Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

By David Goodwillie and Tiffany Clarke Harrison

Book Overview

Fresh out of college and following a brief and disastrous stint playing minor league baseball, David Goodwillie moves to New York intent on making his mark as a writer. Arriving in Manhattan in the mid-nineties, Goodwillie quickly falls into one implausible job after another. He becomes a private investigator, imagining himself as a gumshoe, a hired gun--only to realize that he's more adept at bungling cases than at solving them. When, in his stint as a freelance journalist, he unveils the Mafia in a magazine expos?, he succeeds only in becoming a target of their wrath. As a copywriter for a sports auction house, he imagines documenting the great histories hidden in priceless artifacts but finds himself forced to write about a lock of Mickey Mantle's hair. Even when he seems to break through, somehow becoming the sports expert at Sotheby's auction house--appearing on major news networks, raking in a hefty salary--he's lured away by the promise of Internet millions...just in time for the dot-com crash. Teeming with the vibrancy of a city in hyperdrive, Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time recounts a dizzying and enthralling search for authenticity in a cynical, superficial--and suddenly dangerous--age. In his heartbreaking and hilarious struggle to become a big-city writer, Goodwillie becomes something more: an important voice of the lost generation he so elegantly describes.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565124650
• ISBN13: 9781565124653
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Length: 351 Pages
• Weight: 1.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.3" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Thanks for the memories

This is an excellent look at the challenges and uncertainties and opportunities and longing that make being 20-something so interesting and painful and exciting. By examining many of the questions that are universal to that age, this memoir has brought me back to that era of my life. David, thanks for the memories; yours and mine, the good and the bad.

A fascinating read

Highly recommended. Goodwillie's writing paints a detailed, vivid portrait of New York in the 90's. The book details his struggle to change life from something that randomly happens to him to something in which he takes an active role. Funny, absorbing, and entertaining.

This is a great book!

I really enjoyed this book. I couldn't put it down and I read it in two days. There was a TV show years ago called "Time Tunnel" where characters were sent back in time to a specific time and place in history. This book reminds me a little of that show, with David Goodwille the character who has been "beamed" into a time and place to navigate the cultural landscape. The time is the 1990s. The place is New York. Only this is not fiction - this is real. You love this book if you have any interest in the world of baseball collectibles or big time auctions. You will also love this book if you have even a passing interest in the cultural changes of the 1990s and the "dot-com" boom. And you will love this book if you have any interest in laughing - because this is a VERY funny book. It is also a book that has many other dimensions. I remember reading a commentary regarding recorded history that noted that ancient history was easy to appreciate. It's in books, it's taught in schools, and everyone sort of agrees about so much of the distant past, which has little to do with our day-to-day lives. "Future history" that is current news - all that goes on around us today in real time - is readily available to us by TV reporting, newspapers, magazines, the Internet, etc. We see it and we live it. But the recent past - that is different. That is our blind spot, and the significance and context of relatively recent history can often be lost. A talented and perceptive writer can sometimes hit the mark and bring this recent history into focus, and David Goodwillie has done just that, using his own life experiences as a vehicle. This book is a treat. At different times it reminded me of "Catch Me If You Can," "Wall Street," and "How To Succeed In Business," and at other times it was more like "Seinfeld." It is time capsule of the 1990s, a great read - and VERY funny!

The best memoir I've read since "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius"...

I can't say enough good things about this book. Goodwillie is a massively talented writer, and his ability to expertly distill the energy and pitch of New York in the late 90s is astounding. This is the first book I've read that attempts to make some sense of that era -- when kids just out of college were earning more than their parents and it seemed like the good times really never would end -- and it does a magnificent job. I moved to New York about a year after Goodwillie did, and while I can't claim to have held the same variety of exciting jobs he did, I found a number parallels between our New York experiences, and it's a testament to Goodwillie's abilities as a writer that I think the same will be true of anyone (of any age) who's ever dreamed of making it in the big city -- in any big city.

Keen Observations and Insights from a Talented Writer

David Goodwillie's memoir of life in New York City after college is the perfect read for anyone aged 21, 51, or 81 that doesn't know what they want to do when they grow up but truly loves trying to figure it out. Reading David's book, which is chock full of episodes that are at once poignant and humorous, took me back to a time in my own life after college when the world was less about the daily grind and more about exploring and experiencing what's out there. My favorite authors have always been the ones who take me by the hand and invite me into their world, and Goodwillie is a truly inviting and engaging host. Thanks for the trip, David, and keep on writing!