palliem's review against another edition
1.0
I wanted to like this, I really did, but it just felt like there was no point to any of his story. There were long digressions that had nothing to do with the story I thought he'd be telling--the stalking. And the book seemed ever more pointless, as according to the memoir, the stalking is ongoing, so there's no conclusion. Of course, that's certainly not Lasdun's fault, but it made the book feel rambling and purposeless. I had to really push through to finish this after Part 1, and that's never a good sign.
heather_g's review against another edition
2.0
multiple other reviewers felt the same way: the title is misleading as it only spend 1/4 of the story on the stalking part, then the author goes off on seemingly random tangent side-stories. It could have been better but alas.
the_oddbird's review against another edition
2.0
I'm only halfway through this book but I have very strong thoughts and opinions concerning the hundred or so pages that I have read.
Let me begin...
This is a manual on how NOT to write a memoir.
This is also a good example on how you shouldn't rebuild your reputation if your good name is besmirched. For that, try google. Google probably has much better tips than James Lasdun's sad attempt at vindicating himself.
I'll tell you what this book is actually about. This is a book on how to make your readers despise you more than your alleged stalker. This is a book on how to identify blatant racism and sexism in a self-proclaimed liberal who denies being racist and sexist. This is how you shouldn't lay out your most embarrassing thoughts, desires, and actions to your readers in an attempt to sway them to your side. Granted, at this point in the book, I do not care for Lasdun, or even Nasreen's attacks on Lasdun, for that matter. Destroying someone's reputation through lies and falsehoods is generally not a nice thing to do (and many would advise against it on moral and ethical grounds), but trying to fix your broken reputation by unintentionally telling the public how much of a terrible person you are is probably not the best way to go about it either.
I don't know if Lasdun lacks self-awareness or if he's just being sarcastic and self-deprecating. (I would like to think the latter, but I doubt that was his intention.) Reviewers keep mentioning how he is self-aware, but when it comes to issues such as racism and sexism, he is the very antithesis of self-awareness.
Take the Tintin episode for example. This is, and I'm not joking, a direct quote from his memoir: (after his son quotes a line from Tintin)
I want to repeat that last line again: "I have felt obliged to talk about this with my son, explaining to him that the comedy is okay only because it is directed equally at all cultures, including Tintin's own, and because it is also largely without malice."
I don't know, bro. Maybe look up casual racism and its effects? Since you teach at colleges, maybe enroll in a sociology course or two. I'm sure you'll get a discount for being a faculty member. Or you can google and wiki these topics, since that's what you like to do.
This isn't the only incident that caught my attention.
Lasdun describes an episode where he's sitting next to an Egyptian man on the train. Lasdun has just read an article on the New York Times about the terrorist, Anwar al-Awlaki. When the Egyptian man picks up his cell phone and starts talking in Egyptian Arabic, Lasdun writes about how he associates the man's speech with the article on the terrorist.
Why would you admit these things, and worse yet, publish them?
And then, there is the entire problem of how Lasdun views Nasreen. No, I'm not talking about how she's a malicious stalker out to destroy his reputation through every means possible via the internet. I'm talking about how he views Nasreen as the "corniest archetype of demure Middle Eastern womanhood as concocted in the Western male psyche." He doesn't even bother to deconstruct his viewpoints, instead he goes on and on about Nasreen being Middle Eastern (more specifically Iranian), and he attaches every known stereotype to her identity.
Here is another example: "I, as an Anglo-American Jew, a family man, a published author, a middle-aged male in a position of power (at least from her perspective), was the axis of, shall we say, "virtue," while she, in her own mind at least, was the lone jihadi."
Not only is he racist when it comes to Nasreen, he also holds sexist views concerning her as a woman. This guy just does not understand women, it seems like. Whenever he mentions Nasreen, his prose is littered with impressions of how women are seemingly different just because they are women. It reads worse than a teenage boy trying to understand the concept of girls, women, and female sexuality. (Protip: Women are not a concept.) Lasdun is pretty much a living and breathing example of a Nice Guy™.
I will admit that I did find some parts of his memoir tolerable, and even enjoyable. His thoughts on being a writer strike a chord with me. His descriptions during his travels and his musings (when they're not sexist or racist) are very introspective. I think these are the only things that are keeping me going. At this point, I barely even care about the whole Nasreen episode. That seems more like a subplot compared to all the other things that he writes about. I would've even given one or two of his novels a go if I wasn't so disgusted by his hyperinflated sense of self or his intolerable viewpoints.
I'm not sure if this entire memoir was written to make Lasdum himself more popular than he actually is. He admits that he has a modest readership. I feel like all he wants out of this stalking episode is to make a quick buck and make his name more well known to the general public and entice potential readers. And if this is so, this probably wasn't the smartest way to go about it.
I'm glad I borrowed this book from the library. I'll keep my money, thanks. Or better yet, spend it on an author more deserving of critique, praise, or criticism. I've already wasted enough words on James Lasdun to last a lifetime.
Poor guy will probably read this review and think I'm Nasreen. But really though, who the fuck cares at this point? Grow the fuck up, dude.
Let me begin...
This is a manual on how NOT to write a memoir.
This is also a good example on how you shouldn't rebuild your reputation if your good name is besmirched. For that, try google. Google probably has much better tips than James Lasdun's sad attempt at vindicating himself.
I'll tell you what this book is actually about. This is a book on how to make your readers despise you more than your alleged stalker. This is a book on how to identify blatant racism and sexism in a self-proclaimed liberal who denies being racist and sexist. This is how you shouldn't lay out your most embarrassing thoughts, desires, and actions to your readers in an attempt to sway them to your side. Granted, at this point in the book, I do not care for Lasdun, or even Nasreen's attacks on Lasdun, for that matter. Destroying someone's reputation through lies and falsehoods is generally not a nice thing to do (and many would advise against it on moral and ethical grounds), but trying to fix your broken reputation by unintentionally telling the public how much of a terrible person you are is probably not the best way to go about it either.
I don't know if Lasdun lacks self-awareness or if he's just being sarcastic and self-deprecating. (I would like to think the latter, but I doubt that was his intention.) Reviewers keep mentioning how he is self-aware, but when it comes to issues such as racism and sexism, he is the very antithesis of self-awareness.
Take the Tintin episode for example. This is, and I'm not joking, a direct quote from his memoir: (after his son quotes a line from Tintin)
"It comes from our favorite Tintin book, The Blue Lotus, or, as I have somehow permitted myself to call it, The Brue Rotus; regressing, in my son's company, to the soft racism that pervaded the world of my own childhood, where nobody thought twice about mimicking foreign accents for a cheap laugh. The Tintin books, being all about encounters with foreigners, encourage this kind of low humor when it comes to reading them aloud. They contain a great deal of the comic racial stereotyping characteristic of their time. Being of my own time, I have felt obliged to talk about this with my son, explaining to him that the comedy is okay only because it is directed equally at all cultures, including Tintin's own, and because it is also largely without malice."
I want to repeat that last line again: "I have felt obliged to talk about this with my son, explaining to him that the comedy is okay only because it is directed equally at all cultures, including Tintin's own, and because it is also largely without malice."
I don't know, bro. Maybe look up casual racism and its effects? Since you teach at colleges, maybe enroll in a sociology course or two. I'm sure you'll get a discount for being a faculty member. Or you can google and wiki these topics, since that's what you like to do.
This isn't the only incident that caught my attention.
Lasdun describes an episode where he's sitting next to an Egyptian man on the train. Lasdun has just read an article on the New York Times about the terrorist, Anwar al-Awlaki. When the Egyptian man picks up his cell phone and starts talking in Egyptian Arabic, Lasdun writes about how he associates the man's speech with the article on the terrorist.
Why would you admit these things, and worse yet, publish them?
And then, there is the entire problem of how Lasdun views Nasreen. No, I'm not talking about how she's a malicious stalker out to destroy his reputation through every means possible via the internet. I'm talking about how he views Nasreen as the "corniest archetype of demure Middle Eastern womanhood as concocted in the Western male psyche." He doesn't even bother to deconstruct his viewpoints, instead he goes on and on about Nasreen being Middle Eastern (more specifically Iranian), and he attaches every known stereotype to her identity.
Here is another example: "I, as an Anglo-American Jew, a family man, a published author, a middle-aged male in a position of power (at least from her perspective), was the axis of, shall we say, "virtue," while she, in her own mind at least, was the lone jihadi."
Not only is he racist when it comes to Nasreen, he also holds sexist views concerning her as a woman. This guy just does not understand women, it seems like. Whenever he mentions Nasreen, his prose is littered with impressions of how women are seemingly different just because they are women. It reads worse than a teenage boy trying to understand the concept of girls, women, and female sexuality. (Protip: Women are not a concept.) Lasdun is pretty much a living and breathing example of a Nice Guy™.
I will admit that I did find some parts of his memoir tolerable, and even enjoyable. His thoughts on being a writer strike a chord with me. His descriptions during his travels and his musings (when they're not sexist or racist) are very introspective. I think these are the only things that are keeping me going. At this point, I barely even care about the whole Nasreen episode. That seems more like a subplot compared to all the other things that he writes about. I would've even given one or two of his novels a go if I wasn't so disgusted by his hyperinflated sense of self or his intolerable viewpoints.
I'm not sure if this entire memoir was written to make Lasdum himself more popular than he actually is. He admits that he has a modest readership. I feel like all he wants out of this stalking episode is to make a quick buck and make his name more well known to the general public and entice potential readers. And if this is so, this probably wasn't the smartest way to go about it.
I'm glad I borrowed this book from the library. I'll keep my money, thanks. Or better yet, spend it on an author more deserving of critique, praise, or criticism. I've already wasted enough words on James Lasdun to last a lifetime.
Poor guy will probably read this review and think I'm Nasreen. But really though, who the fuck cares at this point? Grow the fuck up, dude.
balzat28's review against another edition
2.0
"On Being Stalked," the subtitle of James Lasdun's memoir Give Me Everything You Have, hints at a storyline that is thrilling and suspenseful; the tiny little envelope accompanying this subtitle, which also happens to be the only image on the entire cover, hints at the opposite. Stalking is a lurid crime based on obsession, drive, and more often than not delusion, something rare that requires planning to be done successfully. Mail, whether physical or digital--daily or instantaneous, based in bureaucracy and routine or based in time-insensitive whim--is omnipotent, unavoidable, and sloppy, dominated in all forms by pointless advertisements and junk messages. Stalking is pure emotion expressed dangerously on an individual basis. Mail, in the majority of instances and regardless of form, lacks any sense of emotion beyond the customariness of greetings and closings; it is something that can be done en masse--form letters, bank statements, bills, CC'ed and BCC'ed e-mails, reply-alls, newsletters, coupons, spam--and increasingly so by machines, no human input whatsoever, which only intensifies its mindlessness.
At the heart of Lasdun's book is where these two dichotomous islands are bridged together--namely, in the solitary obsession of a graduate student named Nasreen. An Iranian immigrant, Nasreen enters James' world as a shy but promising student in his college creative writing class; years later, after reuniting over Nasreen's developing novel, she becomes fixated on him, first in a playfully flirtatious way, then with increasing directness, until he must rebuff her advances. She seems embarrassed and regretful, but the e-mails soon become more aggressive and more frequent, culminating in multiple e-mails a day filled with accusations of sexual impropriety, racism, sexism, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Soon, Nasreen's web expands to include Lasdun's agent, publisher, colleagues, and former employers, to the point where his very life is dominated by the fear inspired by her e-mails, which are sent from hundreds of miles away. Nasreen never calls, and he never calls her--in fact, he doesn't reply to her e-mails after a certain point, which does little to stem their anger or slow their frequency. They live on those dichotomous islands--he in the land of slow-paced and emotionless texts, of college lectures and ancient tomes and print publications, she in a fast-paced land of obsession that can be dispatched at the press of a button. But they are, paradoxically, as close as two people could possibly be.
Eventually, Nasreen takes to posting anonymous comments, submitting critical reviews of his book, and impersonating others, including Lasdun himself, in the hopes of destroying him, both personally and professionally. And she does all of this digitally, using e-mail and online booksellers and discussion boards to attack from a distance that protects her both physically and legally. (You start to believe that, were Lasdun to confront her in person, she would crumble--the kind of person who uses the distance and anonymity of the internet more defensively than offensively.) Lasdun goes to the FBI, but they do nothing. He goes to his local police, but they can offer little. Even a specialist in stalking crimes to whom Lasdun is referred leads nowhere but a weak phone call and some heartless warnings. He's lost to a world that he cannot control--in fact, no one can control the online world, not even Nasreen herself--and throughout the book, we see our helpless victim slowly resigning himself to the understanding that, no, there's no way he can fight this onslaught.
At the same time, Lasdun tells us about himself at length--his research, his family vacations, his own novels, one of which bears striking coincidences to his own life at the time--a narrative choice that may have been included to make our writer more sympathetic but actually slows his book down and muddies the focus. Had Lasdun kept strictly to the story of he and Nasreen, even while preserving his occasional asides about technology and privacy in our modern age, his story would have been far more interesting, but the book itself would have come in at just under 150 pages--far from a marketable book. Add to this his incessant need to deconstruct and analyze--and to tell us his intentions as he's doing it--makes his story different than most firsthand accounts of stalking, but it also reduces his insight until many of his passages read like those of a cold lit-theory professor looking for something more where there's actually nothing much at all. Nasreen is unstable, clearly and simply, but Lasdun wants it to be more than just that--he wants to see the prisms of her disorder, the historical and personal foundations of her problems, and in trying to understand her he becomes obsessive himself. He is looking for solution by becoming the problem.
It's in this way that his book is one of contradiction. He's a man who wants his privacy and security back but has no problem opening up his private life to the readers of his book. He dismisses Nasreen for e-mails accusing him of stealing and selling her work as the work of others...in a book about her, one that couldn't have existed without her, her work, and her words. In an age of cyber-stalking, cyber-bullying, and unregulated trolling, we're told that acknowledging the troublemakers will only encourage them--it satisfies their need for validation and attention--which is precisely the reason why Lasdun ignores her e-mails. This is perhaps the greatest contradiction of all--a man who ignores his stalker, who follows the standard procedures for dealing with an obsessive contact, and then undermines all of it by writing her into a book. In an age of e-mails that come and go, destined to appear and disappear with the same regularity and impact, Lasdun has written his villain into a book that will last--a bridge on which Nasreen can cross back and forth forever.
This review originally published at
There Will Be Books Galore
At the heart of Lasdun's book is where these two dichotomous islands are bridged together--namely, in the solitary obsession of a graduate student named Nasreen. An Iranian immigrant, Nasreen enters James' world as a shy but promising student in his college creative writing class; years later, after reuniting over Nasreen's developing novel, she becomes fixated on him, first in a playfully flirtatious way, then with increasing directness, until he must rebuff her advances. She seems embarrassed and regretful, but the e-mails soon become more aggressive and more frequent, culminating in multiple e-mails a day filled with accusations of sexual impropriety, racism, sexism, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Soon, Nasreen's web expands to include Lasdun's agent, publisher, colleagues, and former employers, to the point where his very life is dominated by the fear inspired by her e-mails, which are sent from hundreds of miles away. Nasreen never calls, and he never calls her--in fact, he doesn't reply to her e-mails after a certain point, which does little to stem their anger or slow their frequency. They live on those dichotomous islands--he in the land of slow-paced and emotionless texts, of college lectures and ancient tomes and print publications, she in a fast-paced land of obsession that can be dispatched at the press of a button. But they are, paradoxically, as close as two people could possibly be.
Eventually, Nasreen takes to posting anonymous comments, submitting critical reviews of his book, and impersonating others, including Lasdun himself, in the hopes of destroying him, both personally and professionally. And she does all of this digitally, using e-mail and online booksellers and discussion boards to attack from a distance that protects her both physically and legally. (You start to believe that, were Lasdun to confront her in person, she would crumble--the kind of person who uses the distance and anonymity of the internet more defensively than offensively.) Lasdun goes to the FBI, but they do nothing. He goes to his local police, but they can offer little. Even a specialist in stalking crimes to whom Lasdun is referred leads nowhere but a weak phone call and some heartless warnings. He's lost to a world that he cannot control--in fact, no one can control the online world, not even Nasreen herself--and throughout the book, we see our helpless victim slowly resigning himself to the understanding that, no, there's no way he can fight this onslaught.
At the same time, Lasdun tells us about himself at length--his research, his family vacations, his own novels, one of which bears striking coincidences to his own life at the time--a narrative choice that may have been included to make our writer more sympathetic but actually slows his book down and muddies the focus. Had Lasdun kept strictly to the story of he and Nasreen, even while preserving his occasional asides about technology and privacy in our modern age, his story would have been far more interesting, but the book itself would have come in at just under 150 pages--far from a marketable book. Add to this his incessant need to deconstruct and analyze--and to tell us his intentions as he's doing it--makes his story different than most firsthand accounts of stalking, but it also reduces his insight until many of his passages read like those of a cold lit-theory professor looking for something more where there's actually nothing much at all. Nasreen is unstable, clearly and simply, but Lasdun wants it to be more than just that--he wants to see the prisms of her disorder, the historical and personal foundations of her problems, and in trying to understand her he becomes obsessive himself. He is looking for solution by becoming the problem.
It's in this way that his book is one of contradiction. He's a man who wants his privacy and security back but has no problem opening up his private life to the readers of his book. He dismisses Nasreen for e-mails accusing him of stealing and selling her work as the work of others...in a book about her, one that couldn't have existed without her, her work, and her words. In an age of cyber-stalking, cyber-bullying, and unregulated trolling, we're told that acknowledging the troublemakers will only encourage them--it satisfies their need for validation and attention--which is precisely the reason why Lasdun ignores her e-mails. This is perhaps the greatest contradiction of all--a man who ignores his stalker, who follows the standard procedures for dealing with an obsessive contact, and then undermines all of it by writing her into a book. In an age of e-mails that come and go, destined to appear and disappear with the same regularity and impact, Lasdun has written his villain into a book that will last--a bridge on which Nasreen can cross back and forth forever.
This review originally published at
There Will Be Books Galore
wordnerdy's review against another edition
3.0
http://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2013/02/2013-book-45.html
jembrickner's review against another edition
2.0
The first 1/3 of this book is very engaging. I was interested in what had happened and the story-telling is very specific, which, when I'm reading about the events that transpired, is helpful. I'd like to know every detail. But, that same specificity is daunting in the last 2/3 of the book when the author is speaking much less about the actual events and more about other ideas [loosely for the reader, possibly; certainly for me] connected to being stalked. I lost interest during the second part and struggled to get through the last section of the book. It was ok, but I can't enthusiastically recommend it to the average reader.
ramonamead's review
2.0
I was really interested in this book but quit about a third of the way in. The first part was good, then the material got too dense to follow plus the audio book narrator was practically monotone, which made it feel like I was listening to a text book.
bugfriend's review
reflective
slow-paced
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Antisemitism, Bullying, and Stalking
Moderate: Sexism, Misogyny, Racism, and Sexual assault
Minor: Colonisation, Drug use, Genocide, Hate crime, and Infidelity
chicagoliz's review
2.0
This wasn't really a "story," as there is no real resolution. The book is overwritten and excessively wordy. It diverges into numerous tangential rumination, which has nothing to do with the issue of Nasreen's "stalking" of the author. As others have pointed out, it is really difficult to assess the accuracy of this book, as it is so extremely one side, and it reads as more of a justification of his side of what has transpired.
Given that he's a creative writing professor, I'm more puzzled as to why he didn't simply incorporate all of this into a novel. Especially where he writes that he would have loved to have put in an earlier episode from his life where he suffers from a collapsed lung. Had he written a novel, he absolutely could have done that. And it would have given him an opportunity to write a story that has closure (whereas I realize that when he wrote his own story there had not yet been any.)
This was a disappointment.
Given that he's a creative writing professor, I'm more puzzled as to why he didn't simply incorporate all of this into a novel. Especially where he writes that he would have loved to have put in an earlier episode from his life where he suffers from a collapsed lung. Had he written a novel, he absolutely could have done that. And it would have given him an opportunity to write a story that has closure (whereas I realize that when he wrote his own story there had not yet been any.)
This was a disappointment.