{"id":347,"date":"2004-01-12T11:05:29","date_gmt":"2004-01-12T16:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp\/2004\/01\/uber_modesty_the_sting_memoirs\/"},"modified":"2004-01-12T11:05:29","modified_gmt":"2004-01-12T16:05:29","slug":"uber_modesty_the_sting_memoirs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/2004\/01\/uber_modesty_the_sting_memoirs\/","title":{"rendered":"UBER MODESTY: The Sting memoirs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Although this Jones <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/ac2\/wp-dyn?pagename=article&#038;node=&#038;contentId=A30000-2003Dec2&#038;notFound=true\" target=\"_blank\">review<\/A> of String&#8217;s memoirs is a month old, the second graph has a pretty good summary of what&#8217;s wrong with Sting overall, nicely detailed:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Broken Music&#8221; isn&#8217;t smarmy or pompous. Sting is a likable narrator, neither falsely modest nor proud beyond merit, and he writes with a self-deprecation that works. In the end, though, the book fails in a very familiar pattern: Sting starts strong with undeniable chops, then loses nerve and hires the strings. And the wind machine. And the voiceover.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Couldn&#8217;t you make the case that since String wallpapers our lives via tv, Disney movies, and radio, that his memoirs are redundant. I mean, what would it be like if we had to READ that guy&#8217;s music? Anyway, I had long passed on that book, it was an easy call, hope Jones got a nice fee for having to take notes on it. Once I saw that, though, I got to <a href=\"http:\/\/query.nytimes.com\/gst\/fullpage.html?res=9407E6D7143EF933A2575BC0A9659C8B63\" target=\"_blank\">clicking<\/A>. I never finished Kempton&#8217;s book; Jones articulates why.<BR><BR>And everybody is linking to these ads, but they deserve to be popular. Here are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bushin30seconds.org\/view\/06_small.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">my<\/A> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bushin30seconds.org\/view\/04_small.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">favorites<\/A>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although this Jones review of String&#8217;s memoirs is a month old, the second graph has a pretty good summary of what&#8217;s wrong with Sting overall, nicely detailed: &#8220;Broken Music&#8221; isn&#8217;t smarmy or pompous. Sting is a likable narrator, neither falsely modest nor proud beyond merit, and he writes with a self-deprecation that works. In the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-347","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}