Yeah, it's this guy again. Film criticism has apparently having lost its luster, he has chosen a new subject on which to pontificate. And it is... is... Well, I'm not sure what it is. Some kind of wafty, etherish blither about "spiritual planes" and "billions of dimensions" and some more stuff about science, or at least a (not very convincing) facsimile thereof. He reads here just like that scene in Animal House where the professor and the two college kids are smoking pot and waxing philosophic about tiny little solar systems in their thumbnails.
But I'm not going to get down on him for having silly new-agey ideas. I'd much rather kick him in the shins for writing about it and then posting it where people could read it and then get a really bad headache. I wonder about this guy -- and more, I wonder about all these Constant Readers he apparently has. I keep coming upon blog posts by Easterbrook fans who were shockedyesshocked at his recent verbal faux pas, wherein they keep flogging his otherwise killah mad writing skilz. But everytime I am introduced to yet another instance of Easterbrook prose I am struck by his adamantine mediocrity. Oh well -- I had never heard of him before, and I haven't read everything he's written. Maybe he saves his genius for his sports columns, or whatever it is he is best known for. Maybe he needs to stick to sports.
(PS: yes, I know it's just a post on a blog -- a blog his bosses at TNR set up for him and pay him to post to -- and I know that blog posts that jump all over the place and contain non-sequiturs, idle musings, and such are the rule rather than the exception, but where is the evidence of talent that should at least occasionally break through the anti-writer's block exercise that this blog/column thing of his resembles?)
(Via inappropriate response.)
Posted by Andrea Harris at October 31, 2003 09:53 PM"Adamantine mediocrity;" I love that phrase.
Posted by: Michael Lonie at November 1, 2003 at 05:32 PMEasterbrook's habitually written about religion and religious issues throughout his professional career. In fact, that's one of the things that got him into trouble last month; he's so used to talk about Christian, Jewish, and related issues while talking about other issues that he probably didn't think much about it when he took some to task in Hollywood for what he saw as a spiritual failing.
I'm no great fan of his, and actually love Tarantino's films and the kind of movies he deplores. I've never thought of him as an especially great writer.
Posted by: Dean Esmay at November 2, 2003 at 06:29 AMI think I might be one of the few people on earth who feels no pity whatsoever for that guy. I don't hate him; I just don't see why everyone was horrified he got fired. Of course he got fired! News flash: Making derogatory remarks about a guy who is essentially your boss will earn you that ticket. Yet somehow, Eisner was supposed to appreciate that Easterbrook wrote what he did in an outside publication, and therefore not count it against him? Please. I have too many friends who have been fired for far less to care about ESPN sacking the guy.
Um. That had nearly nothing to do with your post. I'm sorry. I'll crawl off now.
Posted by: ilyka at November 2, 2003 at 11:20 AM