Things were too good to be true for our merry band of readers. We’re back to the “stinker” books again. “Bliss” is the type of book that makes us ask, “Why are we reading a travel book? And no Dave Barry or Bill Bryson either – why such a boring and unfunny book?”
Eric Weiner is not a writer
He is a man who has leveraged his opportunities to their maximum potential. My hat’s off to him; he’s squeezed the last drop of ink out of his pen. This is his one “book,” and I assume his last. His lone claim to “fame” is ten years at NPR. But wait, the “R” in NPR stands for radio, an auditory art focussed on current events; no writing, no reflection, no comedy, no basis for this publication. As Eric says, “NPR were the best years of my life.” Now he’s too young to be “recapturing his youth”; maybe he just missed the expense account travel money.
His approach to covering a topic is irritatingly, repetitively formulaic: a dash of old NPR vignette; a liberal lambasting of the locals and their culture; a heaping pile of rubbish about happiness; with seasoning to tasteless, poorly researched facts and figures; topped off with a large dollop of shallow reflection. Did I say yet that he was boring?
Eric Weiner is not a philosopher.
Eric strikes me as the kind of a guy who enjoys traveling and has hoisted many a local libation getting his story. One aspect of his writing “style” is to ask himself rhetorical questions, or worse yet, for variety I suppose, have a friend ask him the leading question. This is how he ferrets out the truth of a situation.
Eric is full of pronouncements, like, “Europe is intrinsically interesting.” He is saying this because of the “warrens of narrow streets and alleys.” Hello Cairo, Tokyo, Jerusalem, Hong Kong, Beijing, or Bombay. It’s large, old cities than are intrinsically interesting, Eric, the world over. Eric gives full credit to the Swiss for rueing envy on the path to happiness, while this is a major tenet of almost all religions and philosophies, like Buddhist thought or the old testament’s tenth commandment.
Eric Weiner is not a commedian.
Eric does actually stoop to a low point of telling a fart joke and at the heart of triteness uses the old cliché about the English and Americans being separated by a common language.. Maybe I just like the slapstick of Dave Barry – hard to measure up to a travel writer like that. Then again, now that I think about it, my daughter writes a better travel story than Eric Weiner does, http://MyTravelBumBlog.BlogSpot.com . She’s equally as well-traveled, much more insightful, and a lot funnier. Start reading at 2009: December: Permission to enter.
One irritating stylistic quirk of Eric’s is the way he will open a paragraph with what seems to be an interesting vignette or anecdote like meeting Susan and her in-your-face NY style. Then the paragraph dissipates into ramblings about conferences, Perrier, and name tags.
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