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Eminent Hipsters (2013)

by Donald Fagen(Favorite Author)

3.42 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0670025518 (ISBN13: 9780670025510)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Viking Adult

review 1: This book collects short essays by Steely Dan co-founder Fagen about music, science fiction, and coming of age in the 1960's along with a 2012 tour diary that follows Fagen on the road with Boz Scaggs and Michael McDonald. The shorter pieces are charming - Fagen seems to have been very aware of his outsider status even as a young man and he wears his taste in music and books as a badge of honor despite the social ills he suffered growing up. I could have done with a few more pieces in this vein, because the tour diary takes up the better part of the book and it's a bummer. Fagen comes off as a tired old crank who despite his success can't find a comfortable hotel. Fagen seems to think the generations raised on television (that is, young people) are almost uniformly stupid ... moreand this section of the book is finally little more than Get Off My Lawn. (Excuse the cliche). There's half a good book here but this doesn't meet my 3-star threshold for recommendation. 2.5 stars.
review 2: Great beginning and so-so ending BUT missing an entire middle. Fagan skips right over the Steely Dan and solo years which just might be a reason to read the book at all! Donald Fagan tells funny stories and has excellent recall of events that shaped his musical world, but there is hardly a sniff of anything Steely Dan. Maybe Fagan was waiting for Walter Becker to send him those chapters? The tour diary at the end (second half of the book?) got old and redundant fast and the whining got worse as the tour progressed. It came to a head when Fagan bitched about the job of "ass buffers" for Madonna and Mick Jagger. less

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