Category / Book Reviewing

by DrMabuse

Walter Kirn is David Denby’s Bitch

And while we’re on the subject of the rich, I couldn’t help but notice Walter Kirn’s review of American Sucker. Kirn writes, “Instead, like countless other Americans who had their own reasons for adding their hot breath to the mammoth bubble in equities whose bursting still echoes in the nation’s ears even as the market is puffing up again, Denby fell short,” and, just after painting the Denby-Schine marriage as “a model of bright metropolitan domesticity,” Kirn goes on to give Denby streetcred with the limolib crowd: “Denby, when young and living in California, had been something of a radical, dancing to the Grateful Dead and defiantly pitting culture against commerce, but he’d mellowed into a propertied intellectual who sneakily admired the system for its ability to supply the good life even to those who held it in partial contempt.”

Beyond the first quoted sentence (truncated here), which has more clauses than fleas on a mutt, is this really a book review? It seems more like biographical apologia than anything else. How can anyone “mellow” into a property owner, much less intellectualize about laying down escrow? Do you plop onto the beanbag one day, listening to Yo La Tengo, only to wake up with a deed of trust in your hands? Writing out a check ain’t exactly tantamount to riffing on Baudelaire. It is a thoughtless process used to keep creditors at bay for another month.

And who the fuck dances to the Dead? That’s a bit like trying to mosh to the Velvet Underground.

by DrMabuse

Hey, Chip, You Rock My World!

Well, since folks are either making confessionals or unabashedly whoring, I’m more than happy to join the collective hue and cry. In fact, Chip, send me a book and I’ll wash your windows in a garter strap! Not a pretty sight, I know. But if that fails to quell the current cries of sexism, then I’ll legally change my name to “Pia Zadora.”

[1/23/06 UPDATE: Two years and countless criticisms of Sam Tanenhaus later, I haven’t been called by the NYTBR. Not so much as a thank you note for the brownies I sent Sam Tanenhaus. My pitches to my own hometown newspaper have fallen on deaf ears. (Never mind that they have taken out-of-town litbloggers for their pages.) The newspapers don’t want me, either because I come across as too volatile or I simply can’t write. As a man who has been on staff for a magazine, I’d like to think it’s the former. I don’t mean for this update to sound as if I’m throwing a pity party or to imply that I’m bitter or anything. I still plan to go on writing, even if it means most of my words being deposited here. But this is a telltale warning to all you whipper-snappers out there. The fresher, the more distinct and the more original you are, the less likely the mainstream media will want you. At least that seems to be my experience.]

by DrMabuse

A Guest Column from Patti Thorn

[Because Mr. Champion has become temporarily unavailable due to the holidays, Return of the Reluctant turns over the rest of today’s content to Patti Thorn of the Rocky Mountain News. Ms. Thorn has graciously offered to expand upon her previously expressed concerns within these trusted waters.]

Dear Motherfuckin’ Santa: Goddam you and the reindeer you rode in on. Rudolph can lift his leg and piss on David Remnick’s head for all I care. And while we’re at it, let Graydon Carter choke on those Dunhills he’s always sneaking into his office. I’m Condé Nasty, you son of a bitch. And don’t you forget it!

thorn.jpgI’m writing this open letter to you for three reasons. First, my Prozac prescription ran out. Since that thin girl behind the counter always wears a Santa hat, I figured that you were the one I should address.

Second, the Rocky Mountain News editor-in-chief has accused me of suffering from a rare apoplexy known to affect book critics. How dare he! Michiko may go a little crazy from time to time, Laura Miller may remain humorless and John Updike may very well be steeped in formal language. But, outside of Dale Peck, that doesn’t make us any less important or any less sane! When I left the hospital shortly before I embarked on my journalistic career, I was given a Certificate of Sanity. You better believe I earned that thing, taking tests, mopping floors, getting in touch with my inner child. I stood on the dais next to the other young ladies jumping up and down in red robes. They may have filled the halls with their terrifying ululations. But I stood still, even when I felt the temptation within my solar plexus to howl to the seven winds. Their saliva oozed down their pendulous chins, Santa. But, oh no, not mine. I kept my reserve. The antidrool impulse inside me was impeccable. Months of telling myself that there was always something else to blame seemed to put things into perspective. I had a small paper napkin, something I had stolen from the kitchen long before. After carrying this napkin with me for six months, this final rite empowered me to use it. I wiped the corners of my mouth. I remained misty-eyed, yes, in light of the ritualistic transition to sanity. But other than this, my face was clean. Antiseptic. The man shook my hand, handed me my certificate, and said, “Go! Go, Young Patti! To the moutains, you shall find your destiny!” I replied, “Thank you, Uncle Ted. I will spend the rest of my time on this earth looking up.” Well, Santa, you know where I am today.

I can’t quite remember the third reason, but I’m pretty sure it involved you delivering some editorial assistant’s head on a platter. I’ve always had a thing for Baptists named John.

In conclusion, books are troubling things. The words wend and blur when I stare at the page. And those publishers. Who do they think they are? Why does the newspaper pay me? Why do I read? Why do I write?

My therapist says that I should look within for answers. But why effect personal achievement when I can take out my frustrations on a small readership?

Sincerely,

A Perplexed Critic on the Edge,
Patti

by DrMabuse

Because Every Review Needs an Attention-Grabbing Sentence to Quote in Later Reviews

Looks like Sterling Clover’s going for a Tibor Fischer (for anyone with the time to read, or skip through, 3,200 pages): “But Rising Up is maddeningly real, at its worst the world’s most erudite dorm-room bullshit session given the Cicero treatment and weighed down by numbing cynicism toward belief and hope of all sorts, naive tossing-about of the ‘social contract,’ irritating misuse of the concept of reification, and an epistemological nightmare of means and ends.” (via Low Culture)

by DrMabuse

Born of a Bitter Bland Seed

In which our blogger attempts to come to terms with book critic Laura Miller.

How This Post Originally Appeared (December 3, 2003):

So who is Laura Miller anyway?

Here’s an audio interview* of Miller extolling the wonders of the Internet back in 1999. But, beyond her nasal droll, I must warn you that, if you click on the stream, you’ll probably be frightened by Miller’s pronunciation of the word “niche” or the moment when she kvetches about carrying all those complimentary books around. A harsh life, to be sure. Despite all this, she’s still bitter.

This profile reveals that Miller was born in 1960 and, before getting into writing, started off as a publicist for a co-op that ran “a San Francisco sex toy store and mail order company.” (Apparently, it was Good Vibrations.) One of her first big breaks came with an essay called “Women and Children First”* which appeared in a collection called Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information, whereby she proffered the following Third Wave generalizations: “In the meantime, the media prefer to cast women as the victims, probably because many women actively participate in the call for greater regulation of online interactions, just as Abbie Irving urges Wade Hatton to bring the rule of law to Dodge City. These requests have a long cultural tradition, based on the idea that women, like children, constitute a peculiarly vulnerable class of people who require special protection from the elements of society men are expected to confront alone.”

Her last column for The New York Times Book Review section was more about the documentary The Weather Underground than books, but didn’t have nearly as many generalizations as previous inside back page columns. But I’m mystified. Just why is Miller still writing for the Times? And can we hope that Charles McGrath’s replacement will see the light?

To look at this from a pugilistic standpoint, if you threw Michiko Kakutani and Laura Miller into a gladiator pit, I’d favor Michiko by twelve points. At least she has a sense of humor. Plus, the Pulitzer helps.

[3/22/04 UPDATE: Months later, I’ve largely ignored Laura Miller. And looking back at this entry, I see that I’ve demonized her a bit. That isn’t really fair. I should clarify that, since I’ve already spilled my thoughts (some would say foolishly), the transformation of Laura Miller is one of the saddest things that ever happened to books coverage. But I have every hope that the Miller I read five years ago will return.]

Addendum (May 20, 2013):

* — I have made efforts to track down the 1999 Laura Miller audio interview from Platform #3 referenced in this 2003 post, but it appears to have disappeared: no doubt deleted in a frenzy of redesigns and server reorganization over the last fourteen years. But you can read this text version of the same article, which appeared on Radio Australia. Additionally, I believe my original link led to Miller’s early essay, “Women and Children First,” but I can’t find it through Web Archive. I have pointed to someone else writing about it.

It wasn’t fair of me to chastise Miller for her “nasal droll.” But in 2013, Miller suffers from the same problems. When she is edited (such as her essays in The New Yorker), she can be an astute critic. But much of her ongoing work at Salon is not edited. I’m a little embarrassed by my cocky 2004 update. I haven’t been able to ignore Miller, in large part because some people still read her criticism. But her influence has faded in recent years, replaced by the likes of Roxane Gay and Michelle Dean, who have both proven to be more astute critics. But Miller has gone out of her way to ignore me. I only met her once at the National Book Awards, where we were introduced by a well-meaning third party and she gave me the look of someone who had just her dog die in a hot car during summer.

This was the first of many posts that laid into Miller. I had this tendency in my early blogging days to seek out obscure bits of biographical data about people — often material that nobody else had found — in an attempt to try and understand them. From what I’ve learned about Miller from others since, I can see why she would hate this. I didn’t know in 2003 how touchy literary people could be. I have fixed all the non-working links.

Because the Luke Ford reprint of the Examiner article cannot be adequately verified from New York, I’ve confirmed Miller’s stint at Good Vibrations through two separate sources: a biographical note that appeared in the anthology Travelers’ Tales San Francisco: True Stories. Additionally, Sallie Tisdale’s Talk Dirty to Me reports that Miller worked at Good Vibrations, where

“she hosted video nights for women who have never seen pornography. She shows clips from some of the new, more romantic, female-produced films, and then clips from older hard-core films with more traditional themes. “The difficult part for women is that they haven’t had the opportunity to even see what’s available,” she says. The surprise is how many of the women prefer the old hard-core films. “It’s so politically incorrect. I’m glad when they’re willing to admit that it really turns them on, but they also say, ‘It really disturbs me, but this works, and the other one didn’t.'”

Now this Laura Miller sounds really cool.