I Told You So

by Kate Clinton

I Told You So is a hilarious, bittersweet, and politically acute survival guide. In collected columns and routines, Kate Clinton gleefully details personal coping techniques tested over a lifetime. They're perfectly suited for political and cultural wildcatting for democracy, curbing your cynicism, and changing the climate. Read them and you'll never be voted off the island.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Kate Clinton is a faith-based, tax-paying, America-loving political humorist and family entertainer. With a career spanning over 25 years, Kate Clinton has worked through economic booms and busts, Disneyfication and Walmartization, gay movements and gay markets, lesbian chic and queer eyes, and ten presidential inaugurals. She still believes that humor gets us through peacetime, wartime and scoundrel time.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had the pleasure of seeing Kate Clinton's standup and it was riotously funny and thought provoking. Unfortunately, her prose is neither.

I'm not clear (and I don't think Clinton is either) on what this book is supposed to BE-it tries to be straight comedy, political satire, and serious expository writing at the same time and ultimately fails at all three. The writing gives you the occasional chuckle, at best. It certainly is not as amusing as seeing her perform. She often structures her essays in a comedic monologue format-with an opening, then a complete shift to another totally unreleated topic or two, then ultimately bringing it back around (often with a real stretch to make the connection) to the original opening. While that might work well for an oral performance, it does not work as a structure for the written word. Often the reader is left with the feeling of "wait, how did we get here? Wasn't I reading about X, not Y?"

And as serious political thought or satire, this simply doesn't work. It's a series of (often not that funny) jabs with no real in depth thought, the difference between reading a political cartoon and reading serious journalism. And the satire might work if she wasn't simultaneously trying to make it sound like she's doing serious political analysis and failing miserably. Very, VERY often, I would think, ah, NOW she's on the right track, this is getting good...only to have the essay end in a very abrupt manner with the thought left half finished. It's hard to pass yourself off as a real essayist when none of your analytical "essays" run more than two and a half double spaced pages.

Occasionally, she hits a gold mine-a suggestion that the election be run like a Project Runway episode is easily the strongest chapter in the book-but ultimately 90% of the chapters in the book read like a half assed freshman comp assignment completed at 2 a.m. the morning it was due. Very disappointing.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed by this book. I think Kate Clinton is one of the funniest stand-up comedians there is. But I just don't find her writing nearly as funny as her act. Maybe if she read it out loud it would work better. But her writing style is a little hard to follow. She mixes plays on words that don't work very well with topical references that don't age well, and the result is that sometimes it's really hard to understand what she means. Rent one of her DVDs or go see her in person instead.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

These essays would likely have been decent reading at the time they were written, but the political aspects (2008 election season and earlier) seem stale now. Moreover, Clinton's lesbian-feminist angle overwhelmed me at times - I noticed that she would mention attending gay (mixed gender, not lesbian) events, consistently giving shout-outs to several women at each, men ... barely at all. Not particularly recommended.

[Anita · Rating 2 out of 5]

I adore Kate Clinton, but this book is just too hard to follow.