Too Smart to Be Rich

by Patty Friedmann

Young Urban Failures--or "Yuffies"--tell how to avoid making money despite a high I.Q. and Ivy League education and provide a quiz to determine whether one can successfully avoid prosperity

125 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Patty Friedmann is a darkly comic New Orleans novelist whose dozen works include the Amazon perennial bestseller Too Jewish and the celebrated Secondhand Smoke. Her essays, short stories, and reviews have appeared in Newsweek, Publishers Weekly, New Orleans Noir, Short Story, and Oxford American, among other places. A novel titled An Organized Panic and a collection of her stories titled Where Do They All Come From are 2017 releases. Patty has had two husbands, two children, and three grandchildren, and currently lives with an annoying philodendron.

Reviews

[SmokingMirror · Rating 4 out of 5]

For some reason I remember this book making a requirement for all yuffies of ownership and readership of Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Since I fit the yuffie profile in all other ways I acquired and read a copy, simply because I thought I might enjoy it, just as I did other yuffie activities. Now I have three copies: the first one, one with a newer cover and another to provide solace in the workplace. This badly remembered injunction is a debt I owe this book, outdated in modes of self perception in the 21st century as it is (and I won't condemn it for not being of this benighted era).

The fact is, it mention G,E,S a couple of times but puts no burden on yuffies to conform to a regimented ideal in their reading and book ownership. If you are a yuffie, it is assumed that you have this book in your life.

Labels aside, I'm to have had the impetus to bring Hofstadter into my life.

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Takes one to know one!!!! I have loved this book for over 20 years. Every time I pick it up I laugh til my whole body shakes. Some may take offence at the idea of a Young Urban Failure (one of my friends did)- but one must understand, Yuffies aren't defining themselves as failures- they succeed where it really matters (or so they think!). Warning- the book implies that one must be to the middle class or upper middle class born to be a Yuffie. Nay nay- there are many Yuffies among the children of the working class although they may not be reconized as "fs" as readily by immediate family. Altho' working class Yuffies may not enjoy or be able to take advantange of the perks available to the middle and upper middle class Yuppies, they have their own variations. What a fun book! (PS- I recently learned that author Patty Friedman writes novels too. I really enjoyed "Secondhand Smoke". "Too Jewish"- not too much. Boring.