{"id":292,"date":"2010-05-01T15:30:45","date_gmt":"2010-05-01T15:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamjcobb.wordpress.com\/?p=292"},"modified":"2010-05-01T15:30:45","modified_gmt":"2010-05-01T15:30:45","slug":"on-the-backfires-of-rave-reviews-ala-tom-rachmans-the-imperfectionists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/05\/01\/on-the-backfires-of-rave-reviews-ala-tom-rachmans-the-imperfectionists\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Backfires of Rave Reviews, ala Tom Rachman&#039;s &quot;The Imperfectionists&quot;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why is it that the giddiest rave reviews often somehow make their books sound suspect? I note this just having read Christopher Buckley&#8217;s rave of Tom Rachman&#8217;s <em>The Imperfectionists<\/em> in todays NY Times.<br \/>\nhttp:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/02\/books\/review\/Buckley-t.html?ref=books<br \/>\nThe book does sound fun, but the reviewer&#8217;s exuberance, plus the waggish character names and plotlines, make me suspicious. A good example of this odd phenomenon\u2014the literary equivalent of &#8220;She&#8217;s got a great personality!&#8221;\u2014occurred last fall, when Jonathan Lethem reviewed Lorrie Moore&#8217;s new novel, <em>A Gate at the Stairs<\/em>, raving madly, the best novel ever written! (In contrast, a good friend of mine who read the book said, &#8220;It sucks.&#8221; I haven&#8217;t read it yet, but the hardback is here on my desk, and is next up in line.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why is it that the giddiest rave reviews often somehow make their books sound suspect? I note this just having read Christopher Buckley&#8217;s rave of Tom Rachman&#8217;s The Imperfectionists in todays NY Times. http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/02\/books\/review\/Buckley-t.html?ref=books The book does sound fun, but &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/05\/01\/on-the-backfires-of-rave-reviews-ala-tom-rachmans-the-imperfectionists\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}