I write, people will be shocked to learn, about American Idol, telling the epic tale of my permanent branding by an in-law of the show.

Elsewhere in the anthology, read the majesty of Stacey Grenrock Woods, Neal Pollack, Mark Lisanti, Jerry Stahl…as I say some of the very funniest. Buy it now!

The New Yorker’s Book Bench mentioned my essay in their item on the book, kindly in general but taking on my declaration that Idol is the most dramatic stage performance ever, suggesting life and death gladiator matches were perhaps more…life or death’ish. To which I say, how can you declare the mere life of a captive marauder to the potential for unlimited fame that our young dreamers stand on the cusp of at the height of the celebrity age? Doesn’t even come close!

His letter includes the line: “While I was not at Hampshire during the 1980s, colleagues and alumni who were have questioned the “composite” characters created by Rushfield. In reality, most students then pursued their education with serious intent and maturity, as they do now”

Now I guess I’ve tip-toed around this question, by just saying the book is about me, and I want to focus on my experience. And some people may have been hard working students, while some were not, i have no idea… I was just writing about my own experience,…not meaning to cast general aspersions beyond the scope of my own experience…etc.

And all that is true, that is my meaning.

However, when the criticism begins to suggest that i am more or less creating a fantasy world of deadbeats out of a land of dilligent, nose to grindstone, highly motivated pHd’s in the making, I must respond.

There may have been many in that above category. It many have even been in the majority. And Hampshire since for all i know may have become a veritable sweat shop of academic labor. But the stereotype of Frisbee U did not come from nothing. My friends, my extended circle may or may not have been the typical Hampshire student, but if they were a minority, they were an extremely sizable one.

A few facts and question about Hampshire College circa 86- 88, the years when the events described in this book occurred:

- The drop out rate at the time. If some would care to pony it up, im not going to name exact figures because i dont want to be off, but im willing to bet anything they would be very significantly higher than the liberal arts average of the time. If it’s not, I’ll be delighted to learn that and put up another post here so proclaiming.

- I had a friend there who went three years without finishing a class. And until the end of that period, no one seemed to notice or care. That’s one example. I’m sure if President Hexter wants to check the academic records of the period, he would find thats not the only one. By far.

- As described in the book, one student earned her diploma by getting her friends to lie on the ground in the shape of a peace sign and renting a helicopter to fly over and shoot it as the center of a music video. Buy me a cup of coffee and I’ll share with you a few dozen examples comparable to that.

- The presence of drugs on the campus. If anyone truly wants to dispute the ubiquity of marijuana and other drugs on Hampshire campus at that time, if anyone who was there from 1986- 88 can look me in the eye and say they rarely encountered them, heard about them, were aware of them, say more or less every time they walked across the quad, I would really have to look that person right back and ask, do you really really think your Hampshire experience of the period was more representative than mine? Really?

- And what no one seems to dispute, not President Hexter, nor anyone else, is the part of my book this the really crucial climax here – the rise of the armies of PC’dom, the little mini-stalins they unleashed and the body count that crusade claimed, all tacitly or actively abetted by the school. People lives were horribly horribly damaged in that period in a way that school is directly responsible, and has never addressed their part in those issues. So if we’re really going to reopen the record of the past, how about we take a look at that too folks? Not just the question of what percent of the student body was stoned what percent of the day?

In any event, this is, truly an argument about the past. If you have read my book, you will know that the final third is devoted to the end of this period, how by the time 1988 came around, the atmosphere that had encouraged this sort of debauchery was behind us. The word “Twilight” is in the very title of the book for crying out loud.

But happy to debate the question forever. I would just ask those who were there at the time and say that their experience was completely different than mine, what makes you so sure that your experience was more typical or representative of the era than mine?

Your servant,

Richard Rushfield

Inevitable movie they say. You listening, Hollywood?

A couple nice reviews out there for Don’t Follow Me, I’m Lost out across the internet.

Patrick Brown at the The Millions begins

This is the first book review I’ve written in nearly three years, since I hung up my reviewing socks following a stint at Publishers Weekly’s online division, where I was paid handsomely in American currency to review books about sports and music. Those books were assigned to me based on a rough affinity for the subject matter. I liked baseball and Phil Spector music and funny writing, so I was assigned books about baseball, Phil Spector and the music industry, naturally.

Despite my purported interest in the subject matter, however, I often disliked the books assigned to me. Perhaps this was a residual effect of years of assigned reading at school. These books, looming over my reading list like a colonoscopy, found me angry and tired. Still, I gave them a fair shake. A few rose above to really impress me. Others offered diversion or momentary entertainment before lapsing into unrelenting mediocrity. Several were nearly too dreadful to finish.

Read it all here.

And on the blog of the great Pasadena book mecca Vrommans, a completely different Patrick was also very kind.

There are also a handful of not-friendly reviews out there, which strangely I don’t have the links to handy, but having written plenty of not-friendly things in my life about others’ work, I say all the better; slams are very welcome.

Overall, if you look at the Goodreads ratings for instance, seems my little memoir either gets zero to one stars or four-to-five stars; readers either love it or throw it down in disgust. Which is the most one can ask for. The most common question from the critics seems to be, why should I care about these inert, cretinous characters? My first reaction to that is, if you don’t, then you shouldn’t. I can’t convince to care about something that didn’t evoke empathy on the page.

But I think I need a better answer than that. My first new year’s resolution is to come up with one. Watch this space.

And as ever, complete info and ordering links right here.

It begins:

In 2006, as a reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper, I joined in what was at that time the largest manhunt in human history: the search for lonelygirl15.

At the time, all the world knew about this shadowy underworld figure was that she claimed to be a teenage girl shooting videos herself on a webcam from her teenage bedroom somewhere in the great sprawl of America. As the world became entranced by the beguiling and wise innocence of her two-minute films, the demand grew to a ferocious roar for the young star to step forward and accept all the honors that a celebrity-driven society could bestow on an instant sensation. And when Bree, aka lonelygirl, failed to materialize, the suspicion arose that perhaps this was some sort of fraud—that the world was being put on.

Read it all here.

Below are video excerpts from the Q and A session. The audio is pretty rough in spots unfortunately.

Many thanks to current Hampshire student Christopher Blyler for putting the event together; truly an inquiring young man in the classic Hampshire mold who ended up asking me the toughest question of the night.

First video is below. The rest are after the jump.

1. Best of Youth
2.There Will be Blood
3. The Baader Meinhoff Complex
4. Together
5. The Lives of Others
6. Wall-E
7. In the Mood For Love
8. Mullholland Drive
9. Bad Education
10. Casino Royale
11. Children Of Men
12. The Queen
13. Up!
14. Spirited Away
15. A Serious Man
16.The Dark Knight
17. Battle Royale
18. Team America
19. Letters from Iwo Jima
20. The Hurt Locker
21. Head On
22. Volver
23. Slumdog Millionaire
24. The Pianist
25. The Ring
26. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
27. Moulin Rouge
28. Ratatouille
29. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
30. Donnie Darko
31. City of God
32. Movern Callar
33. Spider Man
34. Chicken Run
35. Man on Wire
36. Shaun of the Dead
37. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
38. Lilya 4-ever
39. Michael Clayton
40. Munich
41. The Class
42, Capturing the Friedmans
43. Let the Right One In
44. The Wrestler
45. The Others
46. Gosford Park
47. Pans Labyrinth
48. Frost/Nixon
49. The Incredibles
50. Reprise
51. 49 Up
52. Requiem For a Dream
53. You Can Count on Me
54. Y Tu Mama Tambien
55. Almost Famous
56. Amores Perros
57. Nobody Knows
58. The Piano Teacher
59. The Bourne Supremcy
60. Anchorman
61. The Devils Backbone
62. Hotel Rwanda
63. Changeling
64. Good Night and Good Luck
65. Brick
66. In America
67. Sideways
68. Chicago
69. Ghost World
70. Brokeback Mountain
71.The Grudge
72. Gangs of New York

Around 2004, I began writing the memoirs of my wayward college years in the mid-1980s. My writing was initially inspired by news of the death of one of my old classmates. It had been more than a decade since I had last seen my friend, whom I call Frank in the book—and his death from a drug overdose came after years spent adrift, floating through life; a road that many of my peers had taken. On learning of Frank’s death, my thoughts drifted back to those chaotic times 20 years ago, when the party of the ’70s and ’80s had given way to the earnestness of the ’90s, and many of my generation, caught between the two eras, had made their stand by checking out in a nihilistic wave that would become known as grunge.

Looking back in time, I saw that in that brief moment, something had been permanently knocked loose for many of my peers, and I began writing my book to figure out what it had been. When I started writing, I was only in contact with a handful of college acquaintances, and reflecting back on my wayward youth, reading through old papers and journals, became a pleasantly wistful bit of therapy.

Read the rest here.