Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The most important aspect of any book is its ability to hold the reader's attention. Some writers can make anything interesting. What comes to mind is the late Barbara Tuchman (A Distant Mirror), who could make history jump off the page, or Oliver Sacks (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), whose stories about brain injuries are unforgettable. So let me get right down to brass tacks: Joshua Foer is no Oliver Sacks. Moonwalking With Einstein was boring and I would have thrown it in the garbage after page 40 but for a well-intentioned friend at my health club who swore that it would get better. He was mistaken. Don't get me wrong, I think the subject of memory is fascinating. Just not the way Foer tells it. And to be fair, he did occasionally succeed in holding my attention, as when he describes a poor soul with amnesia whose brain was eaten by parasites. But most of the book consists of Foer's attempt to win a goofy memory contest in the Con Edison building, of all places. Now I understand that Foer went to Yale and his brother went to Princeton, but I'm sorry to say, "Who cares?" Foer seems to think that I should care. This is a geek who really believes that you and I ought to be knocked out by his tales of getting drunk with other geeks. At one point where I dozed off, Foer writes: "I found myself fascinated by Ed and his quiet friend Lukas, and...they likewise seemed fascinated with me, a journalist of roughly the same age, who might share their story in some magazine they'd never heard of, and perhaps jump-start their careers as mnemonic celebrities. After Ed's lecture at the high school, he invited me to follow him and Lukas to a nearby bar..." I woke up an hour later and couldn't even remember where I was. Now let's talk about style. Foer seems to think that good writing is what happens when you cram each page of your book with a multitude of facts, people, and places. I'm guessing that he was too busy memorizing decks of cards and other trivia and never had time to read Barbara Tuchman. She provided useful content with captivating stories, saving esoteric references for the back of the manuscript. For all the talk about memory, Moonwalking teaches us very little and, as I've pointed out, Foer's stories are banal. Plus he is expert at using the kind of cute language you can find in Newsweek. A suburban street is a "leafy cul-de-sac." A party is designed to be "maximally memorable." Method Acting is "a technique for giving a line more associational hooks to hang on by embedding it in a context of both emotional and physical cues." What? Adding insult to injury, after 250 pages of talking up the importance of memory training, Foer confesses at the conclusion that all of his work was for naught because he still can't remember where he put his car keys. Why didn't you say so in the first place? In case you think I sound angry, you're right. I feel betrayed by the publishing industry when it tries to convince me that a book like this is top-notch. Amazingly the author, who is 24 and still lives with his parents, received more than a million dollar advance for this dribble. How is that possible? Shades of Peter Sellers and Being There. "Oh, you went to an Ivy League college and your brother is a hot author, that's wonderful, we'll write you a nice fat check and spend a bloody fortune on publicity so the ignorant masses will buy this crap that you've written." To me, this is further evidence that the omniscient publishing industry is run by an in-crowd that suffers from a surfeit of lunchtime martinis. Well, at least Moonwalking was good for something. It helped me catch up on my sleep. But on the whole, this is one memory book that I'd rather forget.