But Flanagan really nailed it by using her own life and the secret lives of a particular set of mothers, to put Couric, and the Today show, in context. As the piece proceeds, Flanagan basically argues that in becoming a news anchor, Couric may have actually taken a step down. And then, in Jay-Z-like fashion, she gives Klein his half-a-bar:
You're not really a huge power broker of the female variety until some bitchy man writes a nasty biography of you, a literary pap smear meant at once to diagnose and humiliate. Edward Klein, the sort of writer who prefers a book-jacket photo to show him nuzzling a tough-looking canine, would seem the man for the job. Like his earlier book about Hillary Clinton, and like Christopher Byron's book on Martha Stewart and Jerry Oppenheimer's book on Barbara Walters, Klein's Katie: The Real Story proceeds from the notion that of all the forces responsible for his subject's protean success, the least significant is actual talent. According to this logic, the star's fortunes depend entirely on how "nice" her female fans believe her to be; the idea that these famous women might have some expertise or ability of greater value to viewers than the mere force of their apparent pleasantness seems never to occur to these writers.Anyway, I say all this to note that I was, at the time I read this, struggling to write a review of a book which I thought had little merit, but deserved some sort of response. This piece helped me find a way. I know in this new-fangled age, the young whipper-snappers no longer dream of writing long hauls in places like the Atlantic. But if a few of you are out there and you still do indeed dream, that Flanagan piece is really a great place to start.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
"using her own life and the secret lives of a particular set of mothers"
Caitlin Flanagan? Get the hell outta here.
I have to say, I really appreciate Caitlin Flanagan. She does sporadically bust out ridiculous sentiments that kind of leave me flabbergasted and uncomfortable, but she always makes me think and on the sentence level, she's quite interesting. I know liberals and feminists are supposed to hate her, but I think she defies easy partisan classification. I just like that she's never boring.
I once saw a review of a John Grisham novel (probably "The Client") that essentially said "John Grisham is not as much to blame for this book as is a society that would accept it as an artistic creation."
Gramsci,
At least read the piece and comment on it.
Caitlin Flanagan is a great writer of a particular mommy subset that occasionally drives me nuts. ("I'm fortunate to be home with my boys and not do any work." "You're writing for the friggin' Atlantic, methinks most of us call that work.") (Loh is my favorite in that subgenre. She passed on the observation a few months back that the sort of people writing about women, family, and work--college professors, writers, editors, think tankers, journalists--have exactly the sort of mentally engaging, can do at home, flexible work that makes combining work and young children more appealing.)
I must confess that the two types of reviews (book or movie) that I enjoy the most are the ones that love or hate a work. A good lambasting, expertly delivered, is a joy.
I think a more interesting list would be the worst journalism of 2008. There are just too many candidates for that one, though.
I will never forget a segment on "Today" about the Ricki Lake show-- Bryant Gumbel was introducing Katie, and used "go, Katie, go Katie" instead of the "go, Ricki" chant the Ricki Lake guests used to use. If looks could've killed, she would have slaughtered him.
I didn't like the Nightly News format with Katie Couric, but I'm still not sure how much of that was Katie and how much her network, who clearly wanted the show to be 'nicer' than the old Dan Rather show. I can't help but be grateful, in an odd way, to Sarah Palin, who may well have saved Katie's career.
I think I'm rambling by now, but what a great piece, and so accurate about how she jumped just as the media scene was changing, never to return to what it was.
Seems to me that a pretty high percentage of book reviews in the Atlantic, The New Republic, etc., are really just extended essays about a topic which is suggested by the book, with an eventually nodding to convention in the last segment by pulling in the tenuous connection and writing a paragraph or two which actually mentions the book itself. (These essays are often quite interesting, but they are in general pretty poor at the claimed job of reviewing the book in question, IMO.)
So maybe your problem with the review was that you were being too conscientious about trying to engage the book itself.
That was a great article. Seems every time I come across one of her longer pieces I find myself telling people they have to read it.
You know who was always on the money in the Atlantic and I haven't seen in a long time? William Langewiesche. Where did he go?
wow... that packed an emotional wallop, especially the last sentence. i have to agree with Doug T, however - i came in expecting a book review, and the little mini-sidebar or whatever you call it said that's what it was (the box that has the book's title, author, and publisher written in it) but instead i got a meditation on what the book's subject meant to the author, with the book not being mentioned until like the third of four pages.
That's not to say the meditation itself was uninteresting, however - Flanagan is obviously a skilled and thoughtful writer, and I otherwise wouldn't have paid any attention to Katie Couric.
Doug T, that leads to a more interesting question-- do we have to give every book the same level of attention? If the book itself is flat and lame, are we better off talking about the bigger picture? I think in this case we almost certainly were.
@agentzero
William Langewiesche jumped ship for Vanity Fair a couple years ago.
I loved that piece and the fact that much of it wasn't about the book, but rather the subject of the book and her connection to it, is precisely what made it so insightful and great.
As for TC's statement that I know in this new-fangled age, the young whipper-snappers no longer dream of writing long hauls in places like the Atlantic. I'm not a young whipper-snapper but I still dream of writing a "long haul" somewhere, sometime.
This is her second take-down of a hatchet-job biography. Her first was of the Martha Stewart book she mentioned in the quote. Noting that the author simultaneously complains of Martha's obsession with thread-count and scratchy sheets in Martha Housewares, Flanagan notes that the sheets were scratchy "because of the thread count, you idiot." That is both a direct quote from the article and my favorite sentence in The Atlantic.
I always imagined Caitlin Flanagan coming to my home city on a book tour, and me requesting that quote as a signature. Never happened, alas.
I don't know why liberals and feminists aren't suppose to like Caitlin Flanagan, the first article I've ever read from her was the meditation on the type of books women enjoy via the Twilight phenomenon.
I haven't read the Couric article yet, but Flanagan's writing is incredible.
*And Deborah, I don't know who you are, but if you had a blog I would read it as faithfully as I read TNC'c*
I've been a work-at-home dad for the past two years, though I prefer the term "domestic bad-ass". What Katie Couric was to Ms. Flanagan, Morning Edition on NPR is to me. It doesn't have the same kind of change of tone hour to hour, but I still wrap my mornings around it.
Business news? It's eight minutes to the hour and the kids had better be through with breakfast.
The half hour break? Time for everyone to be dressed and ready for the bus.
I find myself unimpressed with writers like Klein who rely on unnamed sources to get nasty quotes. Both parties need to find some stones and say and print what has consequences.
@Deborah
I hear you on the reviews. I usually make it a point to see a piece where half the people hate it and half love it. Ambivalence is boring. Bad reviews always have the better lines, though. Can you quote a rave review from memory? I bet not.
Dude, Camille Paglia nulls and voids that list. Gave ovah.
While apparently Caitlin Flanagan is a controversial figure to some readers - I have no idea who she is - but I found the entire article, with its adulation about the Today Show cast as a 'family' and lengthy discussion about couch-based emotional bonds the author had formed with Couric, fairly appalling. This just be my contrarianism mixed with my innate distaste for maudlin emotion on live-format television, but I really reacted strongly against it.
My choice quote o' anger:
Ah it's "a casting choice" to comfort boomers huh? Well why don't we just let Regis host the damn things and be done with it. Old folks love him.
No, seriously, why *shouldn't* choosing an anchor be a journalistic choice? Flanagan?
Flanagan is a great writer; I know this because so many people I know (either knowingly or unknowingly) thoroughly disagree with her on many an issue, but thoroughly enjoy her work. If the GOP could find a woman this whip-smart and witty to carry the mantle of social conservatism--instead of that abomination they rolled out this past Fall--they would be on to something. Then again, the few times I've seen Flanagan interviewed or submitting video dispatches, the effect hasn't been the same. That aside aside, as a father of a little girl, I hang on Caitlin's every word when it comes to her thoughts on what makes young women tick. Her recent review of 'Twilight' had me in tears at times in her analysis of the transition from girlhood to teendom. Ultimately, I think I've managed to categorize the ways I follow her advice (or not) into the psychological and the prescriptive: I pay rapt attention to her psychological takes, but her perception on how to handle/follow through on some of those issues tends to give me pause (as I get the impression she leans toward a more cloistered version of handling a given problem).
And I'm with Deborah with regard to Loh--she vivisects conventional wisdom so deftly, that you wonder why anyone ever adopted the original position in the first place. Her plea for a migration back to the public schools by the best and brightest in their respective neighborhoods was fantastic. She and Flanagan are the two best authors in circulation these days writing about motherhood (at least in this father's opinion).
This is the best Flanagan piece I've ever read. Her use of her own life in this case was more engaging, and less defensive, than I have found it before (her description of her college dorm conveys how I've previously found her to relate to the things she writes about-- exasperated and cutting). In fact, her experience with Today explains a lot about her previous writing-- how it looks at the culture wars, how feminists and mothers are viewed, etc.
Thanks for pointing this piece out, TNC.
Flanagan's pieces are a paradox -- bearable in inverse proportion to the number of I-statements per paragraph. That narcissism often obscures what she does well, her spot-on characterizations and insights (as in this piece).
I'm also aware that others here love CF precisely for those I-statements, so what do I know?
-- C
p.s. I also think some of the anger against Flanagan in the blogosphere once derived from her brief tenure as a staff writer for the New Yorker, which usually comes only after a more considerable body of achievement.
Scottstev, I remember that Martha writeup! And specifically the thread count issue. Because, while I can't stand Martha Stewart, I don't read or watch her, a solution that has not occurred to millions of Martha-haters.
Sean, good definition of Flanagan's effect.
Gramsci,
Applause. Seriously, applause. You didn't have to read it.
TNC - "Peach Cobbler after a blunt"? Haha, I knew there was a reason I liked reading your shit so much. You're a man after my own heart!
Also, I definitely want to write long-form at some point, but I've decided to get into this writing thing another way. Long-form from the bottom up doesn't pay shit. (As I'm sure you're aware.)
Oh, fine, I'll bite: does a literary pap smear diagnose literary cervical cancer or the regular kind? Because I do not think it means what you think it means.
I thought she was a bit unfair to Deborah Norville (I mean maybe she was an overly ambitious witch but somehow her being "the villain" pretty much always felt too pat to me) but otherwise a good article.
"Peach cobbler after a blunt good." Wow. I am stealing that one, but I will cite to you. That is one of the best turns of phrase I have read in ever.
What's great about Flanagan (besides her way around a sentence) is that she's really, really square, but tremendously insightful about the inner life of squares. That's not a perspective we often get in good writers, as few writers are as square and as good as Flanagan, but as a whole lot of the people in this world are very square, she can be tremendously useful.
What's annoying about Flanagan is her tendency to think that every woman on earth is also a straight-outta-1961 square like she is, and those who appear not to be are either terribly damaged or concealing their true nature to impress boys.
She's not the first writer to be at once genuinely terrific and incredibly blinkered. But as she tends to wade into gender-essentialist topics that make people really touchy, she gets more (largely deserved) flak for it.