The Week of Matt Labash Begins

In addition to my upcoming chat with Matt Labash, I plan on bringing you notice of the positive reviews of Fly Fishing with Darth Vader and other little tidbits. Today, we have a review in the Wall Street Journal by Mark Lasswell that rightly notes the following:

In a just world, Matt Labash would be celebrated as the heir to Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson and other writers in the 1960s and 1970s who were corralled under the rubric of “new journalism,” but, well, the world just isn’t just. Like the best of the new-journalism practitioners, Mr. Labash inhabits a story so thoroughly that readers feel as if they’re at his side, seeing events with his sharp eye, privy to his wisecracks, savoring moments when he reels in what feels like the truth. Sure, executing long-form journalism at this high level has about it a whiff of the Civil War re-enactment—an almost perfect evocation of a bygone era!—but there is also a certain thrilling defiance, displayed by both the writer and the magazine that lets him plow ahead, page after page.

Note: I write that I’ll be linking to the positive reviews. And only the positive reviews. If you don’t like Matt Labash, there’s a 50/50 shot you’re a dirty communist or illiterate. Or a dirty, illiterate Communist.