Closing the Loop

Hey: Your pal made the NY Times.  (Sort of.)  For being somewhat of a jackass.  (Of course.)  But I am also man enough to admit that there is, in fact, an ad for Barbary Shore that is perhaps the grandfather of the recent Discomfort Zone ad.*  (It gets points for including J.R. "Bob" Dobbs' evil twin, but I would say that the Deer Park ad is funnier.)

It should also be noted that Franzen's publisher skews 5-to-2 in favor of positive blurbs.  That's not cricket.

(*Mr. Garner's facts were wrong only insofar as he was thinking of the Barbary Shore ad instead of the one for The Deer Park to which his commenter was referring.)

Comments

[R Ellis]

I kinda think the word "odious" is too damning, even for irony.

[Rake]

Yeah, but look who "odious" is attached to: Michiko Kakutani. That's just Franzen's people flipping the script.

And, let's face it, "odious" is overkill.

Dinesh D'Souza is odious. Franzen is at most unfortunately self-absorbed and a little whiny.