SMITH Memoir Picks for June/July
Tuesday, June 27th, 2006
Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, by David Goodwillie
After a liberal arts education and a fizzled attempt at a career in major league baseball, Goodwillie found himself in 1990s New York. His new memoir chronicles life as a writer, job-hopper, and huge partier—all in hopes of drawing greater meaning from stresses, struggles, and, indeed, dismal failures.
Read an interview with David Goodwillie on Living with Legends, the blog of the famous Hotel Chelsea, where Goodwilliee wrote much of his memoir (in the maid’s room, actually).

At the age of 63, Miriam Katin has written her first book. And drawn it. The animator for Disney and MTV uses the emerging graphic memoir form to recall the stunning story of her escape from the Nazis as a small child.

Anita Liberty is a poet and performance artist who’s made a name for herself trashing her ex-boyfriend and reveling in her desolate misery. So what happens when she falls in love? Her latest book illuminates her terror at the very prospect through blog entries, poems, lists, and word definitions. And the newly smitten writer is also putting her mouth where her money is, performing a show based on the book at the Manhattan performance space HERE.

Former fiction editor of The New Yorker writer Bill Buford puts down his pen and picks up a cleaver in this account of kitchen culture, pig slaughter, and Mario Batali-worship. A peek inside the food world intersperses with history lessons, observations from the road, and an obvious passion for all things gastronomic.

Talk about your brushes with fame: Dunn has them in bushels, all spun through the seemingly innocent web of her central Jersey upbringing. Whether she’s dining with Dolly Parton, fake-dating Ben Affleck, or hiking with Brad Pitt, she’s indeed telling her own story-one where sex, drugs, and rock and roll commingle with Aquanet and trips to J.C. Penney.
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