Praise for HITS

Martin Hollick reads Heads in the Sand and says "It's great. You may think a book on foreign policy would be dry, but how can you not love an introduction that quotes both Nietzsche and Peanuts?" Indeed, it's actually impossible to avoid loving this book. But to love it, you must buy it. So why not buy a copy today and finally learn to love? And also about how to somewhat misapply Nietzsche in order to mock Tom Friedman.

Meanwhile, Martin thought something I said didn't make sense, but then it was all explained on the very next page because that's how awesome the book is. Incidentally, anyone out there who's reading the book and saying nice things about it on their blog should feel free to email (I'm myglesias at gmail or at theatlantic) me looking for links -- it's win-in.

Also on his blog, I too wonder why musical theater translates so poorly to film. One relevant point may be that animated musical movies seem to me to work much better, but I'm not sure what that gets you exactly.

Comments

You've done a good job of convincing me not to buy your book.

Posted by strasmangelo jones | April 21, 2008 1:22 PM

No offense, but have you even seen a movie musical made before 1961?

Posted by Heretic Alarm | April 21, 2008 1:25 PM

"Meanwhile, Martin thought something I said didn't make sense, but then it was all explained on the very next page because that's how awesome the book is."

Wow, it sounds like your book is just like "Mulholland Drive".

Posted by Njorl | April 21, 2008 1:29 PM

So you are saying that if I borrowed the book from the library I wouldn't love it?

Posted by blah | April 21, 2008 1:30 PM

"Wow, it sounds like your book is just like "Mulholland Drive".

Posted by Njorl | April 21, 2008 1:29 PM"

So his book is an extended lucid masturbation fantasy? If it has a naked Naomi Watts, I'm in.

Posted by Reality Man | April 21, 2008 1:32 PM

I definitely won't borrow the book from the library if the pages are going to be sticky.

Posted by blah | April 21, 2008 1:41 PM

There are a couple of really good movie musicals that didn't come from the theater (Top Hat and Singin' in the Rain) and a couple that came from the theater (Cabaret and Fiddler on the Roof). I think American Graffiti ought to be in there somewhere and probably (wait for it) Mean Streets.

I once thought "Mulholland Drive" made sense to think there was a dumpster filled with magazines from 1948. Then it got rained on. And a windstorm came and blew the dumpster over. Then Lynch came along and picked up the loose pages. And there all these models who illustrated the lurid stories. Always the same models, but sometimes one was the Good Girl and sometimes she'd be the Bad Girl. Stories from 3rd rate writers who wanted to write just like Mickey Spillane or Cornell Woolrich. But the beginning and end of the stories were missing, but it didn't matter because they were crap stories to begin with. More important were the cures for baldness and psoriasis.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | April 21, 2008 1:54 PM

Matt,
Perhaps you should clarify what your Atlantic e-mail address is. The mailto: link next to your bio link says that the address is matthewyglesias@ ... but here you could be read to be saying that it’s myglesias@. But that’s only correct for the gmail account, right?

Posted by jason | April 21, 2008 2:05 PM

Yeah, CABARET, FIDDLER, OLIVER--all great movie musicals that came from the stage. But the best ones--like the Astaire and Kelly musicals--were written for the screen to begin with.

Posted by Steve | April 21, 2008 2:05 PM

Animated movie musicals generally don't start out on the stage, although now that's where they seem to end up (as do John Waters movies, apparently).

Posted by Delicious Pundit | April 21, 2008 2:22 PM

I've always found Nietzsche and Peanuts a problematic philosophical coupling. I prefer Nietzsche and Family Circle.

http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/

Posted by steve duncan | April 21, 2008 2:23 PM

You should pull out the old Dave Barry comment---"Buy my book. Or just send me some money in a box."

Posted by JoshA | April 21, 2008 2:26 PM

That gets you to:
-film is a much more invasive medium than stage, which makes it seem private and realistic;
-musical theatre requires a much higher level of suspension of disbelief than film usually tolerates; -animated movies don't have the illusion of intimacy that "real" film does, and require a pretty high level of suspension of disbelief to begin with, making it much easier to adopt the unrealistic conventions of musical theatre without being jarring.

Posted by Dara | April 21, 2008 3:26 PM

Was the title inspired by Matt's 2003 position on the Iraq war?

Posted by kafka | April 21, 2008 5:12 PM

"it's actually impossible to avoid loving this book."

I do the impossible daily. This was easy.

However, sending all your publisher's run to Hwang Hung Lo's Bookstore on Kim Street in Pyongyang, North Korea - that took some doing. It was hard to find a book store in North Korea.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 21, 2008 5:29 PM

I bought your book, young Matt! I finished it late last night and still had some coffee in me so I stayed up to work on a monster movie.

For a response to Bush, I found you very persuasive on the merits of international institution-ism. However, numbered among those international institutions are institutions like the IMF and World Bank and rounds of trade agreements that, especially in the halcyon Clinton years, were used to limit labor rights and create whole zones of near-slavery. Although you're pro-trade, your recent comments on Penn and Colombia suggest that you know something about this; my main gripe with the book was that international institutions are a way of extending empire by other means, and at time you seem blithely comfortable with that. (Hey, it's better than tanks.)

Posted by Wrongshore | April 21, 2008 7:35 PM

I have often thought that new animations of some classic Broadway shows - Pal Joey, for example - would be a darn good idea.

Posted by Ken Hope | April 22, 2008 10:40 AM

"musical theatre requires a much higher level of suspension of disbelief than film usually tolerates"

I think that's exactly right. People don't go around bursting into song in real life. Therefore, to have people singing in "real-life" settings is somewhat incongruous. Stage settings are less realistic by definition, so the singing doesn't seem as out of place.

Take a look at "Enchanted" (hey, I have young kids and it's a lot of fun). There it works because of the set-up. Giselle is literally a cartoon character brought to life, so it makes sense (within the logic of the movie) that she would go around Central Park singing and dancing, and everyone would join her.

Posted by Dave | April 22, 2008 11:10 AM