January 1, 2004
When New Yorker film critic Denby begins his memoir, the year is 1999 and his marriage had just ended. "Having lost the greatest thing in my life," he says, "I feared I would lose another and another." So Denby sets out to ride the NASDAQ bull. What follows is his account of making and losing over $900,000 as the NASDAQ crests and collapses. All the while, Denby carries on a running meditation on greed. He recalls a time when investment was "part of pop culture" and even the guys selling papers had stock tips to pass on. Boutsikaris, the Obie-winning actor who reads the memoir, offers a tour de force performance. He understands irony, managing, in the space of a few moments, to sound self-indulgent, self-deprecating, stunningly sincere and painfully intellectual. At times, the author gets caught up in discussing the history of other booms and the nature of capitalism, but the energy level of Boutsikaris's reading never flags. He captures the author's sense of wonder and betrayal and Denby's final realization that, despite maladies aplenty, the economy remains resilient, as does he.
November 8, 2004
When New Yorker film critic Denby begins his memoir, the year is 1999 and his marriage had just ended. "Having lost the greatest thing in my life," he says, "I feared I would lose another and another." So Denby sets out to ride the NASDAQ bull. What follows is his account of making and losing over $900,000 as the NASDAQ crests and collapses. All the while, Denby carries on a running meditation on greed. He recalls a time when investment was "part of pop culture" and even the guys selling papers had stock tips to pass on. Boutsikaris, the Obie-winning actor who reads the memoir, offers a tour de force performance. He understands irony, managing, in the space of a few moments, to sound self-indulgent, self-deprecating, stunningly sincere and painfully intellectual. At times, the author gets caught up in discussing the history of other booms and the nature of capitalism, but the energy level of Boutsikaris's reading never flags. He captures the author's sense of wonder and betrayal and Denby's final realization that, despite maladies aplenty, the economy remains resilient, as does he.
Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
November 24, 2003
"I wanted to be wealthy," Denby bluntly admits near the end of this absorbing memoir of the dot-com boom and bust. "I didn't make it." Like millions of other amateur investors in 2000 and 2001, Denby (Great Books
) was swept along by greed, by the nearly messianic belief that the stock market offered easy opportunities for unlimited prosperity. Denby sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Nasdaq, digested unhealthy amounts of CNBC and the Wall Street Journal
and forged friendships with some of the era's brightest stars (and, later, its most public criminals). He lost his balance in the excess of the time—stock tickers in strip clubs; parties at executives' lofts—and then lost his money when the market crashed. ("The ax had swung," Denby writes, "and heads lay all over the ground.") Though exceedingly well written, Denby's portrait of the great "Dot Con" generally echoes the sentiments of other, similarly themed books about the period. The work is more appealing when Denby focuses on himself: he had nearly suffered a nervous breakdown when his wife of 18 years left him, and making enough money to buy out her share of their apartment was his initial motivation for investing in the market. Denby brutally details his decline, from a night of impotence to an affair with a married woman, then a six-month obsession with Internet porn—harrowing stuff for a New Yorker
staff writer. His dissection of his own Upper West Side narcissism offers some of the most candid critiques of the Manhattan bourgeoisie ever found outside of a Woody Allen film. More of Denby, and less of the Nasdaq, would have made this good book even better. (Jan.)
Forecast:
A print advertising campaign; print, radio and TV interviews; and a five-city author tour will target mid-lifers who will relate to Denby's experiences of anxiety and encroaching age.