Not What I'd Been Looking For

[krpalmer]

Not that long after commenting on reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, I noticed a number of links to a podcast making some strong criticism of the book; the thesis amounted to Isaacson writing a shallow book, more concerned with barbed anecdotes about Jobs the man than the fine details of Apple design, much of it in fact sourced from previous books about Apple, but with the fine details not quite right. I suppose that did strike a resonance with my own reactions to the book, and I started listening to the worked-up criticism and the follow-up with the thought I might be able to make a post about it and keep providing content.

I did get my own reaction, but not quite the one I had wanted. In the middle of the follow-up, the person threw in a slam against the "post-1983" Star Wars films, and with a sort of "wham" I had stopped the playback and thrown the files I had been listening to in the Trash. I do sort of wish I had more of a "live and let live" response towards criticism of Star Wars in particular, being aware of having backed away from various things to try and dodge it; I can usually grit my teeth and bear it when it comes in the content of posts on message boards intended to be about anime, but even there it can be troublesome. It's too easy to be suspicious the criticism is from an attitude of certainty there could be no other reactions, that it carries a "you're wrong" message for anyone who might have one of them, and that seems to provoke a "no, you're wrong" response from me nowadays.

Comments

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

Just wonder what the prequels had anything to do with the topic.

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

It boiled down to addressing a counter-argument that the diffuse yet non-technical focus of the biography might have been "what Steve Jobs wanted" with "well, the prequels and Special Editions might have been what George Lucas wanted," and then adding the zinger "they still weren't 'good.'" In some ways, I suppose, it's not worth getting upset over... it was just the casual invocation of a "standard for disapproval," in a context where I hadn't been expecting it, that grated on me.