Steinberg, Neil 1960-

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STEINBERG, Neil 1960-

PERSONAL: Born June 10, 1960, in Cleveland, OH; son of Robert (an artist) and June (a writer) Steinberg; married Edie Goldberg (a lawyer), September 3, 1990; children: two sons. Education: Northwestern University, B.S.J., 1982. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES: Home—Chicago, IL. Office—Chicago Sun-Times, 401 North Wabash Ave., Chicago, IL 60611-3593. Agent—David Black, 220 Fifth Ave., Suite 1400, New York, NY 10001.

CAREER: Began journalism career at the Barrington (IL) Courier-Review and the Wheaton (IL) Daily Journal; Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago, IL, reporter, 1987—; freelance writer.

MEMBER: Thurber Circle.

AWARDS, HONORS: Peter Lisagor Award.

WRITINGS:

If At All Possible, Involve a Cow: The Book of College Pranks, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1992.

Complete and Utter Failure: A Celebration of Also-Rans, Runners-Up, Never-Weres, and Total Flops, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1994.

The Alphabet of Modern Annoyances, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1996.

Don't Give Up the Ship: Finding My Father While Lost at Sea, Ballantine (New York, NY), 2002.

Also author of teleplay School Dance Party.

ADAPTATIONS: School Dance Party was adapted as a novel by Eliza Willard, HarperEntertainment (New York, NY), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS: Neil Steinberg is a writer and editor for the Chicago Sun-Times who specializes in humor pieces and obituaries. That combination of the cheerful and the bleak is a hallmark of Steinberg books as well. David Zivan, writing in Chicago Magazine on the occasion of the appearance of Steinberg's fourth book, Don't Give Up the Ship: Finding My Father While Lost at Sea, remarked: "Steinberg's oeuvre to date suggests that two somewhat contradictory ideas compete within him. One, that the world is a romp, a place to play pranks in—and that our failures and peccadilloes are as noteworthy as our other endeavors. And two, that we are all cast adrift, roaming the vast blue with a crew we haven't chosen, and whom we do not like very much." Thus, Steinberg's first book, If At All Possible, Involve a Cow: The Book of College Pranks, which was not widely reviewed, recalls his own college days as one of the founders of a magazine called Rubber Teeth, with a tag-line that read, "biting satire that doesn't hurt," according to Zivan. The Alphabet of Modern Annoyances, on the other hand, gives the author free rein to be both funny and indignant as he expounds on the irritations of modern life, including the particular, such as Elvis, Oprah, and McDonald's, and the general, such as relatives, traffic, and zealots. In addition, "idiots come in all forms and populate each letter of Steinberg's abecedary," observed Gilbert Taylor in Booklist.

Steinberg also checked in with Complete and Utter Failure: A Celebration of Also-Rans, Runners-Up, Never-Weres, and Total Flops, a celebration of Schadenfreude, or the willingness to find pleasure in observing the failure or bad luck of others. In any case, given the ubiquity of books about success, "a meditation on failure comes as rare and refreshing fruit," according to Dennis Winters in Booklist. Here Steinberg spotlights people throughout history who, through aiming high—such as the French pilot who competed with Lindbergh to be the first to make a solo flight across the Atlantic—became spectacles in their failure. This unfortunate fellow failed because he planned for success too soon, overburdening his plane with a celebratory meal for six to be consumed in Paris. But Steinberg "invests his tales of bad timing, unfortunate decisions and tumbles into obscurity with such buoyant good cheer, it's enough to give failure a good name," Marlene McCambell commented in People.

Steinberg takes the same mournfully humorous approach to the subject of his own life. In discussing with Zivan the favorable response to Complete and Utter Failure, which ran to a second edition and was published in England, Steinberg intoned, "I thought my life was going to change….Butit didn'tchange." Another momentous event that failed to change the general tenor of Steinberg's life was the month-long sea journey he undertook with his father, with whom he has had a strained relationship since he was ten. The journey is the subject of Steinberg's fourth book, Don't Give Up the Ship: Finding My Father While Lost at Sea. Often compared to Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom's sentimental crossgenerational tale of sharing the dying days of his mentor, Don't Give Up the Ship was judged to be a more humorous, and a more subtle, treatise on the father-son relation by reviewers such as David Pitt in Booklist. Steinberg reports that after he accepted his father's invitation to join him in reliving a journey from his days in the merchant marines, he read numerous father-son narratives, leading him to imagine that the journey would lead to a level of closeness he had never before known with his father, only to have his hopes dashed. "In the end, they have a bickering, tetchy, miserable time," reported Zivan. Which may, after all, be the point, according to Steinberg. "The hard part of life is coping with this dad you're stuck with, and thinking, 'I'm here on a beach in Barbados, and I should be happy, and I'm not,'" Steinberg told Zivan. "You've got to figure out why you're not, and, given the circumstances, you've got to try to be as happy as you can."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Booklist, November 1, 1994, Dennis Winters, review of Complete and Utter Failure: A Celebration of Also-Rans, Runners-Up, Never-Weres, and Total Flops, p. 464; November 1, 1996, Gilbert Taylor, review of The Alphabet of Modern Annoyances, p. 475; April 15, 2002, David Pitt, review of Don't Give Up the Ship: Finding My Father While Lost at Sea, p. 1366.

Book World, November 6, 1994, review of Complete and Utter Failure, p. 3.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 1994, review of Complete and Utter Failure, p. 1203; October 1, 1996, review of The Alphabet of Modern Annoyances, p. 1454.

Library Journal, December, 1996, review of The Alphabet of Modern Annoyances, p. 128.

People, March 6, 1995, Marlene McCambell, review of Complete and Utter Failure, p. 37.

Publishers Weekly, September 26, 1994, review of Complete and Utter Failure, p. 47; November 18, 1996, review of The Alphabet of Modern Annoyances, p. 59.

San Francisco Review of Books, March, 1995, review of Complete and Utter Failure, p. 36.

Wall Street Journal, December 28, 1994, review of Complete and Utter Failure, p. A11.