April 19, 2005

It Ain't Exactly Mailer-Vidal, But We'll Bite.

Jonathan Safran Foer, in a post that is likely fake unless Mr. Foer would like to corroborate it, has responded to Steve Almond's takedown:

Me and you should hang out, really. With my ironic-ironic-ironic-ironic pretentiousness and profound postmodern invulnerability and your high-school / freshman-year-in-college ironic, I'm-not-pretentiousness-because-I-am-aware-that-I-might-be-pretentious-and-also-because-when-I-feel-that-I'm-being-pretentious-I-go-ahead-and-say-that-I'm-being-pretentious (and I use a lot of cliches in my language, just like on TV and in Hollywood movies) we can be really profound and postmodern and probably we can achieve true art really quickly, in like two minutes, and then after we can eat hot dogs. We can eat nuts from those profoundly sorrowful Nuts 4 Nuts people.

(Thanks, Chelsea!)

Posted by DrMabuse at April 19, 2005 01:08 PM
Comments

Almond is a little hard on Foer, but I think he also makes a few decent points.

Foer's schtick is pretty funny to start (the whole Ghengis Khan crashing history thing is good), but it gets a little old. Dunno, maybe I'm missing some in jokes here or something . . .

Posted by: Scott at April 19, 2005 01:54 PM

What are the decent points Almond makes, pray tell?

Edward nails him, methinks.

Am I the only tall male Jew in America who likes Jonny Foer?

Posted by: birnbaum at April 19, 2005 02:06 PM

I'm really starting to get confused as to what is fiction and reality, but it's funny anyway.

Posted by: Bud Parr at April 19, 2005 02:10 PM

I think the JSF blog is fake. If you'll look in the archives, it also has posts by John Updike, and a "Robot Machine." Also, JSF refers to himself too often as postmodern and profound, and "John Updike" talks too much about "not getting" things.

Really, it has to be fake.

Posted by: Andrew at April 19, 2005 02:42 PM

Robert,

On a second reading, I change my opinion.

Posted by: Scott at April 19, 2005 04:23 PM

I haven't read more than 500 words + that many dingbats by JSF (part of an unreadable New Yorker story), so I have no interest in weighing on the merits of Almond's reviewer's remorse, but it is ignoble to write a conventional review for a large cirulation daily, keep the rhetoric down so as not to alientate the editors, and then, upon seeing that he's coming in on the mild side compared to other reviewers, screed out on MobyLives for his regular audience. He says everybody's bullshit detector is broken. Not so.

Posted by: bky at April 19, 2005 05:20 PM

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Posted by: jonathan safran foer at April 20, 2005 04:09 PM