How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neil Diamond (book)

[underpants]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learned-Stop-Worrying-Love-Diamond/dp/1905847653

At about 200 pages, He Is...I Say: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Neil Diamond is a fast, breezy, and humorous read.

Bill Murray once said in a famous quote used early on by Rolling Stone writer David Wild here, "there are two types of people in this world, those who love Neil Diamond, and those who don't."

As he makes quite clear in He Is...I Say: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Neil Diamond, David Wild falls into the former category. This is a great book. It is extremely well-written, and often very, very funny.

But it is also one a lot of music writers might find themselves a little embarrassed to read. Because as much as He Is...I Say is Wild's unabashed and unapologetic love letter to Neil Diamond, it is also in many ways a book about music criticism itself.

For the most part, he nails it. Especially the part about how many rock critics often seek the same sort of approval for their own work as that of many of the artists they write about — especially when the public at large beats the scribes at their own game as self-appointed tastemakers.

In telling the story of how he convinced the powers that be at Rolling Stone to run with his long and loving interview with "the man, the myth, the middle aged Hebrew Hunk," he hints that Diamond's generous donation to RS publisher Jann Wenner's anti-gun charity in honor of John Lennon just might have tipped the scales in his favor.

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/10/19/1125292.php