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1/ Hello this is a tweetstorm (and podcast) about the best book I've read in years. motherjones.com/politics/2019/…
2/ A few months back, I was asked if I'd interview George Packer for the Sidney Goldstein theater and @cityartssf. "Sure," I said. "Packer's a great writer." Then a 531-page doorstopper on Richard Holbrooke arrived. "Fuck," I thought.
@cityartssf 3/ Readers, I am not someone who seeks out political biographies about diplomats. Nor would I count myself as a foreign policy expert. "Uuuuuuugh, what have I agreed to," was my general thought.
@cityartssf 4/ But then I started it and this is one amazing book. Yes, you learn or relearn about every conflict from Vietnam to Afghanistan. But THE DISH. THE JUICY JUICY DISH, on so many DC/Hollywood/NYC figures. It's a salacious page-turner! It's a beach read.
@cityartssf 5/ But much more than that, it is a masterful biography. And it has a narrator that—well, if I were teaching narrative theory, I'd really have my class discuss these techniques.
@cityartssf 6/ People have mistaken the narrator as Packer himself. It's not, it's...something and someone else.
@cityartssf 7/ People have also taken this to be a hagiography of Holbrooke. Far from it.
@cityartssf 8/ Also, since I'm gushing, I'd never met Packer before the interview, though I found him and his mother (who taught writing at Stanford for years and is a total pistol) to be delightful.
@cityartssf 9/ Did we also discuss how Packer intitially supported the Iraq invasion and came to be a chronicler of all that went wrong, yes. Did we discuss his 1997 @Harpers piece on quitting the @DemSocialists back before they were cool, yes.
@cityartssf @Harpers @DemSocialists 10/ I sent "Our Man" to my dad, a former editor, who's pretty housebound with leukemia but still an enormous reader. Two days later he emailed: "Just finished George Packer’s book on Holbrooke. Amazing piece of work! Best book I have read in years, maybe decades.”
@cityartssf @Harpers @DemSocialists 11/ Ok, so am I going to convince you to read a 500+ page book on Richard Holbrooke, maybe not yet? But maybe you have the time to listen to my interview with him. Then you can decide: motherjones.com/politics/2019/…
@cityartssf @Harpers @DemSocialists 12/ For @MoJoPodcast, we cut this interview down. The whole thing airs on @KQED (and other stations nationwide) on 8/4(ish?). In the longer cut there's more gossip and foreign policy. But also I addressed reviews that saw the narrator, presumed to be Packer, as sometimes sexist.
@cityartssf @Harpers @DemSocialists @MoJoPodcast @KQED 13/ In "ruby red lips" descriptor kind of way. Interesting issue about a cinematic biography when the narrator is not the author is this kind of misread, if that's the word I want. Anyway, we get into it and it's interesting. I'll post full link here, when live.
@cityartssf @Harpers @DemSocialists @MoJoPodcast @KQED 14/ Packer in the book addresses, via the narrator, a too-flattering profile in the New Yorker that...he wrote! (not that the narrator says so.) Fascinating way for an author to confront his own failings.
@cityartssf @Harpers @DemSocialists @MoJoPodcast @KQED 15/ Ok so bonus material to come for you foreign policy and narrative and feminist theory geeks. (Also H.R. McMaster showed up to this event 👀, alas did not make public comment.) For now you can get a taste here: cityarts.net/radio-broadcas…
