I'm the author of the memoir SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME, which was published June 2nd by Algonquin Books. It's a classic American story about moving to New York City to become a writer, and then getting sucked into the whirlwind of a generation spiraling out of control. You can order it now at amazon , powells or barnes & noble . If you live in NYC, you can buy signed copies at 192 Books or the legendary Gotham Book Mart . For detailed information including a list of readings and events please visit www.davidgoodwillie.com .ABOUT THE BOOK:
From its NASDAQ-fuelled heyday to the tragic hours of 9/11, the provocative and mindblowing story of Manhattan in its most recent golden age comes to life in David Goodwillie's exhilerating new memoir, SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME.
Filled with art, sports and culture, and littered with sex, drugs, and celebrity, Goodwillie's tale is a classic American story: With naive aspirations of literary renown, a young man moves to New York City. He arrives at the dawn of a decadent new age that celebrates youth and rewards dreamers with riches beyond imagining. But eight jobs later, he learns that success comes at a heavy price.
After his attempt to make it in professional baseball, Goodwillie arrives in Manhattan in 1995 and begins a journey through a series of implausible careers. He becomes a private investigator but has no talent for finding anyone; a writer for America's leading sports auction house; and then a journalist who exposes the mafia, only to become their newest target. Even when he breaks through as the most unlikely of experts at Sotheby's, he's soon lured away by the promise of Internet millions...only to find that he's missed the biggest party of all.
SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME teems with the temptations and contradictions of New York itself: tenements and penthouses, one-night stands and serious romances, gratuitous success and crashing failure. With a good measure of innocence and irony, Goodwillie takes readers on a quixotic search for meaning--the struggle to lead a creative, worthwhile life--and offers a memorable tale propelled by wit, humor, and a finely tuned sense of style. In his struggle to become a big-city writer, Goodwillie has become something much more: an important voice of the lost generation he so eloquently depicts.
REVIEWS:"...A compelling account of life in Manhattan in the late 90's golden days before the towers fell. The former minor league ballplayer and aspiring writer chronicles his stints as private eye, investigative reporter, and sports expert at Sotheby's auction house with verve and wit but also insight into this country's proclivities." -- The Seattle Post-Intelligencer [Read the full review]
"In his exuberant and rollicking first memoir, Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, David Goodwillie sinks his teeth into the New York City of the late '90s...[It's] a memoir that restores lighness, honesty and enthusiasm to the genre." -- The New York Post [Read the full interview]
"[Goodwillie's] fluid writing a gift for dialogue make the book a clever, compelling, page turner" -- The Washington Post [Read the full review]
"A chatty, earnest, hilarious, and addictive account of what it was to be young last decade." -- Esquire.com [Read the full review]
"Goodwillie writes with wit and sober hindsight about life among the young dot-commers who were outearning their parents and fluent in the mechanics of stock options before attending their first college reunion." — Newsweek [Read the interview]
"A candid story about good luck, bad decisions, and missed opportunities...[Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time] is a revealing document of an electric, proposterous moment that slipped away as fast as the NASDAQ fell." -- Chicago Reader (Critic's Choice) [Read the full review]
"An honest (and often earnest) record of a young person's experience coming to the city and thrashing about in its sea of opportunities...Mr. Goodwillie is an endearing narrator." -- The New York Sun [Read the full review]
"In his breakout first book, Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, a breathless, humor-tinged account of postcollegiate life in the fast lane, David Goodwillie takes an unflinching look back at life in New York City during [the 90s]." — Elle [Read the full review]
"[S]mart, finely tuned storytelling... A memoir of bilious excess, related with humor and just the right amount of acidic sadness." — Kirkus Reviews [Read the full review]
"In sharing his career and relationship struggles, Goodwillie does more than just recount personal anecdotes—he reflects critically, yet ultimately affectionately, on the nature of American society." — Library Journal [Read the full review]
PRAISE:
David Goodwillie has written an astonishingly entertaining book about ... hell, the price of ambition? The vagaries of love? The essence of youth? Sure, all of those things, and a few dozen more, wound together brilliantly in a rollicking tale that is laugh-out-loud funny and, somehow, fiercely poetic. A wondrous debut. - Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics
In Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, David Goodwillie casts himself as the classic innocent in the scary-absurd big city. It's a hell of a ride, with a wry, sure-handed narrator at the wheel. - David Gates, author of Jernigan
Not just a memoir, Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time is a painful and witty evocation of a very specific collective delusion called New York in the Nineties. - Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land
Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time reminds me of the person I never was, and makes me miss him. - Stephen Graham Jones, author of Demon Theory
In Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, David Goodwillie presents a beautifully layered self-portrait--last-ditch jobs and wise women, parties and loss and artistic revelation--that is also a portrait of a city that didn't yet fathom it was young and innocent, didn't dream in all its full-blast boogie that it might be vulnerable, the last New York before 9/11. - Bill Roorbach, author of Temple Stream
David Goodwillie gives us a lively---and elegantly written---account of a want-to-be writer's knockabout adventures in the Manhattan of the 90's: parties, sketchy jobs, crappy apartments, friendships that come and go, gratuitous success, looming failure. And something more: belated, hard-earned arrival at what might pass for wisdom. - P.F. Kluge, author of Eddie & The Cruisers and Alma Mater
Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time examines life on the Big CIty Success Make from every angle but straight ahead. By the end of David Goodwillie's sweet and sour, funny and sad memoir, you'll have felt and experienced every high and low he has. - Ron McLarty, author of The Memory of Running
