Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

[10], 356, [2] pages. Inscribed by the author on the title page. The inscription reads For Ellen, With much admination-- Best wishes David Goodwillier. David Goodwillie is the author of the memoir SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME, for which he was named one of the "Best New Writers of 2006 by members of the PEN American Center. Goodwillie writes about books for the The New York Times and The Daily Beast, and his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including New York, Newsweek, Popular Science, The New York Observer, and The New York Post. He has played professional baseball, worked as a private investigator, and been an expert at Sotheby’s auction house. He is a graduate of Kenyon College. He is also the author of the acclaimed novel AMERICAN SUBVERSIVE. Hailed as "genuinely thrilling" by The New Yorker, and "a triumphant work of fiction" by the AP, it was a New York Times Notable Book of 2010, and a Vanity Fair and Publisher’s Weekly top ten Spring debut. Goodwillie's first book, the memoir Seemed Like a Good Idea at the time, was published by Algonquin Books in 2006. Written partly at the Chelsea Hotel, it tells the story of his journey through downtown Manhattan as he struggles to become a writer. The Louisville Courier-Journal called it a "mesmerizing memoir and searing sketch of a decade in decline.[Goodwillie] conveys his wisdom via syntax that is simultaneously sobering insightful and amusing." He has written several investigative features for national magazines. 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 exposé, 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. Goodwillie wrote eloquently about a lock of Mickey Mantle's hair while at Sotheby's! Derived from a Kirkus review: Goodwillie’s fresh and invigorating debut opens at Kenyon College, where he winds up as the star of the school’s baseball team. Come graduation time, he’s being scouted by the majors. When that doesn’t work out, it’s off to the Big Apple. He finds a job as a private investigator researching Mafia shakedowns in Chinatown; an on-again, off-again coke habit and a Cuban roommate named Gus who works as a press agent for Mayor Rudy Giuliani but somehow knows more about the literary world than Goodwillie does. The author moves to writing catalogue copy for a sports-memorabilia auction house to working as a sports researcher at Sotheby’s. Goodwillie tries to hang on to his literary dreams, publishing an investigative piece here, a short story there. When the collapse finally comes, he relies on a congenial tone of self-mockery and smart, finely tuned storytelling. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated].…