I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel, by David Shields, Caleb Powell
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I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel, by David Shields, Caleb Powell
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Caleb Powell always wanted to become an artist, but he overcommitted to life; his former professor David Shields always wanted to become a human being, but he overcommitted to art. The stay-at-home dad (three young girls) and the workaholic writer (eighteen books) head to the woods to spend four days together in a cabin, arguing life vs. art.
I Think You’re Totally Wrong is an impassioned, funny, probing, fiercely inconclusive, nearly-to-the-death debate. Shields and Powell talk about everything—marriage, family, sports, sex, happiness, drugs, death, betrayal, and (of course) writers and writing—in the name of exploring and debating their central question: the lived life versus the examined life. There are no teachers or students here, no interviewers or interviewees, no masters of the universe—only a chasm of uncertainty, in a dialogue that remains dazzlingly provocative and entertaining from start to finish.
James Franco’s film adaptation of I Think You’re Totally Wrong, starring the authors, premiered in 2015.
- Sales Rank: #1233722 in Books
- Brand: Shields, David/ Powell, Caleb
- Published on: 2015-09-01
- Released on: 2015-09-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.98" h x .78" w x 5.16" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 272 pages
Review
“Outrageously entertaining . . . a warm, funny, and charming book that questions not only what it means to live for art, but what it means to live.”—Saul Austerlitz, Boston Globe
"Hugely entertaining."—John Murawski, Raleigh News & Observer
“A daring descent into the ‘chasm of uncertainty.’”—Matt Seidel, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Start reading I Think You’re Totally Wrong, then try to stop; I dare you. It screws with your head in a way you can’t shake off, and it’s moving—weirdly moving. It ruined my work day. I loved it. Shields is opening up new ways to be a writer.”—Walter Kirn
“I Think You’re Totally Wrong helped make sense of the strange rigors of life as I know it—the balancing of art, work, motherhood, along with enough time to have those moments of adventure or inspiration so that the pleasure of art still feels filled with life, a sort of Proust versus Conrad question many writers or artists know. The book’s arc is seamless, deceptive, effective: by its close, the reader feels an antinarrative resolution, a sense that everyone leaves a bit more alive from the exchange.”—Edie Meidav, The Rumpus
“The premise of the book could easily play as straight farce: two self-involved and argumentative men argue with each other about . . . themselves. Often in a hot tub. ('You said you wanted homoerotic tension,' Powell says to Shields. 'Were you hitting on me?') But what unfolds is actually quite gripping, and they’re well aware of the farcical qualities. Not only do we witness personal experiences conscripted into intellectual work; we witness these disclosures getting heard and processed. In the end, the form of the book is more illuminating than any resolution the authors find to their central conflict. Shields and Powell offer a different vision of how the confessional might play out: rather than baring their psychic flesh for the sake of exposure and intimacy (‘You said you wanted homoerotic tension’), they are excavating complexities inside their experiences. . . . Shields and Powell have generated a ‘lived’ creative inquiry with its roots in the conflict between living and creating. ‘Art can serve people,’ Shields declares. ‘Basically, the royal road to salvation, for me, lies through an artist saying very uncompromising things about himself. And through reading that relentless investigation, the reader will understand something surprising about himself.’ This notion of investigation offers an alternative to confession. Its goal isn’t sympathy or forgiveness. Life is not personal. Life is evidence. It’s fodder for argument. To put the ‘I’ to work this way invites a different intimacy—not voyeuristic communion but collaborative inquiry, author and reader facing the same questions from inside their inevitably messy lives.”—Leslie Jamison, The Atlantic
“Provocative . . . entertaining . . . diverting.”—Kurt Rabin, Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star
“The two longtime pals disagree on marriage, religion, sex, politics, happiness, film—and everything else—with passion, insight, and panache.”—Lisa Shea, Elle
“A fascinating reality-show romp of a new book.”—Davis Schneiderman, Huffington Post
"A provocative, two-sided story.”—TimeOut New York
“Impassioned, funny, probing.—BookForum
“Intelligent and erudite.”—Kevin O’Kelly, Christian Science Monitor
“Raw, unflinching honesty. Seemingly no subject is taboo here.”—Philip Eil, Jewish Daily Forward
“A celebrated new book.”—Jewish Journal
“By turns funny, philosophically engaging, and emotionally revealing.”—Doug Childers, Richmond Times-Dispatch
“A worthy and important addition to the genre [book-in-dialogue], this casual conversation pushes readers to rethink fundamental questions about life and art.”—Publishers Weekly
“A stimulating intellectual interaction with lots of heart.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Shields and Powell approach their topics with clarity and wit, they poke and prod, they agree and disagree . . . an often contentious and always intelligent dialogue.”—Mark Levine, Booklist
“How cool is this?”—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
“A fierce and funny debate about life and art.”—Type Books
“An impassioned, contentious, and ultimately contentious yet entertaining look at age-old debates about the life of the artist.”—Kevin Larimer, Poets & Writers
“I read this book at compulsive speed, thoroughly engaged by the weekend and the argument—its unbuttoned fluency and candor. I’m envious of the sheer loquaciousness of the conversation and its no-holds-barred freedom (of speech). Both Shields and Powell have their own style of eloquence. The Art v. Life theme may have been the essential trigger for the book, but it becomes engrossing on a score of other fronts.” —Jonathan Raban
“There’s a sense that we can actually see David and Caleb talking, even though, obviously, we can’t. It’s like eavesdropping on a riveting debate/conversation, and sometimes one takes one side, sometimes the other. One of the things I love most about the book is the tennis-match-in-slow-motion quality of the arguments, which made me question where I stand on the choices I might have made, and even continue to make.” —Susan Daitch
“This deeply personal book is a success. It’s quite daring in its confessional parts. Confession makes sense only when it costs something, when it’s courting disaster; I found that risk-taking in this book, and it’s bracing.” —Peter Brooks
“Most writers editing a taped conversation would cut all the stuff around the ‘point’—in this case, an argument about life and art—but it’s the way in which the conversation about life and art is entwined with the details of the two men’s lives and personalities that makes I Think You’re Totally Wrong so artful. A fascinating, fantastic book.” —Melanie Thernstrom
“I don’t think there’s anything quite like this book, which is way more authentic than fiction or structured argument. It held my attention from start to finish, the narrative line is strong, the characters are developed in an intriguing way, it made me laugh hard dozens of times, and not necessarily at the jokes. The quarrel never turns into false drama because it doesn’t need to.”—Brian Fawcett
About the Author
David Shields is the internationally bestselling author of twenty books, including Reality Hunger (named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (New York Times bestseller), and Black Planet (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award); Other People: Takes and Mistakes is forthcoming from Knopf in February 2017. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and two NEA fellowships, Shields has published essays and stories in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Esquire, Yale Review, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney’s, and Believer. His work has been translated into twenty languages.
Caleb Powell grew up in the Pacific Northwest, has played bass in a band, worked construction, and spent ten years teaching ESL and studying foreign languages on six continents. Now a stay-at-home father in Seattle, he has published stories and essays in The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, Pleiades, and Whiskey Island Magazine.
Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
More Powell v. Shields than Life v. Art
By S. McGee
First, a pop quiz. How familiar are you with David Foster Wallace? With the works of David Markson? With Eula Bliss -- NOT On Immunity: An Inoculation or even Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays but The Balloonists? How comfortable do you feel with statements such as, "at some point philosophical ambiguity becomes moral cowardice", or "you haven't learned to wire the investigation through the central intelligence agency of your own sensibility"? If you're cool with all the above, and you love My Dinner with Andre (The Criterion Collection) and Spalding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia, you're an above-average candidate to fall for this book. Otherwise, you may want to hit the pause button, and consider the merits of borrowing it from a library before committing yourself to a purchase decision.
It's an interesting enough book, and reading it is a bit like being a fly on the wall as two guys that you don't know very well -- and aren't altogether sure that you have all that much in common with (in my case) hang out and talk about everything from their wives and kids and families and traumas (Caleb Powell has more stories, as befits the "life" side of the argument, involving everything from a near death experience in his late teens to encounters with transvestites in the South Pacific) to literature. David Shields, Powell's one-time writing instructor, is a much-published and much-lauded writer; Powell, a little published stay-at-home dad to three daughters who earns about a tenth of what Shields does, and Shields isn't averse from occasionally reminding him, as a way to score points and end the debate, that he is successful and Powell isn't.
It's a free-flowing conversation, which rambles and occasionally captures an interesting insight or thought. For instance. at one point Powell challenges Shields' reluctance to engage with those who aren't part of his "club". "Stuff like this makes me wonder if you even want to understand people at 'ground level'," he challenges his erstwhile teacher. He goes on to point out that while many Americans don't read literary works, "they're not all morons." And, he adds, "Why would they read David Shields if David Shields if David Shields doesn't want to hang out with them?"
And there it is, in a nutshell. After finishing this, I emerged feeling that neither of these two writers was someone I found tremendously interesting or engaging. Their ideas were esoteric or proved too elusive; the level of intellectual arrogance on display was breathtaking, at times. Reading through the debate (although "debate" implies a far, far more structured process than what is actually taking place; the discussion of art versus life is more implied than stated and even then makes up only a part of the total dialog) reminded me of a segment of one of Samuel Johnson's "Rambler" essays, in which the 18th century lexicographer and critic wrote of the vast gap that exists between a writer's "public" voice, as it appears in their work, and their personal voice, which often is significantly less impressive. "A transition from an author's book to his conversation," Johnson wrote, "is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect." Splendid turrets and magnificent spires give way to "narrow passages" and "despicable cottages".
This was amusing, mildly interesting, but never really more than that. I never felt as if it broke beyond a narrow set of boundaries. Basically, the two authors belong to the same literary "club"; share roughly the same literary tastes (at one point, Powell acknowledges, "I like all these writers you like") and have similar enough backgrounds that their differences are really rather modest. One has been a success in his career as a writer; one has not. Even then, I felt that the idea that Powell has made a deliberate choice in favor of life experience over art to be rather disingenuous. Was that a choice he made, or a choice that he has become comfortable with? What would have happened had his novel been published? Would he have chosen not to follow Shields' path?
The format is intriguing and promises much, but the choice of David Shields and Caleb Powell as the two protagonists made it less intriguing than it could have been. I kept what wondering what might have happened had two writers with radically different life experiences undertaken the same experiment -- and what fireworks might have followed. While the discussions here are of some interest, it didn't leave me pondering any of the questions the duo raise, much less the central one of life versus art. They may feel passionate about it, but Shields seemed to feel the most passion about getting home from the weekend in time for his Skype chat with his college-age daughter, and Powell for his next beer and for a discussion of human evil in Cambodia.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Worth reading if for no other reason then to grapple with its opinions and ideas
By loce_the_wizard
To get to the start of "I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel" by David Shields and Caleb Powell you have to pass over the opening platitudes from other writer/reviewers. I would recommend skipping this part as these packaged comments do nothing but puff up their author's reputations and create expectations that this book simply does not fulfill. I had to restrain myself from trashing the book as a reaction to this padding by the publisher, a practice that needs to just go the hell away at this point.
So the book itself veers from interesting to intriguing, but it sometimes teeters on tedium as David Shields and Caleb Powell debate and bicker over whether a steadfast dedication to art or life provides the foundation for excellent writing and enduring literature. Both score points, Powell for life and experience, and Shields for art, but neither lands a knockout. Shields often dances about and waits and zips Powell with more eloquence and examples, but Powell rolls through each attack and gets off enough salvos that he keeps Shields on his toes.
There is playful side banter and enough of the quotidian incorporated to keep the book both moving along and grounded. But the constant shifting from topic to topic and the seemingly truncated conversations---while necessary to convert a raw transcript into something of coherent narrative---means much is lost in the process. Consider it like cooking a pot of fresh spinach: you fill the pot and think that there will be too much, but as the spinach cooks down, you realized there is not nearly as much to it as you had expected. That is, in essence, what has happened during the condensing and editing of the four days of audio recordings that form the basis of "I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel."
By the time I finished, I felt like neither Shields nor Powell would be the kind of fellow I would want to hang with for a winter camping trip, but on the other hand, I would love to talk with each of them over a cup of coffee or a beer. They reveal enough of themselves that sometimes it is impossible not to cringe a bit (TMI!), yet their willingness to keep pushing and let the sorts of things most of us rarely share appear in print says a great deal about their conviction to the project.
I can imagine a series of similar dialogues taking place with different pairing of authors to codify this form of writing as more than a one-off project. Yes, there will be a movie, but whether it helps settle the debate is doubtful.
I leave with one more thought. What if this concept is a false polarity? What if art and life cannot be separated or if either one's importance in creating literature cannot be exalted over the other? What is the third way, the intermingling of reporting, life, experience, and memory into literature (it is a broad word, literature, encompassing many forms) such as the Gonzo writing of the later Hunter S. Thompson or even the compact prose of Ernest Hemingway shows that this debate does not really need settling?
It's worth reading this book if for no other reason then to grapple with its opinions and ideas as you zip through it.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
An Argument
By Lynn Ellingwood
Soon to be a movie produced by James Franco, this novel is a quarrel. Two writers, one who is successful and another who isn't yet, go into the woods for four days to use words to debate each other in a way that others will want to read it and buy the book. Like Magical Mystery Tour, the mystery is whether anything will come out of this effort or something miraculous will arise. The two men argue and debate and posture throughout the book and try to make good their points. Interesting stuff and since one taught ESL overseas, I find it even more interesting. I want to jump in and argue too.
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