Monthly Archives: July 2006

Al Gore in Cambridge!

If you’re in the Boston/Cambridge area on July 18th, you should swing by the Harvard Book Store around noon. Al Gore will here signing copies of his book An Inconvenient Truth for an hour or so. He’s not speaking, just signing, but still, it’s an opportunity to at least say hello to the man. Check here for more information.

The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History by Jonathan Franzen

I just finished Franzen’s memoir, due out in September, and I must say that I was disappointed. This is not a traditional memoir, rather it’s collected essays, several of which have been in the New Yorker previously. Remember the article he wrote on Charles Schulz several years ago when Fantagraphics began reprinting all of the Peanuts? That’s in there as is the article on birding. Already I’ve read two of the six chapters in a slim, 197 page book.

Don’t get me wrong. I personally think Franzen is a great writer and that’s why I am disappointed—I wanted more. I loved the first essay ‘House for Sale’, which moves back and forth from today to his teenage years, where Franzen’s remembrance of his years in the Christian Fellowship made me squirm. The same with the following two essays. After that, the book loses steam, the essays lose their impact. I don’t know if Franzen just threw all of these together or what, but the lack of focus gives you an incomplete look at the author. Perhaps that’s what he wants, after the Oprah fiasco. I just hope his next book is stronger.

Get Off Your High Horse, New York

Could this article on Boston’s South End be anymore condescending?

BOSTON, while still not quite an avatar of cool, is showing plenty of new signs, for better or worse, of hipness. A Barneys New York opened at Copley Place this past spring, and the conductor of the Boston Pops, Keith Lockhart, has introduced “Pops on the Edge,” a series that features musicians like Elvis Costello, Aimee Mann and the alternative country-rockers My Morning Jacket. A lot of the cultural heat is smoldering in the city’s South End. This vital neighborhood has been “emerging” for more than 10 years, but has now officially emerged. Engaging new restaurants, bars, shops and condominiums are found among the brownstones on Tremont Street, and are tucked into the side streets, too. Spending 36 hours in the South End proves that Boston has a happening, maybe glamorous, scene — even if some Bostonians still believe in eating supper at 5 o’clock.

Right, like there’s no person in New York that eats at 5. Puleeze. Ann Marie Gardner, I don’t know where you’ve been for the last 10 years, but you don’t know what the hell you are talking about, so just shut up before you offend another city.