Eric Renderking Fisk recomends Joseph Dougherty's "Comfort And Joi," a love letter to an almost forgotten actress and the time in history she represents....

Comfort And JoiReview: “Comfort And Joi”

A Book about Hollywood and Pop Culture like no other…

A few weeks ago I received a book in the mail from it’s author with a press kit and a note saying how much the author hoped I would enjoy his book. “I liked it” would be an understatement… the book brought back memories of my early passion for classic cinema and reminded me that I’m not alone in my obsession with early cinema.

“Comfort and Joi” by Joseph Dougherty is a pleasure to read.   Not a single word is pretentious, not a single page is overly pleased with itself because of an over-intellectual smug evaluation of what movies mean to us. “Comfort and Joi” isn’t a literary book that hides it’s message in overly subtle metaphors. It’s a book that’s light while revealing the things I already loved in a different way though someone else’s eyes.

“Comfort” is a love letter to an under-appreciated actress and the era that she belonged to... his love for this actress is a means of asking us to evaluate and understand our own enjoyment of the classics. The book draws the reader out and engages our own memories and our own thoughts of what movies mean to us.

Between “The Great Gatsby” and “The Long Good Bye...”

Few have been able to write about what the cinema means to us with out excessive psychoanalysis and even fewer have been able to get it right. As demonstrated in his book “Comfort and Joi,” Joseph Dougherty is one of those few who accomplishes the task of revealing what it’s like to be an intense fan of a performer or motion picture while still having a full life fully planted in reality. “Comfort And Joi” could have been a fluff piece of fan-boy drivel that can be found elsewhere all over the internet, but this book is smart and sentimental while being an engaging “slice of life.”

Mr. Dougherty’s book is not a novel about imbalanced obsession. The narrator of this book is one of us: someone with a career, a level of success and a respect for people’s space as illustrated in a literary device that demonstrates curiosity about other people while at the same time keeping a respectful distance.

There are some moments that remind me of Harlan Potter’s monologue to Philip Marlowe about artificial obsolescence in Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Good-bye,” Mr. Dougherty writes about our culture’s obsession with “bigger, faster, newer, more stylish” things while throwing away the things and people that have already established a level of quality.

“Comfort and Joi” also reminds me of “The Great Gatsby,” in our duality of  trying to move on and accept the way things change while at the same time trying to savor memories and subconsciously  try to turn things back to the way they were. I’ve also discovered that we are all a bit like Jay Gatsby in the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past…” trying to recapture some of our best movie experience.

“Comfort and Joi” also works on another level as an indictment and condemnation of modern pop-culture… In his pages he revisits the Golden Era of Hollywood and it’s steady decline as it develops new material for the “faster, cheaper, dispensable” entertainment developed for television.

This is also part biography, about how this actress Joi worked to get ahead while maintaining an element of dignity, restraint and privacy that’s obviously absent in the era of Pam Anderson and Britney Spears. Look at someone like Joi Lansing, someone who played small rolls in both major movies and forgettable ones but had more style and substance then the vast majority in Hollywood today.

Like Real Life, Movies are about People…

    This book can best be summarized as a close friend who you once knew long ago, last seen during the end of an era or at a milestone like graduation… then seen again by chance after many long years absence.

One of the messages I found in these pages is to treasure even the slightest insignificant joys in our life and appreciate “the little people,” like Joi Lansing. Like movies, we all have a central cast of characters… but we also have ‘extras’ and ‘background people’. One of the other significant messages of this book is to get to know those ‘extras’ and learn about their rich histories and stories. We’re all background characters to someone else, and it would be better to appreciate each other more like the stars that we really are.

    I appreciate the memories that this book helped bring back, but more important is the message that everyone is special and loved by someone else, not to overlook or dismiss anyone.

You can learn more about the author and his book by going to his Comfort and Joi website and links to where you can buy the book.

Questions or Comments, you can respond by writing to renderking@thefedorachronicles.com

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