Bad boys
Paul Fussell once wrote an essay about the folly of responding to negative reviews. You can't win and it makes you look like a sorehead, was the gist of it. In issue after issue, the Letters column of the (insert city here) Review of Books proves he was right. Some writers can't wait until the next edition to look like soreheads and prefer the white-hot speed of social media. And some choose a more direct approach.
For instance, the cultural critic Stanley Crouch took exception to Dale Peck's review of his novel Don't the Moon Look Lonesome. Not content with dismissing Peck as "a troubled queen," Crouch slapped him in a New York restaurant -- apparently not the first time he got physical with a critic. The same year, he was asked to join a panel judging the PEN/Newman's Own Award intended "to protect speech as it applies to the written word," so thanks, PEN, for topping up the strategic irony reserve. Crouch is a certified genius. Just ask the MacArthur Foundation.
Back in 2001, Colson Whitehead reviewed the short story collection A Multitude of Sins in terms less glowing than Richard Ford thought proper. I don't know if Ford complained to the editors of the New York Times Book Review, but he waited two years to confront Whitehead at a party and spit in his face, after addressing him as "kid." Ford is a good old boy from Mississippi, so he probably expects credit for not calling him "boy," but two years is a long time to save up your saliva. For this and other acts of Trumpishness the Paris Review has given Ford its lifetime achievement award.
All right. It's not on a level with William Burroughs shooting his wife in the head, or Norman Mailer stabbing his, or even William F. "The American Burke" Buckley calling Gore Vidal a "queer" on national television while also threatening violence. But if cultural arbiters reward borderline criminal behavior, it's certain we'll see more of it. Writers are not that stable to begin with. And now the Nobel has gone to an apologist for genocide. I think there should be consequences for that sort of thing, no matter how much "terse poetry" you bring to your prose. If you can't coexist decently with other people, go live in the woods like J.D. Salinger.
For instance, the cultural critic Stanley Crouch took exception to Dale Peck's review of his novel Don't the Moon Look Lonesome. Not content with dismissing Peck as "a troubled queen," Crouch slapped him in a New York restaurant -- apparently not the first time he got physical with a critic. The same year, he was asked to join a panel judging the PEN/Newman's Own Award intended "to protect speech as it applies to the written word," so thanks, PEN, for topping up the strategic irony reserve. Crouch is a certified genius. Just ask the MacArthur Foundation.
Back in 2001, Colson Whitehead reviewed the short story collection A Multitude of Sins in terms less glowing than Richard Ford thought proper. I don't know if Ford complained to the editors of the New York Times Book Review, but he waited two years to confront Whitehead at a party and spit in his face, after addressing him as "kid." Ford is a good old boy from Mississippi, so he probably expects credit for not calling him "boy," but two years is a long time to save up your saliva. For this and other acts of Trumpishness the Paris Review has given Ford its lifetime achievement award.
All right. It's not on a level with William Burroughs shooting his wife in the head, or Norman Mailer stabbing his, or even William F. "The American Burke" Buckley calling Gore Vidal a "queer" on national television while also threatening violence. But if cultural arbiters reward borderline criminal behavior, it's certain we'll see more of it. Writers are not that stable to begin with. And now the Nobel has gone to an apologist for genocide. I think there should be consequences for that sort of thing, no matter how much "terse poetry" you bring to your prose. If you can't coexist decently with other people, go live in the woods like J.D. Salinger.
posted by Buttermilk Sky at 11:59 AM
1 Comments:
Writers are *supposed* to act like Donald Trump on speed, so you'll know they're writers. Otherwise, how could you identify them? Someone once suggested branding them on the forehead with a scarlet W, except it takes two people to hold them down while a third wields the branding iron, and that's too much expensive labor for today's economy.
Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions. So if an author spits on you, just spit back.
Yours crankily,
The New York Crank
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