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In Only Love Can Break Your Heart, David Samuels writes with a reportorial acumen and stylistic flair that recall the pioneering New Journalism of Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, and Joan Didion. Combining elegant, nuanced personal essays with far-out reporting—on the lives of radicals in the Pacific Northwest, anti-abortion zealots, demolition experts, suburban hip-hop stars, and more—Samuels shows us an American landscape whose unsettling mix of unfathomed dislocations and blue-sky the optimisti feeling that all is going to turn out well is both instantaneously recognizable and thrillingly new.
These essays display his strange sensitivity to both the tragic and comic dissonances that bubble up from the gap amongst the American promise of endless nirvana and the lives of salesman, dreamers, aging baseball legends, crackpots, atomic test internetlocation workers, and dog track bettors who struggle to live out their dreams one day at a time.
From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. In this collection of antecedently published stories by Harper’s contributing editor Samuels, he claims writing for magazines is like playing sports. Whatever the journalistic game—Samuels’s subjects range from Woodstock 1999 to a Goodyear blimp pilot, amid others, plus a few personal essays—Samuels is a solid player who most times hits home runs. Every building begins as a dream, he states in Bringing Down the House, a profile of a demolition company, but [d]estroying a building… [is] a slow, closely biblical reckoning. Behind the scenes at such places as the Sedan Crater nuclear test site; the antiglobalization Mecca of Eugene, Ore.; and Super Bowl XL with Stevie Wonder, Samuels’s reportage is at it is best. He wryly flays untrue constructions of American reality on the right, left and places in between. Ideologically, what Chad Sweet has in mutual with his newfound friends in the Republican Party is that not one thing he says makes any sense, Samuels writes when it comes to a new Republican at a $2,000-a-plate Bush-Cheney ’04 fund-raising party. Samuels could give a little Bush-bashing wink here; rather he observes that politics isn’t with regards to coherence anymore. Neither is much of life in our Golden Land of Mini-Moos, according to Samuels, who captures this free drifting weirdness with clarity. (Mar.)
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From BooklistIn this primary collection of his magazine pieces, journalist Samuels, whose work has been featured in Harper’s and the New Yorker, amid other venues, well captures the end-of-millennium fervor of the late 1990s—7 of the 19 pieces accumulated here were in the first place published then. From his disillusioned take on the greedy capitalism marring Woodstock ’99 to the colorful profiles of a ragtag group of radicals from Eugene, Oregon, Samuels is acutely conscious of the chasm amongst idealistic aspirations and more routine reality. He alternates amid social critiques, such as his touching depiction of the sad-eyed clients of a dog-track betting operation in Florida or his hard-hitting profiles of the workers who handled nuclear bombs at the Nevada Test Site, to more personal pieces on how his peers’ search for connection manifests itself through career ambition, antidepressant medication, and musical taste. And it is in his profiles of and musings on musicians—rap producer Prince Paul, Detroit native son Stevie Wonder—that Samuels’ writing is at it is richest. An eclectic collection most noteworthy for it is spot-on depiction of the late 1990s. –Joanne Wilkinson
Review
“An intelligence and unsparing lucidity remindful of Joan Didion’s work circa Slouching Towards Bethlehem.” —New York Observer
“He’s a savant when it comes to scene reporting and has a closely autistic command of minor details and facts. Armed with minutiae, he achieves the glorious breadth and details of a mural painter.” —Village Voice
“The protraits that emerge are indepth and oftentimes severe, but there is something delicate in Samuel’s method. In his stories the random flow of events takes on real meaning, permitting us to see what’s concealed in plain view and to listen what’s being said.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Samuels is heir to an American tradition, and writing this terrific needs a place to go.” —Los Angeles Times
Most helpful client reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
 Singing words, words among the lines of age…
By Shea
On the surface, this collection offers dependable amusement with it is blend of sharp reporting and compassionate, good-humored storytelling. But woven allround the stories is a provocative conception ignited in the reader’s mind by Samuels’ preface: that perchance we owe it to ourselves to re-configure our notions when it comes to identity, and all the goals that follow.
“My story has something to do with our national gift for self-delusion and for making ourselves up from scratch, which is much the same thing as believing in the future,” Samuels writes, noting younger generations’ struggles to find a sense of self when traditionalisti mainstays like family dinners are less prominent.
To suffice, we comprehend for concrete schemes to help us feel in control — it may be a Florida greyhound bettor who feels invincible in the face of chance. Or Oregonian anarchists who think they’re making a divergence when reality proposes otherwise. Or a Woodstock 1999 organizer who’s lost sight of what genuinely matters so much that music and togetherness get trumped by four-dollar water bottles and corporate detachment.
The truth is, Samuels suggests, that in attempting to define ourselves amidst the tumult of progressed America, we all get lost in the mire to a heap of extent. “The fact that we lie like crazy while pretending to always tell the truth is such a mutual narrative scheme in American creative writing of recognized artisti value and American lives that we oftentimes confuse our wishful imaginings with reality.” Or, as Neil Young says in the song that lends this book it is name, “I have a friend I’ve never seen/ He hides his head inside a dream…”
Samuels’ writing has an intelligent, approachable eloquence that brings the traditions of literary journalism to a new level. At points, it’s hard not to get entranced in his stories of dreams and disillusionment, from Pentagon meetings to more personal experiences. But with subtle precision and deafening insight, Samuels colors each page with his queer wisdom. It’s as if each piece were written for this book — even though the fact that this isn’t the case lends a gorgeous fluidity to the collection. He respects our capacity to parse the stories for ourselves, taking from them what we choose. Each story offers a layer, creating what in the end is a new portrait of the reader’s distinguishable sense of self and appreciation of others.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
 Excellent Perspective on Modern America
By Adam J. Loewy
I original came throughout David Samuels’ work after reading his story on Britany Spears and the tabloid media in “Atlantic Monthly.” I found his take rather original, his writing very strong, and his determinations thought-provoking. His entire essay collection ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ was evenly enjoyable.
I can’t think of a writer to compare Samuels too and I say that as a compliment. He is very original. If I was pressed, I would compare him to a more intellectual – and darker – Chuck Klosterman. There are numerous arousing and attention holding essays in this book, esp. the pieces on Woodstock 1999, the Super Bowl in Detroit, and the leftis lunatics in Eugene.
One minor quibble with the book is his personal essays. This is the reason I can’t give 5 stars to this book. With all due respect to Samuels, I in truth don’t care with regards to his failed relationships or why he decisive to move to Miami to be with galore gal. These essays belong in another book and they detract from his investigative pieces. But they are a little percentage of the book.
Overall, this is a very good book. I genuinely hope Samuels keeps writing articles, as a voice like his is much necessitated in contemporary non-fiction.
5 of 5 persons found the following review helpful.
DAMN, what a great book
By Jill Jones
I don’t ordinarily like collections, but this one propelled me through such an amazingly surreal and pretty American landscape–emotionally, it goes from sea to shining sea–that it seemed like a novel. I loved the pieces with regards to the dog track, the anarchists in Portland and the Super Bowl with Stevie Wonder.
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