Two-fisted, foul-tempered, obsessive, formerly bi-curious sexual vulture admires memoir by Friend of Korrektiv Ellen Finnigan

No, seriously: check him out:

I wouldn’t venture to guess just how many literate Catholics really do experience their faith journeys as passages toward a certain light, but at least one memoirist, a woman named Ellen Finnigan, seems to have pushed the meat of her story back toward the dark middle. According to an Amazon reviewer, Finnigan “falls for a Nietzsche-quoting ‘bad guy’ and self-described hedonist. As they carry on an illicit office romance in the absurd corporate culture of a failing start-up, and he tries to convert her to bohemianism, she is forced to doubt and examine herself and her own weakly held convictions.”

In my subprime days, I knew my share of Nietzsche-quoting bad guys, and most of them were big, leaking douchenozzles. But this one, at least, seems to have done something rare — he seems to have given God a good run for His money. I haven’t read Finnigan’s book myself, but Amazon users are going wild for it. Maybe, a little unusually for a Catholic memoirist, the author knows what Willa Cather learned from writing Song of A Lark, that the getting-there part is more important than the goal, and deserves an infusion of real suspense. Finnigan’s title is a tribute to I-ing: it’s The Me Years.

[Thank you, Mrs. Darwin, for the heads up.]

Comments

  1. Angelico Nguyen, Esq., OP says

    Just below Bird’s Nest in Your Hair on my to-read stack, and just above Infinite Jest.

    • Please do not read my book, Angelico. I’m sorry but that would be a real invasion of my privacy.

      • Matthew Lickona says

        Comment of the week?

      • Angelico Nguyen, Esq., OP says

        Well, but I already own a copy, Ms Finnigan; it is, literally, beneath a copy of Bird’s Nest in a stack on my table. I had rather hoped to take it on my Christmas travels: One should always have something sensational to read on the plane.

        How’s this for a compromise: You can specify the pages and paragraphs that I must absolutely, positively, never ever read.

        • What gives you the right to read any of it?! People are such voyeurs.

          • You pay your nickel, you get to peek.

            • Jonathan Potter says

              Thanks for the Diary of a Wimpy Catholic link. I dig it. Interesting take on Mark Shea’s interesting take on the gay saint of Seattle.

              On the “I” front, I have an idea for a memoir, or possibly a parody of a memoir. The title: TMI.

        • Angelico (Can I call you “Gelly”?), I would of course be honored if you read my book instead of US Weekly on the plane. I just hope that if you hate it, we can remain internet friendz 4 evah, because I think you are the cat’s pajamas!

          • Angelico Nguyen, Esq., OP says

            Ms Finnigan:

            Re Gelly — Not only can you; you may. Whether you should is a complicated but entirely trivial question, not to be sweated.

            Re The You Years — If it’s good enough for Betty Duffy, it’s good enough for me. In case there do turn out to be any hateworthy bits, I’ll just sublimate my disgust and/or anger into something constructive: No harm, no foul.

            Re the feline nightclothes — I hold you, Ms Finnigan, in similarly high regard.

  2. More important than getting over the Nietzche-quoting bad guys is overcoming Nietzsche himself. Which no one to this side of “Good Country People” has done, except maybe W.P.

  3. You’re such a douchenozzle, Angelico, to insist on reading Ellen’s book instead of relying on the Amazon reviews.

    • I don’t read memoirs. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the memoirist’s ideas as well as the critics’ thinking. With nonfiction I can never forget that none of it really happened to me, that it’s all just experienced by the author.

      TAGGED WITH: EVERY GENERATION IS THE WORST GENERATION SINCE THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION

      • Angelico Nguyen, Esq., OP says

        ‘You’re think I’ll write a tell-all and make you look bad.’

        ‘I’m worried that you’ll write a tell-all and make yourself look bad.’

    • Angelico Nguyen, Esq., OP says

      From my earliest youth, LeVar Burton inculcated in me a healthy skepticism of book reviews.

      ‘Доверяй, но проверяй’, and all that.

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