You Hurt My Feelings-Nicole Holofcener
The true revelatory core of how people actually feel about your work can have a multitude of words attached to it that would be apropos. Heartbreaking, heartwarming, sobering, saddening, uplifting, inspiring, flattering, devastating—among many others—could all be applicable.
One of life's great mysteries (that I doubt I will ever uncover) is the fallout of genuine emotions that follows anyone who finishes reading my book. Do they view me as a pervert for what I choose to include? Feel sorry for me for putting such effort into what was ultimately rubbish? Don't know how to break it to me that I should never have quit my day job? View me as a horrible person? Inspire them? Etc. Etc. Etc.
As I am penning this review I am a shade over 4 hours away from giving a dissertation on my first novel Broad Street Tully. The support within my immediate community has been nothing short of amazing. On social media alone the contributory shares have been terrific, and it will be interesting to see who all takes the time out of their day to actually show up and listen to what I have to say.
At the small book release party I had in April of 2023 at Late Nite Records, a good friends record store, I would say there were about 15 to twenty people—mostly friends and close family—that dropped by over various portions of the evening. I will return to this review to update with a final tally later on (estimated), but with the inclusion of strangers to this evenings event I am setting the bar at roughly around the same number of congregates—17.5. Which is to say my parents, some relatives, a few close friends, and maybe 2-3 strangers.
By comparison, this really isn't too bad, and raising the bar any higher would serve as a prerequisite to disappointment. The reason being for keeping the attendance bar so low to the ground is because the previous two "Meet The Author" events I attended—to get an idea of how others approached their presentation—was very sobering as to the reality that authors face in today's day and age of digital overconsumption. The first woman, who was a former IRS employee that blew the whistle against her former employer's shady acts, from the outset had only myself, one solitary friend of hers, and the event coordinator in attendance. The following week, when a local lawyer gave his presentation on biking laws, I would say that there were roughly around 10 people total.
This is by no means intended to be a knock on either author and their work, as I rather enjoyed both presentations very much and walked away a smarter person for having gone. But more to emphasize the fact that being an author takes some serious thickness of the pigmented flesh if one is hoping to breach the dregs of irrelevance and establish a name which demands attention.
Not that these harsh nuggets of reality are unique only to writers, but all walks of life that depend upon their self-efficacy to produce bread on the table via what they love the most in their life. As wrestlers performing in empty VFW halls for nothing more than a free hot dog and a case of beers and comedians battling stage fright to remember when the punchline needs to be delivered in a bar full of drunks not even listening, or bands taking the stage at 5:30 in the afternoon on a 9:00 bill performing to only security guards and the other bands and their girlfriends can attest to, the chops along the way to the top are not for those whose feathers can easily be ruffled.
Pain is indeed part of the process.
Before the release, I planned on experiencing quite a bit of honey-tone laden voices of support, and I was not disappointed in the least bit. The support that I have received, I must emphasize again, has been spectacular, so this is not to say that I take what people have said to me in support of this endeavor with a grain of salt.
But one can't help but wonder, under the surface, what is true and genuine in the acclaim and what is mere placating?
A shade over a year has gone by since the release and as of this moment it has 6 five star reviews on Amazon. Five, by people I know personally, and one from a person I had never met before.
The only review that the book has gotten which I think is the closest to genuine as possible and would provide me with an unbiased gauge to my work, was by a gentleman who runs a podcast with another mutual friend called "Talking About Balls". Now, I had never met this person before so I anticipated an opinion that was devoid of a soft candy shell wrapping. And before the podcast was released on YouTube, I had a sneak preview through Facebook where he took a picture of one particular passage that was worded poorly and remarked "'Of' is not a substitute for 'have' in the English language. The fact that this was published, physically pains me. It's one thing for idiots on social media to type it out, a book is another story."
Ouch!
Now, one of the biggest hurdles of apprehensiveness that took a tremendous amount of strength to leap over was the belief in myself despite operating at a deficit in the area of grammar. This still rings true to this day. My knowledge of grammatical structure is absolutely piss poor. And my dicking around in High School instead of paying attention still lingers on with penalty strokes in several areas of life. So needless to say, that stung quite a bit to read and began to form what I believed to be a harbinger of further and even deeper scathing critiques of my work.
But later on, when the podcast aired, the same gentleman who rates the enjoyment of his books on a 1-5 scale of beers. graciously decided to give me 4 out of 5 cold ones.
Not bad.
The former critique remained firmly entrenched, but the story itself he seemed to enjoy very much. And after the sting began to go away I grew more confident in my writing. The beautiful thing about typos and grammatical snafu's is that they can always be ironed out. So long as my stories are crisp enough with adequate flow to get from A to Z and satisfy myself, then I am content. This attitude may not appease those who demand Chaucer and Hemingway at every turn of the page, nor the future uppity publishers that one day may beckon, but tough shit. I'd rather be David Higgs anyways.
Aside from the critiques though, there was always this worry that every purchase or positive word is provided to me under the delusion similar to Florence Foster Jenkins, where everybody—aside from myself—knows that I suck at my craft, but go to great lengths to keep me ignorant of such a nasty secret.
As Britney Spears wrote about Kevin Federline: "He really thought he was a rapper now. Bless his heart…"
Intuitively, I doubt this to be true. But who knows? It could be.
***
These personal attestations were included to correlate "You Hurt My Feelings". A story in which the main character Beth, played by Julia Louise Dreyfuss, eavesdrops and overhears her husband at a department store voice his genuine feelings of negativity associated with her latest rough draft.
In turn, she is devastated, grows cold to him without letting him know why and then explodes at him over dinner as he buries himself further in deceit with hollow chimes of support.
The emotional tug of war goes back and forth for a bit between Beth and Don before things can resume to more amicable times of old.
Before this happens though we get subtle glances of everyone working in careers that are either unfulfilling or become too difficult to be worthy of persevering further. Ben, as a psychiatrist, has clients that think so little of his ability to create positive change in their life that they demand refunds or insult him under their breath. Carolyn, Beth's sister, is a home decorator for bored housewives in New York City that finds no satisfaction in throwing shots in the dark and landing on obscure pieces of artwork that seem to tickle their fancy, which proves that she has no upper-level gumption at knowing what people want. Mark, Carolyn's husband, is a fragile actor who loses work and wallows in self-eviseration when he gets fired from an acting gig. And Eliot, Beth and Ben's son, works in a weed store and battles insecurity while attempting to finish his first novel.
Stories like this are unique in that they only can really appeal to those that know the struggles that can accompany taking a leap of faith in yourself. And in this particular case I find it comforting to see that some of the irrational suspicions I hold within are not relegated to only myself, but are rather universal choppy waters that everyone investing in themselves must navigate through.
So far as the story itself and the characters, I found that there was a lot of lacking and misplacement. Especially in the dialogue. Where, in a weird sense, I found the amount of cursing to be way out of place, and even unnecessary. This had all the gloss of a clean romantic comedy, or light hearted comedy, and came out at the end like a poor imitation of Trainwreck. Eliot's outbursts were so subdued and artificial that when he drops the c word in regards to the girlfriend who dumped him it was like a joke that received dueling crickets rather than laughs. And I didn't get any pleasure out of hearing Julia Louise Dreyfuss, nor her mother, or her sister talk like truck drivers.
It's desperate reach to be a movie that it wasn't, rather than accept the movie it should have been reminded me a lot of "The Big Short", which, to me, was only a poor replicate of "The Wolf Of Wall Street."
Had the cursing been erased and a little more focus placed on acting instead of a bunch of Manhattanites "gaslighting" each other and melting down despite their opulent existence, it might have had a chance.
But it wasn't that at all.
So here's some brutal honesty for you:
Stars: *
Verdict: Pass
Cousins: Sideways, Florence Foster Jenkins, Birdman, Author! Author!, American Splendor