Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good
author: Kevin Smith
name: Paul
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2012/04/16
date added: 2012/04/16
shelves: memoir, humor, non-fiction, new-in-2012
review:
Talk about unusual: I just finished Kevin Smith‘s sort of memoir-meets-motivational-self-help-vanity-project in one sitting. This is unusual primarily because having the time to read nearly 250 pages in an evening almost never happens, but it’s also unusual because you might expect that I’d only devour a book this way if it was amazing.
Well, Tough Sh*t isn’t amazing. It’s kind of repetitive, honestly: Smith has an analogy about Wayne Gretzky that he references a half dozen times; he talks a lot about how amazing his wife is; he frequently describes his up-and-down relationship with Harvey Weinstein. Sometimes it feels like the individual chapters were written separately and he’s refreshing readers who are perhaps not privy to earlier discussions about his pet concepts or jokes, but then he’ll do it within pages of each other as well so maybe he just doesn’t have a great editor?
The book is funny, but not in the way that generates actual real-world laughter. It’s sort of effective as a motivational tome, except that he branches off into über-digression an awful lot so the point gets muddled and spread around. There’s some interesting anecdotes, but it’s not riveting.
What Tough Sh*t does do well is capture a tone that set me at ease, coming across like listening to a friend sit in your living room and tell stories. Smith is sort of a strange person to write something akin to self-help because his success seems a bit accidental and he spends so much of the book kind of justifying his work that one gets the impression that even he isn’t quite sure how it all works out for him. He’s smart but he seems to suffer from the same affliction as a lot of people who had just the right mix of serendipity and skill: He assumes that the same lighting can strike for everyone.
Granted, Smith is bright enough to know that’s not the case so he tempers the message a lot and comes up with the core concept that action is king. It’s a bit Nike in its core motivational strategy: Just do it. Of course, it’s easy to say that when the one time he Just Did It without any kind of fallback or failsafe he ended up with the indie hit Clerks. Not everyone is going to do that, so he mumbles something about how success doesn’t matter and skims over the fact that he writes about spending money with the casual nonchalance only someone with plenty of it can afford. I’m not saying its disingenuous, but the book wears enough of its author’s bais and “if I can do it, obviously anyone can” over-simplicity on its sleeve to not ever be in contention for a legitimate life manual.
Which is not to say there isn’t some valuable insight here. The opening chapter, a crassly told case study in how, from a biological perspective, every living human is the result of astronomic odds, is strangely effective in giving perspective on the moral imperative Smith seems to ascribe dream-chasing. He also makes a semi-convincing case for art as a legitimate pursuit and offers some reasonable-sounding practical advice for tempering expectations when pursuing lofty ambition. The biggest thing the book made me reconsider was criticism, which is a bit of a funny thing to say in a critique of his book.
Smith decries criticism, then blasts critics for getting understandably haughty when he stabs at their means of expression, but there’s circular logic going on somewhere (I suspect both sides have valid points). Obviously Smith himself isn’t exempt from criticism: He spends a lengthy chapter describing his run-in on Southwest airlines over his weight and seat accommodations which amounts to a very pointed criticism of that company. He is also unshy about criticizing actors, other movies and business execs in Hollywood, so the sword kind of cuts both ways. But he did make me think about what I do when I review books and movies online. Granted, I don’t get paid to do it and I’m no authority nor do I even have much of a voice, but it does pay to be reminded sometimes that I am publishing my thoughts and opinions online where anyone, including the creative forces behind those works, can see them. Potentially, me saying negative things could be hurtful and it’s worth remembering that while I have every right and justified intention to describe what I personally thought of something or what it made me think about, it’s not really worthwhile or even accurate for me to judge the artistic value of someone else’s work.
That doesn’t mean I should just avoid writing with an empirical tone, only that it’s worth it to remind myself as I discuss what other people are doing by way of self-expression, perhaps some day I may be the target of people like myself who are dissecting what I’m expressing. I would expect those people to be honest about what they think or felt about something creative I did, but much as I wouldn’t want them declaring whether my work is worthy or not, it’s not my place to do so either.
In that spirit, my opinion of Tough Sh*t is that it was half-successful at doing what I suspect it was trying to do. It did make me think some, it was easy to read but ultimately it was probably more for people who are much bigger fans of Mr. Smith than I am. I’m certainly not sorry I read it, but I probably won’t go searching for more.