Gawker
James Lipton, host of Bravo's Inside The Actor's Studio, has a book! It's called Inside Inside and we got our copy today. It's 492 pages long and costs $27.95. If the first two pages are any indication, it might be the most gloriously horrendous book ever written. You have to love a man who starts the memoir of his middle-brow career with an epigraph by Chaucer, from 'The Canterbury Tales': "And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche." Nearly as trenchant as Dostoevsky's "Raskolnikov seemed offended." (Crime and Punishment, pg 144.) Or Faulkner's immortal words, "'Such good beer,' she said." (Sanctuary, pg 140.) Except with the added benefit that Chaucer is a) in Middle English and b) in the prologue. Let's face it, Lipton only has time for prologues. He's a busy guy and can barely read. But can he write? You decide.
I made myself a promise that I would not begin this book with the first-person singular pronoun I... and I've already broken that promise four times—five if you count the pronoun myself, which the Oxford American Dictionary defines as "corresponding to I and me." An unpromising sign.You got that right, Lipton! But it truly does get better from there. It kind of has to, right?
April may be the cruelest month to Eliot, but to me it's the kindest, with the portents of spring, which is crammed with beginnings. Of holidays, I enjoy Memorial Day because it officially begins the pleasant summer season, and dislike Labor Day because it ends it. Thanksgiving is welcome because it begins the Christmas season, of which I confess to being inordinately fond and I'm resistant to the compulsory joy of New Year's Eve, because it ends it.Only 490 pages to go! Join us next time in Inside Inside Inside as James Lipton discusses the working of his prostate, Barbra Streisand's love of Kit Kats and how one affects the other.This affection for beginnings has had a predictable effect on my preferences. Though I should know better than to invite comparison with my betters as I begin my own literary effort, I confess to unbridled admiration for the blunt simplicity of "Call me Ishmael"; the instant dramatic engagement of "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"; the authorial certainty of "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way": the ringing challenge of Donne's "Go and catch a falling star/Get with child a mandrake root": the quiet fury of Yeats's "Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon can not hear the falconer;/Things fall apart; the center cannot hold": the stately opening chords of Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, which greet us not with the C-major tonic but with a submediant A minor chord, as if the boat had left the dock without us, and we had no choice but to jump in and swim after it....
Comments
And gladly wolde he suck and gladly douche.
Can books induce seizures?
It always amuses me how actors think they can write. I swear to God, the Fringe Festival in my city is a non-stop humour factory for me.
But enough about me. What do you think of my book?
How trenchant. Not to be confused with trench mouth, which perfectly sums up his prose.
"what are two places James Lipton has never been with a woman?"
Is that forealz? Sounds like a bad Frasier Crane impression.
When is he gonna kiss the manny already?
I'd rather have my fingernails pulled out by Maoists guerrillas than read more if this.
How fabulous! This is the perfect holiday gift for people I dislike but am obligated to add to my gift list. It surely must induce seizures.
...as if the boat had left the dock without us, and we had no choice but to jump in and swim after it.... I never realized that this Lipton was affiliated with the Boston Tea Party. How enlightening!
These passages seriously sounds like a LiveJournal entry, which is something I recommend for him.
The thing about personal blogging, which is what this feels like, is that you are able to vomit out each and every thought, mind ramble and inane personal cough with little to no personal censor and with no editor. It's your thoughts, your words... voila!
But this is supposed to be a book. Something for public consumption, not for your fellow Harry Potter fanatics. You are SUPPOSED to have an editor. Someone to rein you in. Just reading this little bit, I now fully understand what people say about wanting to stab yourself in the eye with a spork. I so get it now.
I'm gonna come right out and say it: Lipton is an arrogant sack of shit and he's not even a little bit funny!
Memoirs suck! (Except yours, David! xo)
Holy hell..did we just discover who NTJ really is?
@TheHonJudgeSmails: I can't top that.
Be well, Josh. You're a brave man for tackling this tome, which Merrimam-Webster's Collegiate Dictinary defines as a "cutting instrument." Oh yeah, and "book."
That's not really part of the book ... is it?
WHAT! He fucking stole the paper I wrote freshman year at Oberlin for a course titled Dramatic Post-Non-Representational Reinterpretations of Chaucer, Tom Wolfe, Frank Zappa and Rent, which I wrote while holed up under my loft bed while on Quaaludes and acid after not having done any of the reading!
@PandoraSpocks: Louise Miller from the epic 1989 drama "Teen Witch," however, could Top That.
@Koala325:
Ack, loser. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
If it's a great actor - it's a good show. If it's a favor for a PR rep it's worse than a root canal without novacaine.
This is the only moment of James Lipton's life which I'd like to remember:
[www.youtube.com]
i'd rather read the phone book.
October makes me melancholy as the fear of ghosts and goblins appearing at my door, begging for candy like welfare recipients begging for government cheese, means that winter is slithering in on it's cold, bloodless stomach.
And my favorite curse is, "May the fleas of a thousand camels eat your manly bits."
James Lipton just showed up to teche Gawker that Chaucer is actually in Middle English. Then he proceeded to pass around naked snapshots of his hot-ass wife.
James Lipton has not read beyond the first line of any book published.
Which is only fair, since no one is going to read his book at all.
@TheHonJudgeSmails:
I think I just fell in love with you. I used to pretend to be sick when Teen Witch was going to be on just so I could stay home from school and watch it.
I'd rather read John Fitzgerald Page's memoirs.
Can he write? You decide! Turn to page 68 if you like his sentence structure! Turn to page 32 if you think he drops random literary references for no reason (or does he? 72!) Turn to page 11 if you think Stacey should chase the stranger down the alley!
"James Lipton died today. Or maybe yesterday. I don't know."
I've found the only memoirs worth reading are those written by gay, alcoholic ad execs. But then I've never professed to reading great works of literary genius.
@collegecallgirl: This [www.youtube.com] makes me very, VERY happy.
"I confess to unbridled admiration for the blunt simplicity of 'All the Whos down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot'; the instant dramatic engagement of 'Don't call it a comeback. I been here for years, rockin my peers and puttin suckas in fear'; the stately opening chords of Michael Bolton's 'How Am I Supposed to Live Without You', which greet us not with a full orchestra but with a Casio-esque melange of synthesizer, as if the boat had left the dock without us, and we had no choice but to jump in and swim after it, like a hopeful boat passenger who had been left on the dock with no choice but to swim after the boat...."
Please tell me he at least ends the book with that "What's Your Favorite Swear Word" quiz.
Okay, I hate to do it, but the same English major in me that's cringing at his prose is also going a little green at the "effect/affect" mixup.
@Titania: I didn't want to mention it.
I feel like this is the type of shit someone says to you at a bar in the hours before they drug and rape you.
@TheHonJudgeSmails:
You know, I wish you saw more of me than just brains.
How much colde I cere? Nawt so mch aktully!
Yes, Frasier without the funny. You can just hear the pretentious droll cadence of his twatwaffle voice when you read this drivel.
Crammed with beginnings indeed.
One time about ten years ago I saw him at a bodega...buying CRUMPETS.
Let me give you all the abridged version of this autobiography.
Mother died today. A screaming comes across the sky.I am an invisible man.The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. They shoot the white girl first.It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. Reader, I married him.
It was easy.
@Titania: Thanks. It's fixed. Effectionately, JDS
Trees perished for this kack. Will Ferrell's portrayal of Lipton is more complex and nuanced than Lipton's own self-portrayal. Is he being paid by the word? Or has a 'friend' dared him to see how many tedious old saws and hackneyed cliches he could jam up in there?
@joshuadavidstein1: Also, who's Yeat?
I'm confused as why SO MANY people feel the need to write excessively long memoirs. Like anyone gives a fuck how James Lipton feels about Memorial Day v. Labor Day.
Enough with the creative non-fiction/memoir/masabatory ramblings: come up with an original idea and write a novel of reasonable legth. THANK YOU.
"I find that I am most fickle in my selection of favourite seasons, of which I have two, betwixt which I pendulate hither and thither... hither and thither..."
His reflections on the seasons read like the thinking man's Jean Teasdale.
@HookerfaceAnon: reality television.
Far as I can tell from Amazon there's no audiobook as yet. If there was we'd be talking about worse stuff than seizures. So worse, probably, that if John Edwards got back into torts the day after Obama got Veeped, he'd probably make enough to finance three campaigns. And Sexbot...Lipton in the title role, in the remake of Mr Goodbar. Sounds boffo in a kinda sick way. Problem is, only Chappelle in drag would work in the Diane Keaton part. Oh, all right, maybe Screech.
it's all written on blue index cards, right?
and i hope he has an entire chapter dedicated to that BULLSHIT j-lo interview called "no, jennifer, we don't know what you mean"
I'm crying into my MFA student loan bills right now.
"And so we begin, here at the beginning, which seems as good as place as any to begin the beginning. So, in our beginning, we begin."
@TheHonJudgeSmails: i used to love watching that movie until the cold, stark truth about blondes, jocks, and nerds hit me full in the face when i found out Brad married Randa in the end.
You know, this intro bespeaks the true value of a good editor. Lipton's original intro read: 'My name is Rhoda Morgenstern. I was born in the Bronx, NY, December 1941. I've always felt responsible for World War II.'
@narnio: You are wise.
I hear it read in the voice of J. Peterman...
@collegecallgirl: TEASE!
@fivehole: You just ruined so many childhoods.
@City_Dater: ha!
Dictionary definition: Check.
Greatest hits of first lines (he left out Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice [Freudian repression?]"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.") but other than that: Check.
Irrelevant autobiographical information: Check.
Yes, this may be the most hackneyed introduction that has ever been written.
I think he has taken advice from an undergraduate student on how to fill the page limit without actually saying anything about the topic. Josh: is the font extra large and are the margins really wide?
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