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A Striver's Tale
A Review by Anna Godbersen

Nostalgia is a fine thing in a memoir, but too much will choke it. David Goodwillie, in his 1990s picaresque Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, exhibits signs of nostalgia, but what he seems to yearn for is some mythical, writerly New York era; his attitude toward his own life and times is aptly summarized by the bemused backward glancing of the title. This is a happy balance, and it gives what might otherwise feel like a familiar story (boy moves to the big city, dates and works with mixed success) charm and energy. Goodwillie's striver's tale begins in 1995, when "the internet [was] an abstract thought, something pending"; by the end, the bubble will have burst. In between, the author tries his hand at minor league baseball, private investigating, auctioning sports memorabilia (plastic bag filled with Mickey Mantle's hair, anyone?) and reporting on the mob. There is a certain amount of comical slumming: Goodwillie does bumps of cocaine on his way to meet dad at the Four Seasons, and his sidekick for a time is a Giuliani flunky. There's also a good deal of highbrow I Love the 90s background noise: A pre-fame Jewel sighting ("She has this naked urgency for experience"); a lot of talk about the meaning of Tina Brown; that whole Monica thing. Goodwillie gets better jobs and moves to new apartments, but we all know the fate of that bubble. Through it all, the author keeps some literary dreams alive. They have allowed him to produce a chatty, earnest, hilarious, and addictive account of what it was to be young last decade.

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