Books in Brief

Private Parts, by Howard Stern (Simon & Schuster, 446 pp., $23)

THE SECRET of Howard Stern’s success is that he doesn’t deserve it. If he were better looking, better bred, or more intelligent than any of his fans, as most successful people are, the fans would promptly disown him. It is precisely the rarity of someone as ordinary as themselves attaining such prominence that excites their patronage. Most of the millions of readers of this tell-all autobiography could have written something like it themselves if only they had had the courage or shamelessness. But since they didn’t, the fact that their anger and their preoccupations are externalized in the slouching, post-pubescent gang liness of Mr. Stern fills them with a feeling of joyous vindication against a universe more talented than themselves. Everything Mr. Stern reveals about his life, from birth to pimply high school days to college debauchery, is entirely undistinguished. Only when he hits the air waves does his insatiable appetite for suburbanized abjection distinguish him from the rest of mankind. This poorly written and edited memoir ranks, therefore, as something of a milestone in human events, though whether of the rise of Everyman or the decline of the West is not yet clear.

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Private Parts, by Howard Stern (Simon & Schuster, 446 pp., $23)

THE SECRET of Howard Stern’s success is that he doesn’t deserve it. If he were better looking, better bred, or more intelligent than any of his fans, as most successful people are, the fans would promptly disown him. It is precisely the rarity of someone as ordinary as themselves attaining such prominence that excites their patronage. Most of the millions of readers of this tell-all autobiography could have written something like it themselves if only they had had the courage or shamelessness. But since they didn’t, the fact that their anger and their preoccupations are externalized in the slouching, post-pubescent gang liness of Mr. Stern fills them with a feeling of joyous vindication against a universe more talented than themselves. Everything Mr. Stern reveals about his life, from birth to pimply high school days to college debauchery, is entirely undistinguished. Only when he hits the air waves does his insatiable appetite for suburbanized abjection distinguish him from the rest of mankind. This poorly written and edited memoir ranks, therefore, as something of a milestone in human events, though whether of the rise of Everyman or the decline of the West is not yet clear.