Maslin Watch: Rock'N'Roll Hoochie Koo

Maslin's take on the memoirs of former CBS Records exec Walter Yetnikoff is...well, to be honest, I think she's found an apt text on which to apply her critical approach, and for that I'm largely going to leave her alone this time, save only to consider the following statement:

However frivolous he is about recycling old party-boy stories, he is more serious about depicting the power struggles, back-stabbing airplane envy and creative accounting that defined the business as he knew it.

I wonder--not enough to pick up the book, per se, but I wonder nevertheless--if the ratio of personal chicanery to professional chicanery in the book is as heavily skewed towards the former as it is in the book review. Because one would like to have a high-ranking music exec pull back the curtain and reveal the precise workings of the exploitation process, though one suspects this may not actually be that dreamed-about tome. In the meantime, though, I think we may have found Maslin's niche, as she writes perfectly well about a book when she ignores anything to do with its bookish qualities and focuses strictly on its status as an object of newsworthiness.