The Royal Nonesuch: Or, What Will I Do When I Grow Up?

by W. Glasgow Phillips

Glasgow Phillips published his debut novel Tuscaloosa at the tender age of twenty-four. The results were disastrous: encouraging reviews, translations, a paperback sale, a film option, and a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford. But over the next two years, as Phillips’s second novel unraveled and freelance journalism assignments ended in humiliation, a horrible, secret thought took hold in him: perhaps, just possibly, whatever talent he had was of the kind that would never be more than promise.
Washed up as a “real” writer before he was thirty, Phillips went to Los Angeles and formed a company with his best childhood friend Jason McHugh, independent producer of Cannibal! The Musical and Orgazmo. The Royal Nonesuch is the story of Phillips’s rollercoaster ride through the twisted world of underground Hollywood and the funhouse of the Internet during the boom. Phillips builds a hilarious and poignant memoir, in the tradition of Augusten Burroughs and Sean Wilsey, from tales of promise and failure, family and madness, friendship and redemption, fame and infamy, and good old-fashioned hustling. It is a remarkable book; a brilliant portrait of a generation in all its foolish glory.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

384 pages, Paperback

First published February 21, 2007

Reviews

[Oriana]

So W. Glasgow Philips published the book Tuscaloosa when he was 24, and it was quite well received. (I've read Tuscaloosa, and it's pretty good. Not astonishing, but good.) He then got a huge grant from Stanford to keep writing, and everyone was praising him all over the place and he had it made.

Well, The Royal Nonesuch really is 200 pages or so of why he really, really didn't. It's kind of a sad memoir, one of the main undertones of which is that Philips never again achieved the level of success he'd had when Tuscaloosa first came out. He did do a lot of really cool stuff, though. He is friends with Trey Parker & Matt Stone (in fact his roommate for many years was the guy who played Choda Boy in Orgazmo, who remains convinced to this day that the entire project was conceived with the sole aim of getting him in front of a camera with a dick on his head), and really involved in underground film circles, even creating (with friends) anti-festivals called LapDance and Cannes You Dig It? He also started a corporate naming company, and was involved with a whole bunch of internet start-ups in the 90s that all... almost... were about to strike it big.

Interspersed with all that is a rotating cast of quirky, tragic, fascinating characters that I really can't describe in sound bytes.

So yes yes, I definitely enjoyed this book. It was kind of disappointing, though, and inconclusive, as a memoir I guess is likely to be. But a good book to read on a plane, and there are lots of images and scenes that will stay with me.

[T]

I am giving this book two stars because it's really not fair that I am reviewing it now. Maybe one day I will open it and be so blown away (or desperate for reading material) that I can make it past the first 100 pages. But really, I can't get into it. I don't give a flying fart about any of the characters. Might as well stick it in the garage because it's filled with a bunch o' tools. Quirky? Maybe. But not worth the time it takes to flip the pages it seems. As my husband says "I can't get into that book. I've tried opening it up in different chapters to see if it gets any better. But it's a shit sandwich no matter where you slice it."

[Lauren]

So I'll admit it - I judged this booked by it's cover, which at first blush has everything that Lauren would like: a Hollywood tale that drops names, ridicules Burning Man and is reviewed positively by Dave Eggers. Unfortunately, Phillips' book doesn't live up to its cover art.

While he does succeed in detailing his life in the late 1990s to 2001 in excruciating detail, he fails to make his reader care about his characters, their exploits, or himself as the protagonist. It seems like he dumped out the contents of his head with no editing or larger message, printed it, and went on faith that his peripheral experiences in Hollywood would be enough to sell a few books. And while there are passing moments of interest to the reader (does Ron Howard really want to be a young, struggling artist again? Was the "Timmy" character on South Park really named for a suicidal, psychotic adult who liked to refer to himself as Timmy the Woodsman?), overall this book is a disappointment. Save your money and go read something by Dave Eggers.

[Maggie]

He could be my son, except I forgot to have kids. And what a challenge it would have been: a scary-intelligent, brash little renegade who took some weird turns growing up, partly because of the area he grew up (Marin County, California, where I live - affluent, liberal, and a little uneasy about both attributes), and partly because he was born in 1969, which makes him kind of a loose baby boomer caboose. (Technically, he's a Gen-Xer.)

Phillips's tumultuous trip to adulthood involves drugs, the dot-com boom and bust, film-making, television, comedy, writing, and a dizzying array of risky choices - about which he spares himself hardly at all - but he gets through it because of a basic grounded sensibility and the extremely fortunate choice of getting born to his particular mother (hi, Margaret!), who must have helped instill in him that most important quality: an internal bullshit detector. You have one of those? You can't run and you can't hide, not forever.

[Michael]

i freaking loved this book. i've spent the majority of this century pining for the innocent prosperity of the mid-to-late 90's (don't ask), so this first-hand account of the dot-com bubble in action (and, of course, its abrupt busting) left me wanting to know more. i simply couldn't get over the world in which phillips thrived in his early 20's--the newness of online media, the ubiquity of venture capital, etc. i totally dug phillips' writing style, too; nothing fancy, but straight-shooting and smart.

[Turi Becker]

Picked this up off of the Advance Reader copy shelf at work. It had been there awhile; it was published about a year ago. Started reading it thinking it was a work of fiction, even after reading the introduction. Soon realized it was a memoir of this guy, Glasgow Phillips, basically his story of trying to make it in a combination of Hollywood and the internet boom of the late 90s. I found it funny, tragic, and hard to put down, BUT I only know of one other person who would be at all interested in it, so I'm giving it to my brother-in-law.

[Darren]

A very California-damaged memoir of self-deprecation and loathing, costumed weirdos, failed films, erratic travel, the early dotcom era, Might magazine, the origins of the McSweeney's phenomenon, the phonies at Sundance Film Festival, the early days of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, plus a few genuine tragedies and realizations that tie it all together. Phillips seems like a guy I'd like to hang out with, but not all the time.

[Joe]

A coming of age memoir that is both compelling and hilarious. for anyone who shuns the 9-5 world and thinks they can handle adulthood on their own terms. reminds me why my 20s were somewhat of a trainwreck.

[Emily]

it's an uncorrected proof. yay for CPC...

[Holly]

OK. This guy is kind of an asshole, so he doesn't present a very sympathetic figure.

[Patrick]

This book is hysterical.

[Kit Fox]

Entertaining, but I'm kinda done with people in their 30s writing memoirs.

[corey Carrier]

We'll see how this goes.. so far, not so good.

[Jonathan Bishop]

The life and adventures of a man who fails at everything, though much hilarity ensues. Sort of.