And Besides, Can You Really Trust a Grump Who Believes that Kate Atkinson Isn’t Very Good?

Alex Good: “But overall I have a hard time believing that the internet constitutes any kind of an alternative to mainstream book reviewing. Indeed they may be even more corrupt, compromised, and commercialized, more of a personality-driven ‘performance art,’ more of a hysterical scream for attention, than what we see in print.”

Actually, if you want to discuss what constitutes “a hysterical scream for attention,” Good’s inept essay is about as hysterical — for both author and reader alike — as foolish screams come. I particularly like Good’s faux footnotes, which suggest some explicit examples to prove his flaccid argument, only to offer more hysteria — and sometimes fabricated hysteria taken out of context — from other sources!

1 Comments

  1. Ed, I love your site, and I love you, but sometimes you frustrate the shit out of me. Here you excerpt 51 words from a 9,283-word essay, then accuse the author of that essay of taking things out of context. I think Good’s arguments are well-reasoned and nuanced, and not nearly as hysterical as you make them out to be.

    And by the way, he didn’t say that Kate Atkinson isn’t very good. He said that Case Histories isn’t very good, which is not the same thing.

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