Sunday, June 29

Switch Hitters

Only seven authors have ever have reached No. 1 on both the fiction and non-fiction New York Times Bestseller lists. They are:
  • Ernest Hemingway
  • John Steinbeck
  • William Styron
  • Irving Wallace
  • Dr. Seuss
  • Mitch Albom
  • Jimmy Buffett

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is your misspelling of Jimmy Buffett's name a subtle comment on how much you despise the man, the music?

Johnny said...

Heh. No, just another reflection of the amount of care and effort I put into this site. Also, I'm almost always distracted by buffets.

Fixed!

Actually, I think Margaritaville is a pretty misunderstood work, and sorta genius. It begins by describing what seems like a beach bum paradise, but as the song goes on, we see the singer's situation as a sort of static hell where nothing ever changes and the singer is stuck, unmoored yet somehow fixed. And worst of all: "I know it's my fault."

Unfortunately, I don't think this point has been picked up on by most of the song's fans. And then, weirdly, Buffett himself seems to have forgotten it as well, and embraced the beach bum lifestyle wholeheartedly with none of the reservations his younger self had shown.