Wasn't the Grass Greener?: Thirty-three Reasons Why Life Isn't as Good as It Used to Be

Rating:
Summary: Ms. Holland's "Greener" Opus Nostalgic, 33 Bar Symphony
Review: "Wasn't The Grass Greener?" (aka "A Curmudgeon's Fond Memories") is Barbara Holland's evocative, wistful essay collection enjoyable for its lack of pretense, emphasizing effect over cause. She assembles 33 missing social puzzle pieces, enjoyable independently, into a picture of how society now views personal comfort, leisure time, and social interaction.

Holland drew her vignettes for "Wasn't The Grass Greener?" living everywhere from Washington, DC (where she grew up and from which she writes a disturbing glorification of national wartime attitude) to Denmark (where she lived as a young adult, developing a fondness for homogeneity that mirrors Pat Buchanan's similar views on multiculturalism) to Philadelphia (where she raised her family and fondly remembers frozen ponds for skating and the old John Wanamaker department store).

She recalls the decline of such mundane activities as card playing ("just another of those things...that caused us to visit our neighbors and invite them into our houses") and ice skating ("nobody won or lost, which is not the American way and probably a bad influence on the young"). She writes of home furnishings plain as a liquor cabinet or radiator (It was clean and it smoked not...(they) moderately (were) dispensing their measured flow of comfort, like grandmothers"). She eventually rises to abstracts like worrying, idleness ("Work stole our days, but entertainment took everything left over")or falling in love. As she does, you realize Ms. Holland misses how things felt, not always how they were. The telegram's tangibility bests e-mail's cold type. The tavern's social jape and comfort, songs from parlor pianos, even old clothes hung from clotheslines show natural, tactile interaction American life now lacks.

Her essays prefer older, more personal entertainments to those from passive, antiseptic, solitary electronics. She prefers organic, commodious warmth over the constant chase for mechanized, articifically magnetized fads and fashions. She trusts people ("When I was young, the doctor was God") over machines. She misses what united us, decries the cynicism and nihilism that divided and partially conquered us.

Holland frets about our needing protection from fear (of lawsuit and loss), at all costs from seen, unseen, and manufactured dangers. This insulation became isolation keeping temperatures steady, freeing us from harmless pranks, suntans and bugs at picnics. It kept children organized and supervised rather than left to their creative endeavors (this chapter, too, appears to advocate irresponsibility). It even kept our most intimate communications, love and sex, at virtual (reality) arm's length rather than forward to vulnerably falling in love.

Holland writes in refreshing, near-diary style, neither persuading nor entertaining objection. But fond memories, however curmudgeonly and well-written, do not excuse facts. Her otherwise humorous chapter on pianos hits a sour note when she writes, "Imagine the Beatles carrying one around...nobody could wring a drop of juice out of rock on the piano." Huh? Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Leon Russell, Elton John, Billy Joel? When rock was greener (pre-British Invasion), piano dominated the new style and remains prominent. (And yes, Paul McCartney played mean piano on the Beatles' rockers and Elvis allegedly played better piano than guitar).

Pink Floyd, who I doubt was heard much on Holland's parlor piano, once asked the musical question, "Would you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?" They answered years later, "I have become comfortably numb." Leo Buscaglia once said he would choose feeling pain over nothing; his views were parodied unforgettably in the film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (the bohemian Bueller could be Ms. Holland's hero) and restated 33 different ways here. Her nostalgic book (true to her code, unavailable on audio cassette) is worthwhile, educating reading worth following with your own sequel.

Rating:
Summary: Ms. Holland's "Greener" Opus Nostalgic, 33 Bar Symphony
Review: "Wasn't The Grass Greener?" (aka "A Curmudgeon's Fond Memories") is Barbara Holland's evocative, wistful essay collection enjoyable for its lack of pretense, emphasizing effect over cause. She assembles 33 missing social puzzle pieces, enjoyable independently, into a picture of how society now views personal comfort, leisure time, and social interaction.

Holland drew her vignettes for "Wasn't The Grass Greener?" living everywhere from Washington, DC (where she grew up and from which she writes a disturbing glorification of national wartime attitude) to Denmark (where she lived as a young adult, developing a fondness for homogeneity that mirrors Pat Buchanan's similar views on multiculturalism) to Philadelphia (where she raised her family and fondly remembers frozen ponds for skating and the old John Wanamaker department store).

She recalls the decline of such mundane activities as card playing ("just another of those things...that caused us to visit our neighbors and invite them into our houses") and ice skating ("nobody won or lost, which is not the American way and probably a bad influence on the young"). She writes of home furnishings plain as a liquor cabinet or radiator (It was clean and it smoked not...(they) moderately (were) dispensing their measured flow of comfort, like grandmothers"). She eventually rises to abstracts like worrying, idleness ("Work stole our days, but entertainment took everything left over")or falling in love. As she does, you realize Ms. Holland misses how things felt, not always how they were. The telegram's tangibility bests e-mail's cold type. The tavern's social jape and comfort, songs from parlor pianos, even old clothes hung from clotheslines show natural, tactile interaction American life now lacks.

Her essays prefer older, more personal entertainments to those from passive, antiseptic, solitary electronics. She prefers organic, commodious warmth over the constant chase for mechanized, articifically magnetized fads and fashions. She trusts people ("When I was young, the doctor was God") over machines. She misses what united us, decries the cynicism and nihilism that divided and partially conquered us.

Holland frets about our needing protection from fear (of lawsuit and loss), at all costs from seen, unseen, and manufactured dangers. This insulation became isolation keeping temperatures steady, freeing us from harmless pranks, suntans and bugs at picnics. It kept children organized and supervised rather than left to their creative endeavors (this chapter, too, appears to advocate irresponsibility). It even kept our most intimate communications, love and sex, at virtual (reality) arm's length rather than forward to vulnerably falling in love.

Holland writes in refreshing, near-diary style, neither persuading nor entertaining objection. But fond memories, however curmudgeonly and well-written, do not excuse facts. Her otherwise humorous chapter on pianos hits a sour note when she writes, "Imagine the Beatles carrying one around...nobody could wring a drop of juice out of rock on the piano." Huh? Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Leon Russell, Elton John, Billy Joel? When rock was greener (pre-British Invasion), piano dominated the new style and remains prominent. (And yes, Paul McCartney played mean piano on the Beatles' rockers and Elvis allegedly played better piano than guitar).

Pink Floyd, who I doubt was heard much on Holland's parlor piano, once asked the musical question, "Would you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?" They answered years later, "I have become comfortably numb." Leo Buscaglia once said he would choose feeling pain over nothing; his views were parodied unforgettably in the film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (the bohemian Bueller could be Ms. Holland's hero) and restated 33 different ways here. Her nostalgic book (true to her code, unavailable on audio cassette) is worthwhile, educating reading worth following with your own sequel.

Rating:
Summary: 30 reasons why life isn't really as good as it used to be!
Review: Ever suspect life isn't as good as in the 'good old days'? Maybe you're right! Holland outlines over thirty reasons why life isn't as good as it used to be; from the disappearance of simple pleasures such as home pianos and liquor cabinets and clotheslines to the transformation of a unifying single cultural worry to thousands of daily concerns.

Rating:
Summary: (read on below, please)
Review: The late musician Frank Zappa intoned that nuclear holocaust was not the only--and perhaps not the worst--form of ultimate destruction; there were, he said (and I'm surely paraphrasing) at least two others: paperwork and nostalgia.

With this book, Barbara Holland has erected a lovely 235-page altar to the latter of Mr. Zappa's nightmares. Why someone with her obvious writing talent (see her 'Endangered Pleasures' as an example) and keen eye should have written such a sour collection of "oh, but how things were so much better when *I* was a kid" essays is a bit beyond me. If your eyes start to roll when an older relative launches into his "well, y'know, in *my* day ..." talk, well, you'll appreciate this book even less. It's that same talk, repeated 33 times--even the title warns you.

So what's wrong with a little wistful looking back? One of Ms. Holland's strengths (again, shown better elsewhere) is her rock-solid certainty, which veers just close enough to sarcasm that you can't help but get the point. That is, even if you don't agree with her jabs, you know that *she's* sure--and will tolerate no argument because, well, none is warranted. Alas, that sure voice is rarely found here. We're not told that radiators are *definitively* better than forced-air heat, or that clotheslines should just make you *forget* about clothes dryers. In most cases, the author simply wants to tell us little ditties about why these artifacts appeal to her personally, often washed down with a sepia-toned childhood anecdote. She saves her venom for what has replaced her cherished icons, and here we find the usual suspects: TV, computers, technology in general.

Without wondering whether Ms. Holland wrote out 'Wasn't the Grass Greener' in longhand (avoiding those demonic PCs), one could read only her essay on 'Art' to tease out the defects in the rest of this book. The piece is not exactly why art "isn't as good as it used to be." Instead its two pages are devoted to quotes from intellectuals trying (admittedly, to somewhat hilarious effect) to define what art is. Yes, we can rather easily see this is a mess, but where's the cure? And, for that matter, what's exactly wrong? Was "art" better at some point in our glorious past? When? Why?

You can read the other 32 essays with much the same reaction. Psychiatrists (the Freudian variety) are so much better mere "therapists!" E-mail is so pale compared to the visceral thrill of receiving a ... telegram! So what are we to do? Go back? And how, exactly, would we revive such lovely things as suntans, taverns, or liquor cabinets? Without remedies--or even much depth beyond anecdotes--the writing comes off as no small amount of whining.

Barbara Holland was on much surer ground when attacking our present phobias; I'm hoping she doesn't continue the case for returning to some older ones.