When We Were Good: The Folk Revival Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I approached this book with high hopes, and found myself sorely disappointed. It had gotten such great press when it came out -- with big write-ups in the "New York Times" and elsewhere -- but frankly, I found the style and grammar so convoluted that I could hardly understand it. Cantwell's overly-academic prose is so dense and thicketed that halfway through I realized I had absolutely no idea what his book was about. Something about the American folk revival... but what exactly was he trying to say? Cantwell, a former '60s folkie who teaches American Studies at UNC Chapel Hill, applies a nearly impenetrable acadamese to his history(?)/analysis(?)/deconstruction(?) of the folk revival, but seems unable to rise above the terminology and crowded syntax he's adopted. His writing has a piled-on, house-of-cards style, full of incredible run-on sentences and needless verbal transpositions that make practically every sentence, paragraph and chapter difficult to follow. In short: arrrrrrgh!!! The most frustrating aspect is the boggling lack of narrative skills: Cantwell sets out to tell stories and convey experiences, but inevitably gets balled up in unreasonably convoluted, digressive rhetoric. Maybe I'm just a big dummy and can't understand all that smart-feller, egghead stuff... or maybe this guy needs a more forceful editor.

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