Chekhov's Mistress
A Literary Agnostic Goes Snark Hunting
Mentioned in this post: literary criticism, business of literature, criticism and personality, Bookforum, Birkerts, Peck, Maisonneuve, Amazon.com, Oprah, Believer, snarking
Perhaps every generation believes it is they who are in the dark ages, clamoring for an unseen way out from the mediocrity that popular demands have dictated on the seriously talented writers who are wasting away on fame and money. And maybe each of those generations battles over the written word through yet more written words until only the best are left writing [insert pen/sword imagery here]. Yet with few exceptions, it is the fiction that remains for the next generation and not the criticism.
I should disclaim any formal knowledge of literary criticism right up front. I am an avid reader and writer and I enjoy reading about literature and the book world, but consider myself intellectually ignorant of what makes good literature what it is, although I have a pretty good idea of what it is not. Eye nose it when I seize it and dats about it. I’m a hanger on. I read a lot of serious books without understanding much and hope that through osmosis I can at least connect the dots from Dante to Shakespeare to Joyce and Faulkner and their heirs, and enjoy the beauty of the language; that is all I hope for.
The other side of literary addiction is following the business. While the world watches Ben and J-Lo (?) or OJ and Ice T (??), I enjoy hearing what Dave Eggers and Paul Auster are up to (professionally, that is). And even though it seems like the whole world is watching these guys too, I know that it’s a small world relative to the former.
When these two sides of literature, criticism and personality, collide, the debris has the unfortunate effect of remaining scattered about indefinitely; particularly in the case of the ephemerally permanent World Wide Web. So begins my snark hunting journey. (argh, you say this is the beginning!)
In the April issue of Bookforum I read an article by Sven Birkerts who nostalgically writes about the state of criticism today and mentions this guy Dale Peck who has supposedly written some damning reviews of the entire body of work of authors such as Rick Moody and most recently the very author whose piece I was reading. Apparently this had been going on for several years and seemed to be coming to a head with the publication of Peck’s book of these essays. I saw a piece in Time Out New York (TONY) that dismissed Peck as a “failed fiction writer shouting, ‘Look at me!’” Knowing that TONY’s was less than a subtle analysis, I was nevertheless getting my Tucan Sam worked up and wanting to know more about this snarking business.
My next stop on the Peck walk was the April/May issue of Maisonneuve, a Canadian magazine that published an excerpt from Peck’s aptly titled book, “Hatchet Job.” That article, which apparently was to have run in the New Republic, chopped Mr. Birkerts in to so many obsessively detailed pieces, I had visions of “Notes from the Underground” running through my imagination – with Peck of course being the unnamed conscious of society (see, connecting those dots…).
Now Hatchet Job is getting more attention than one of those controversial old Benetton ads and its sales are ranked as of this writing at 8,684 on Amazon.com. That’s not exactly Oprah standards, but it is outstripping sales of his previous book, released just last November, which ranks just over 264,000, and is quite a good showing for a book of book reviews. Incidentally, Oprah’s latest pick, Anna Karenina, 124 years after being written, is ranked #26 and is enigmatically dubbed by Amazon as the #1 “Early Adaptor” product in literature & fiction.
I decided to hunt the snark to see if I could make some sense of all this public sparing, and so started to snake my way through a bevy of articles beginning with the first issue of Believer Magazine, which apparently coined the term (via Lewis Carroll). Then over to Salon.com where some of the E-team reside, around to the New York Times and now to reviews of the book (The Elegant Variation , a bookish blog, does a nice taxonomy of some of the reviews and promises to do one of their own).
As a casual observer to this world, I find the egoistic banter a little self-indulgent on all sides, but I think that the negativity that makes the core of Peck’s reviews a cure worse than the disease. It’s one thing to try and shape criticism by actually being critical and not taking the easy route, which is one of Peck’s laments about the industry, but another to attack other writers. It seems like such an obvious point – to just set the standard for criticism instead of burning at the stake those that don’t measure up – that it is tempting to believe that the assessment made by some reviewers may be right after all: Peck is building a career by being outrageously negative. After all, audacity, whether honest or not has generated a lot of fame and fortune in our culture.
Nonetheless, all this snarking has people talking, and that may be good for literature, I suppose, in that, as some have said, it shows that people still care. But perhaps this feuding reveals that there is just nothing better to talk about. And that is the state of literature today. Hatchet job indeed.
p.s. I will add links to the other articles I’ve found (not already linked to above) within a day or two, but my window of consciousness is closing for the night.
Download articletnr_040521_snark_believer.pdf
Download articletnr_020701_snark.pdf
Download articletnr_011231_snark.pdf
Download articlesalon_031212_dale_peck_.pdf
Download articlesalon_020724_snark_ltrs.pdf
Download articlesalon_020724_snark.pdf
Download articlenyt_031026_snark.pdf
Download articleguardian_031123_snark.pdf
Download articlenyt_030907_snark_.pdf
Download articlenyrb_040715_mendelsohn_snark.pdf
Download articlebeliever_030901_snark.pdf
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: June 22, 2004
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:0
- Links to this Post: Technorati
