Do we need a “magazine” on substack, a la the Mars Review of Books, to legitimize the criticism so that advance copies are obtainable? The American Review of Books? The Substack Review of Books? The Hatchet? If there were an easy way to directly divvy up the revenues amongst authors I’d help pull it together. Zero desire to be a paymaster, but a model where the revenues were split up at the source would be cool.
This is a good idea! (People might not want to send review copies to The Hatchet, though.) I'm a bad organizer, but I'll gladly participate if someone wants to set it up.
I quite enjoyed Manov's takedown of Oyler (whose work I've never read, beyond opening and then immediately closing her novel), which seemed well-researched and excitingly spiteful (although she was apparently quite thin-skinned about my own making fun of her last year...), but the Peck comparison is alarming (the girls, including Rothfeld, all seem to want to compare themselves back to the mid-century New York intellectuals, but the last-generational comparison seems more correct)... I've been reading him a bit as I work through a pile of OUT magazines from the 90s-10s (he was a book and movie reviewer for them), and his work is really dreadful--lazy, petulant, pointless, and not aimed in the service of anything in particular, neither a vision of good literature nor of what would be 'good for the gays' (ofc much bad reviewing has that axe-grinding quality, but I do expect a thinking person's reaction to some work of literature to include taking seriously some notion--hopefully sophisticated, complex, supple, and alive--of what literature should be and do, and of a 'for whom?' literature and criticism ought to be)... and what I've read of his own fiction (Martin and John) is just awful, pseudo-experimental crap. He's still remembered for some zingers, but otherwise a literary life that just as well might not have been lived.
That said, unfortunately, takedowns get the most attention... I think you're the only writer to have noticed my positive appreciations of Howard, Riding, etc (of course then again you're also the subject of one!)--nobody knows you when you're nice!
Yes, since I mentioned Peck, I probably should have explained some of the extreme statements that made him so controversial at the time, including his dismissal of most of modernism and postmodernism (Joyce, Faulkner, Nabokov, Pynchon, and DeLillo), and his proposed antidote, which he called "a new materialism," though he didn't explain what he meant by that. As you say, there seemed to be no larger system of values there, plus a lot of aimless aggression, even if I found some of his takedowns (e.g., Infinite Jest) persuasive. He particularly waffled on ID-pol topics, sometimes attacking writers (like Wallace) for sexism or homophobia, and sometimes mocking other writers for working in any kind of identitarian vein at all (as I recall, haven't read the book in a while). So yes, not the world's best critic, but a good conversation-starter! That's probably the best justification of the takedown as a phenomenon, but you're right that it would be better if people wanted to converse about appreciations too.
It was before that kind of thing got trendy I think (that takes me back, though, remember Object Oriented Ontology?)...I believe all he meant was like stories and characters rather than postmodern hijinks, but I'd have to reread the book. It's in the last chapter where he replies to his own critics.
This entry may be the thing that turns me from an occasional reader to a regular reader. I've just started reading your book reviews but this is great occasional writing all around. I do want to ask because I'm always fascinated by interesting political journeys, why the Stalinist/Third Worldist wing of the group was considered humanist? This would have been quite the opposite in my circles at the time. Was it just that it distinguished it from the post-humanist/Deleuzian/whatever wing?
Thank you! I believe the proximate reason was because Edward Said had adopted humanism as his banner against French Theory (he had a posthumously published book called Humanism and Democratic Criticism). But, much as Said would cite a relatively or superficially apolitical comparatist scholar like Erich Auerbach as precursor humanist, the word also, as he knew, had a hard left pedigree in figures like Lukács and Sartre drawn to Marxism as the emancipation of the creative human being from capitalism or oppression (sounds nice but includes in its concept of "creativity" a voluntarist concept of violent revolution that is more dubious) as opposed merely to a science of history or quasi-inevitable economic processes.
Re reviews, I have to put in my vote in for The Doloriad by Missouri Williams, which was ill-served by most reviews, especially a very inadequate one in NYT. I tried to rectify with my own review, but it deserves more attention and more thoughtful reviewing.
Here's my job on you, impresario, reposted from Barkan's article comments without changes because I don't consider your pap worth them.
>suicide as a cheap hook (yikes)
>ripping off someone's real suicide for a cheap hook (yikers island)
>"professional managerial class"
>"gender identity"
>hacked-up tradcath dark academia vibe
A novel for our time, indeed, in the worst way.
>Simon Magnus achieves acclaim and infamy for writing a series of graphic novels that are a bit like Batman and Superman, only far darker and more violent (and, arguably, more imaginative.) The Fool, the Joker stand-in, even rapes Sparrow (the Robin stand-in) in Simon’s most notorious graphic novel. How do comics and literature intersect for you? How do each, in your view, shape American culture? Why decide to reinvent the Batman mythos?
Not an original idea in his head, huh? There's a term for this kind of stuff -- "2edgy4me"
>Moore’s Watchmen, in particular, still stands as one of the greatest literary works of its era, not notably inferior to comparable fiction by DeLillo or Pynchon. When writing Major Arcana, however, and despite the novel’s several reflections on how comics can portray time more adeptly than any other medium by turning it into the gridded space of the paneled page,
I have a tip for this guy -- make one friend who can draw. Then he can have a comic too! Also, Pynchon is....bad. Don't insult Watchmen like that.
It’s a little tired to moan about this but I do think the relative lack of great novels by major publishers also discourages the sort of really epic takedowns one found in another age. Maybe I’ll write one when I finish Major Arcana! (Probably not though)
Yes, like I said on Tumblr, Wood was writing hatchet jobs on things like Underworld. He was wrong, but it was a challenging essay and still fun to discuss. Meanwhile, Luiselli got shit on Twitter for "the vanishing Indian trope" and that was about it.
Do we need a “magazine” on substack, a la the Mars Review of Books, to legitimize the criticism so that advance copies are obtainable? The American Review of Books? The Substack Review of Books? The Hatchet? If there were an easy way to directly divvy up the revenues amongst authors I’d help pull it together. Zero desire to be a paymaster, but a model where the revenues were split up at the source would be cool.
This is a good idea! (People might not want to send review copies to The Hatchet, though.) I'm a bad organizer, but I'll gladly participate if someone wants to set it up.
Good point on the name. Maybe we should call it The Believer.
I’ll keep mulling it over, organizationally speaking.
n+2 maybe
Done. That’s it.
I quite enjoyed Manov's takedown of Oyler (whose work I've never read, beyond opening and then immediately closing her novel), which seemed well-researched and excitingly spiteful (although she was apparently quite thin-skinned about my own making fun of her last year...), but the Peck comparison is alarming (the girls, including Rothfeld, all seem to want to compare themselves back to the mid-century New York intellectuals, but the last-generational comparison seems more correct)... I've been reading him a bit as I work through a pile of OUT magazines from the 90s-10s (he was a book and movie reviewer for them), and his work is really dreadful--lazy, petulant, pointless, and not aimed in the service of anything in particular, neither a vision of good literature nor of what would be 'good for the gays' (ofc much bad reviewing has that axe-grinding quality, but I do expect a thinking person's reaction to some work of literature to include taking seriously some notion--hopefully sophisticated, complex, supple, and alive--of what literature should be and do, and of a 'for whom?' literature and criticism ought to be)... and what I've read of his own fiction (Martin and John) is just awful, pseudo-experimental crap. He's still remembered for some zingers, but otherwise a literary life that just as well might not have been lived.
That said, unfortunately, takedowns get the most attention... I think you're the only writer to have noticed my positive appreciations of Howard, Riding, etc (of course then again you're also the subject of one!)--nobody knows you when you're nice!
Yes, since I mentioned Peck, I probably should have explained some of the extreme statements that made him so controversial at the time, including his dismissal of most of modernism and postmodernism (Joyce, Faulkner, Nabokov, Pynchon, and DeLillo), and his proposed antidote, which he called "a new materialism," though he didn't explain what he meant by that. As you say, there seemed to be no larger system of values there, plus a lot of aimless aggression, even if I found some of his takedowns (e.g., Infinite Jest) persuasive. He particularly waffled on ID-pol topics, sometimes attacking writers (like Wallace) for sexism or homophobia, and sometimes mocking other writers for working in any kind of identitarian vein at all (as I recall, haven't read the book in a while). So yes, not the world's best critic, but a good conversation-starter! That's probably the best justification of the takedown as a phenomenon, but you're right that it would be better if people wanted to converse about appreciations too.
I didn't even know he had a "new materialism"! Maybe he's somehow in the background of Vibrant Matter style retardation lol
It was before that kind of thing got trendy I think (that takes me back, though, remember Object Oriented Ontology?)...I believe all he meant was like stories and characters rather than postmodern hijinks, but I'd have to reread the book. It's in the last chapter where he replies to his own critics.
This entry may be the thing that turns me from an occasional reader to a regular reader. I've just started reading your book reviews but this is great occasional writing all around. I do want to ask because I'm always fascinated by interesting political journeys, why the Stalinist/Third Worldist wing of the group was considered humanist? This would have been quite the opposite in my circles at the time. Was it just that it distinguished it from the post-humanist/Deleuzian/whatever wing?
Thank you! I believe the proximate reason was because Edward Said had adopted humanism as his banner against French Theory (he had a posthumously published book called Humanism and Democratic Criticism). But, much as Said would cite a relatively or superficially apolitical comparatist scholar like Erich Auerbach as precursor humanist, the word also, as he knew, had a hard left pedigree in figures like Lukács and Sartre drawn to Marxism as the emancipation of the creative human being from capitalism or oppression (sounds nice but includes in its concept of "creativity" a voluntarist concept of violent revolution that is more dubious) as opposed merely to a science of history or quasi-inevitable economic processes.
Re reviews, I have to put in my vote in for The Doloriad by Missouri Williams, which was ill-served by most reviews, especially a very inadequate one in NYT. I tried to rectify with my own review, but it deserves more attention and more thoughtful reviewing.
https://open.substack.com/pub/finalcanticle/p/get-aquinas-in-here
Thanks! I hadn't even heard of it, to be honest.
Here's my job on you, impresario, reposted from Barkan's article comments without changes because I don't consider your pap worth them.
>suicide as a cheap hook (yikes)
>ripping off someone's real suicide for a cheap hook (yikers island)
>"professional managerial class"
>"gender identity"
>hacked-up tradcath dark academia vibe
A novel for our time, indeed, in the worst way.
>Simon Magnus achieves acclaim and infamy for writing a series of graphic novels that are a bit like Batman and Superman, only far darker and more violent (and, arguably, more imaginative.) The Fool, the Joker stand-in, even rapes Sparrow (the Robin stand-in) in Simon’s most notorious graphic novel. How do comics and literature intersect for you? How do each, in your view, shape American culture? Why decide to reinvent the Batman mythos?
Not an original idea in his head, huh? There's a term for this kind of stuff -- "2edgy4me"
>Moore’s Watchmen, in particular, still stands as one of the greatest literary works of its era, not notably inferior to comparable fiction by DeLillo or Pynchon. When writing Major Arcana, however, and despite the novel’s several reflections on how comics can portray time more adeptly than any other medium by turning it into the gridded space of the paneled page,
I have a tip for this guy -- make one friend who can draw. Then he can have a comic too! Also, Pynchon is....bad. Don't insult Watchmen like that.
Yes, I already read it. Thanks for your feedback—I hope you find a book you like!
Goofball.
It’s a little tired to moan about this but I do think the relative lack of great novels by major publishers also discourages the sort of really epic takedowns one found in another age. Maybe I’ll write one when I finish Major Arcana! (Probably not though)
Yes, like I said on Tumblr, Wood was writing hatchet jobs on things like Underworld. He was wrong, but it was a challenging essay and still fun to discuss. Meanwhile, Luiselli got shit on Twitter for "the vanishing Indian trope" and that was about it.