Reviewing the Reviewer: Part Three

Comments on a Review of A Book About the State of Reviewing Books

We don’t need this but here it is. I asked for it. You got it.

Wolcott vs. Pool vs. Reviews vs. Internet vs. jon.

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=69e34cc4-6eb7-4c69-a5a7-24681dfac7c4

Wolcott makes me smile with lines like this:

“They tore the iridescent wings off Romantic poets for sport, and crouched in the hills like hyenas waiting for Hemingway to falter. Insidious by nature, they fluff up authors' reputations in order to fatten them up for the sacrificial kill: the young slain for failing to live up to their early promise, their distinguished elders dragged by their whiskers into the lair of the spider-queen, Michiko Kakutani, to be eaten. Even the most scrupulous and fair-minded reviewer is considered suspect, a discount knockoff of a real writer.”

Before we pop our corks, let’s get the glasses. Reviewing a book review about books about reviewing books was MY IDEA. I take full responsibility. But as you will see, there is no end in sight. Once we start down this road, we’re essentially fucked. Let me quote the great Frank Zappa:

“Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.”

The same goes for books and those who write their reviews. The reviewers sometimes think they are artists who are above journalism. But bottom line they are writers. And some writers are no better and can behave even worse in public because they take themselves SERIOUSLY. They are men and women of LETTERS. They have drilled down to a granular level where they think they are the SALT. They think they are the SHIT. And they very well may be. Who knows? By definition I am a writer here because I have written this crap. And I may even be an artist. But only if my crap sells. You’ll have to skip ahead to the BONUS QUOTE at the end to find that out.

In fact, as a Certified Master of the Obvious, I see my work here is DONE. It’s a NO BRAINER. Let’s leave the way we came in. Before shit met fan. Previous to the serious. We’ll end with a quote and a comment because that’s the way we are now.

Here’s the great QUOTE and the lame COMMENT:

“The noise volume of this volubility explodes when Pool leaves the fenced-in confines of print and strays into the asteroid belt of Internet reviewing. Buffeted by the fraggy clusterfuck of hidden agendas, free-floating animosity, and arbitrary verdicts, she finds herself clutching her space helmet in the uncharted void.”

“As a serial book reviewer I enjoyed the piece. As a resident of the UK, I have to ask: what is a ‘fraggy clusterfuck’?” —jon turney

Well jon, the word INTERNET was a keyword; perhaps a hint; maybe even an epiphany foregone. They obviously have computers in class-consciously backwards countries like the UK. Or is your mind sodden by inhaling your morning PLATE O’ GREASE with BANGERS?

Try www.urbandictionary.com. You will find another keyword hidden there like some bullshit DaVinci Code. It’s INEPT.

BONUS QUOTE

“Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.” –Frank Zappa

Merry Christmas to all. And to all a good fight.