A Hand-to-Hand Struggle With a Raging River
In an age of technology, communities along the Mississippi still rely on the basics: shovel sand in bag, pray it works.
June 19, 2008
Here are some more, but just the headlines, most of which are hysterical:
From Would-Be Reformer, to Former Mason, to Plaintiff
Veteran Tries to Get Back to Who He Was
Offenders Return to Society, but Under Her Watchful Eye
Does the ‘Real’ Ireland Still Exist?
Now Free to Speak His Mind, an Ex-Mayor Is Doing So
A Name and Face No One Knew, but Never Forgot
Silence Replaces Bids and Moos at Stockyards in Suburbs
The View From My Pew
A Natural Treasure That May End Up Without a Country
Atop a Hallowed Mountain, Small Steps Toward Healing
“A view from my pew”!
As you can see, I’ve done my best to get a headline on this piece just as frightening as the ones attached to Barry’s. (And to be totally fair, the headlines are probably just a product of the NYTimes style.)
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July 13th, 2008 @
Great job, Josh! You manage to showcase your lack of spelling skills (wretch?) and your ineptitude at research (no mention of Barry’s Pulitzers or Polk award?). Barry’s much lauded style can’t hold a candle to your oh-so-original-sneering-snarky-I-can’t-write-so-I-critcicize observations. You’ll go far in the world of journalism as long as there are Pennysavers to proofread.
July 14th, 2008 @
Ignatius: Thanks for the correction. It’s OK if you want to attack me (can’t write), but I’d prefer you attack my argument. I’m not sure I disagree with you. I think my observations about Barry’s piece are about as original as his observations about Joel. However, I’ll take issue with the notion that an award-winning writer can do no wrong. If he’s so wonderful, I’m sure my little critique on this little blog will do him extremely little harm. I’m not certain why you seem to take this so personally.
July 15th, 2008 @
Alright , Josh, let me explain. Ankle-biters annoy me. Particularly ankle-biters who are unfamiliar with Pope’s admonition from “An Essay on Criticism”. I’ll give you a moment to Google that… I know, it’s long, I’ll make it easy on you. Skip to::
“Nay, fly to Altars; there they’ll talk you dead;
For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread ”
I see that you have edited the original post and added disclaimers which demonstrates that, perhaps, you are educable. Lose the tone, though. The Gawker-ish style is hackneyed and indicative of a lack of substance.
Tell me, Josh, how many good writers are really out there? Would you know the difference? Read this and use it as a yardstick in the future:
The Corpse on Union Street
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/08/national/nationalspecial/08orleans.html
July 15th, 2008 @
Ignatius: I didn’t mean the piece to be any more snarky than it is, and I’m certainly not copying the gawker style of being nasty just for its own sake. If I’m going to make fun of a NYTimes writer, I can see the need for a bit more humility in making the case. However, a small point on your style: I’m willing to take substantive advice even at risk to my ego, such as it is, but it’s generally hard to take that advice from someone taking pains to talk down to me.
While I’m reading the pieces you suggest (and thank you for that), I would ask that you flip through Dale Carnegie’s tome (you know the one) and remember this advice: “Criticism is futile because it puts the person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself.” When one is demonstrably correct in argument, the need to take the high road is all the greater.
July 17th, 2008 @
Let me add something, in light of Joel’s performance at Shea. I listen to a lot of music. Most of it allows me to embrace a certain mood, feel a certain way ( a way I’d like to be…cool, excited…whatever). But Billy Joel always makes me feel like myself. He brings me back to myself. I used to bike to cold spring harbor, get it? I never greased back my hair, but I know what he’s talking about and so does everyone else. Anyone who ignores that — ignores what it is that makes him as popular as he is — misses the point entirely, and it’s precisely because he’s never been comfortable in his own skin that he can reach everyone else who feels similarly. That’s not a charming affect of his character or some conundrum. That’s the whole point. I suppose that’s why the Barry profile got under my skin. It’s not fun being Billy Joel, but it’s goddamned human. He’s a genius. He’ll get his critical respect when he can’t enjoy it. And he knows it. And that’s part of being Billy Joel, too.
July 17th, 2008 @
Josh, I do not take issue with anything that you have written concerning Barry’s article vis a vis that of Klosterman. That is not to say that I agree with you, but had you stopped there, I would never have commented at all. It is this kind of patronizing nonsense that irked me-”It got me interested in who this Barry fellow is.”- followed, in the original, with a smug mocking of his columns.
You live in New York. You have journalistic aspirations. You are, by all appearances, literate, yet you are unfamiliar with a writer who was a NYT investigative reporter, the NYT City Hall bureau chief during the Giuliani administration, the NYT “About New York” columnist, the NYT “This Land” columnist and the author of “Pull Me Up” and “City Lights”.
That, in itself, is somewhat forgivable, but when you offer up a profile, steeped in ridicule, AFTER having done some research into his background, I can only conclude that you are either a damned fool or intellectually dishonest.
It is a shame that you found it sufficient to make a judgment based solely on the column headlines. You missed an opportunity to experience a master at his craft by neglecting to read the actual columns.
July 18th, 2008 @
Ignatius, Why do you hide behind a nom de plume? Even your hero, the great Dan Barry, has the cojones to put his name next to his assertions.
July 18th, 2008 @
Yes, Eric. Yes, it is a matter of cojones. You see, I lack them and I live with an irrational fear that someone like you will track me down and slap me. Hard.
If you have something to add, on topic, I will be more than glad to address it.
July 18th, 2008 @
Ingatius: Goodness, man, I’ve already fessed up to feeling foolish, but in some small defense of myself, I didn’t write a profile or a criticism of Barry, though I might have. I’m making fun of his headlines, really. As I added after you first wrote in, that’s more a factor of the NYTimes headline writers/editors.
I don’t think I’m saying Barry is a bad writer. I reread the post and I don’t see that anywhere. It’s also very unfair to say that, because I presumably have ambitions, I’m supposed to know every NYTimes reporter, even the more accomplished ones. Or that I need to research someone’s career before I make fun of the headlines placed above his articles. The headlines are self-explanatory. One either finds them funny or not. Barry’s shared Pulitzer doesn’t bear on the issue.
I don’t have a problem with Barry, but I am beginning to have a problem with you. You seem to have completely ignored my previous post. Despite my note that criticism needs to be tempered, you seem far more interested in being nasty than in being heard and listened to.
As for my being ambitious, I think you’re quite wrong about that. My colleagues and I write about the most secretive financial institutions and routinely beat all other media outlets in our reporting. It’s doubtful you’ve ever read my magazine or you wouldn’t be so quick to assume I’m a junior wannabe. I AM reading through Barry’s work, as you’ve suggested, and I appreciate your basic message: that I’m wrong to kick a writer just because his headlines are silly. I don’t think that’s what I was doing, but good point.
However, I’m not going to refrain from pointing out absurd or silly little issues at the NYTimes, a great paper overall, just because you seem to feel I should contextualize to an absurd degree any current production against some previous glory (like ignoring funny headlines because the writer of those stories shared a Pulitzer for work done 14 years ago*).
Your argument also seems to be that I’m a lesser writer so I should just shut my mouth. This is the same argument people always make against critics: that the critic has never done what he’s criticizing (film critics, typically) or that the critic is not as good as the person being critiqued. Well, fabulous. But the criticism is either valid or it’s not. Ad hominem attacks remain irrelevant. In fact, if I can point out the silliness of those headlines, surely a writer of Barry’s caliber can see them, too. Either he chafes at them or he likes them. Either way, I don’t need to be HL Mencken to make a joke about them.
In summary: I respectfully disagree that I have attacked Barry at all. I appreciate your commentary on this site, and I hope you stick around to keep me honest. But do it in a nicer way. I’m not attacking you personally, nor would I even if I knew your real name. Please return the favor.
* And, yes, I know he keeps getting awards thrown at him, but good is good, whether a committee says it or not. Clearly, he’s brilliant at reporting stories.
July 18th, 2008 @
Josh, consider the dogs called off. My original intent was to smack you around a bit just to let you experience the sting of blogosphere jabs so you would know what it feels like. You have surprised me by responding like a gentleman and editing your original post rather than digging your heels in and attacking me in turn. You have been gracious and honest in all your replies and, for that, you have my respect. After having read some of your other posts, I also retract my disparaging statement about your writing and I wish you and your colleagues well in your endeavors.