DAVID GOODWILLIE - SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME
David Goodwillie; Photograph by Alexandra Rowley
Photo: Alexandra Rowley
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ABOUT THE BOOK

Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

From its NASDAQ-fuelled heyday to the tragic hours of 9/11, the provocative and mindblowing story of Manhattan in its most recent golden age comes to life in David Goodwillie's exhilarating new memoir, SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME.

Filled with art, sports and culture, and littered with sex, drugs, and celebrity, Goodwillie's tale is a classic American story: With naive aspirations of literary renown, a young man moves to New York City. He arrives at the dawn of a decadent new age that celebrates youth and rewards dreamers with riches beyond imagining. But eight jobs later, he learns that success comes at a heavy price. After his attempt to make it in professional baseball, Goodwillie arrives in Manhattan in 1995 and begins a journey through a series of implausible careers. He becomes a private investigator but has no talent for finding anyone; a writer for America's leading sports auction house; and then a journalist who exposes the mafia, only to become their newest target. Even when he breaks through as the most unlikely of experts at Sotheby's, he's soon lured away by the promise of Internet millions...only to find that he's missed the biggest party of all.

SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME teems with the temptations and contradictions of New York itself: tenements and penthouses, one-night stands and serious romances, gratuitous success and crashing failure. With a good measure of innocence and irony, Goodwillie takes readers on a quixotic search for meaning—the struggle to lead a creative, worthwhile life—and offers a memorable tale propelled by wit, humor, and a finely tuned sense of style. In his struggle to become a big-city writer, Goodwillie becomes something much more: an important voice of the lost generation he so eloquently depicts.

** Update (5/15/06): Film rights to SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME have been optioned by Anne Chaisson at Dirty Rice Films ("Roger Dodger" & "P.S.") in a pre-empt, with Dylan Kidd and David Goodwillie to adapt the screenplay, and Dylan Kidd to direct.