{"id":43,"date":"2008-03-09T19:22:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-09T19:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookblog.salticid.com\/?p=43"},"modified":"2008-03-09T19:22:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-09T19:22:00","slug":"slackjaw-jim-knipfel-1999","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2008\/03\/slackjaw-jim-knipfel-1999\/","title":{"rendered":"Slackjaw – Jim Knipfel, 1999"},"content":{"rendered":"

Years ago I went through a phase of reading the New York Press<\/a> when we visited New York, and my memory of that publication boils down to Jim Knipfel’s column, Slackjaw<\/a>–kind of fascinating, kind of repellent. When the book came out, I noted the positive reviews, but never had an opportunity to read it. Then it turned up as a donation at the library, and I’m the first to check it out. He’s a brave, articulate, cynically funny man who’s had more bad breaks already than another ten people put together, from retinitis pigmentosa to a brain lesion. His descriptions of dealing with the various agencies helping the blind in New York City–particularly the way they valued him symbolically for holding down a full-time job, yet continually expected him to have time during the day for their bureaucratic paper chase–are both entertaining and enlightening. I enjoyed the writing and the anecdotes, admired Knipfel’s resilience, and identified to a certain extent with his misanthropy. But overall, I can’t say I loved it, and I was glad to part ways with him at the end. Sometimes the person who moves into my head when I read a biography or memoir turns out to be somebody I just don’t click with long-term; no reflection on the book itself. My favorite passage, about a stint at the Whitney when they decided to hire impoverished artists as museum guards:<\/p>\n

This is what my fellow guards and I experienced, during a typical ten-hour day: Packs of wild grade-school children on a field trip, running rough-shod over Giacometti sculptures. Tourists protesting, “But I am French!” when told not to touch the paintings. American visitors demanding their money back, arguing that there was no real art in the museum.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, and Thomas Pynchon loves him! I thought blurbs from Pynchon must be pretty rare, but perhaps<\/a> I’m wrong<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Years ago I went through a phase of reading the New York Press when we visited New York, and my memory of that publication boils down to Jim Knipfel’s column, Slackjaw–kind of fascinating, kind of repellent. When the book came out, I noted the positive reviews, but never had an opportunity to read it. Then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}