new yorker writers are fighting on twitter guys

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/authors/susan_orlean_counters_dan_baum_on_twitter_116264.asp

I wouldn't consider either of those people writers

cmon bro twitter is legit art form now eff u

"fighting"

whiney u need to unclench

i saw susan orlean post something catty, was wondering what it was about

whiney as a twitter celeb i think you need to step in

i just hope she never finds out uh oh im having a fantasy doesnt consider her a real writer

rap writers are coming up with fake paul wall quotes on twitter, way funnier imo

www.twitter.com/noz

Wow she really looks nothing like Meryl Streep.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/original/danbaum.jpg

what the hell is that?

pimping your wacky rap-pun stand-up routine in more than one thread = NAGL

still love u tho

wasn't paul wall in olivia tremor control

olivia twitter control

guys this thread is about the new yorker writers, who are fighting, on twitter

pimping your wacky rap-pun stand-up routine in more than one thread = NAGL

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, May 12, 2009 1:06 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

on the grind like coffee grounds

susan korlean jabbar

looool @ dr. morbius's southern dandy cousin

I found Baum's account pretty fascinating, although I just realized that I was picturing David Wallace from The Office every time he mentioned Remnick.

link? twink?

i think baum is kind of a big weenie about all of this--he wanted to quit the nyer and move to costa rica because his eight grade daughter wanted to have a "family adventure."

the first half is in non twitter form here (scroll down)

http://www.metafilter.com/81577/Twitter-the-antiNew-Yorker

i tried to read it on twitter but reading a story like that backwards in broken-up 140 character tweets is stupid.

even in the right order it looks dumb:

http://www.danbaum.com/Nine_Lives/New_Yorker_tweets.html

The ponderous and sometimes solipsistic tone of most New Yorker writers probably fits in well with twitter.

I liked writing for an intelligent readership with broad interests. I liked the editing, and the factchecking.

The biggest disappointment was learning that, after all, it’s not only about the work on the page.

i mean like duh

I didn't think he wanted to quit the New Yorker for the Costa Rica year -- Remnick assured him that he could file stories from anywhere in the world, then reneged on that.

dBaum's world

bosses change their mind about stuff all the time, though!

poop yorker

Sure, sure, I'm just correcting you, Que.

his two options were:

1. move to costa rica because his 8th grade daughter wanted to have an adventure and send the NYer proposals for articles, which they may or may not go with.

2. stay in america and continue to work for the NYer.

right jaymc--my bad. he didn't want to quit.

dont think baum comes across that bad. but neither does remnick--sounds mostly like they were just two dudes with different working styles and orlean is taking it all hella personally

Orlean:

Dissing your boss? Whining abt story credits? Writing stories that aren't good enough to run? Seeming to dislike the mag itself?

It seems like only the first two are accurate summations. Baum clearly thought all of his work was good, even if Remnick didn't. And though he disliked the atmosphere of the magazine's office, that doesn't amount to disliking the magazine itself -- in fact, he has a lot of nice things to say about it.

dont think baum comes across that bad. but neither does remnick--sounds mostly like they were just two dudes with different working styles and orlean is taking it all hella personally

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Tuesday, May 12, 2009 6:30 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think he comes across bad in the sense that he's airing this stuff publicly... even if he has legit grievances it seems a bit cheap (and bizarrely self-destructive) to me

well its kind of the opposite of self-destructive given that he has a book coming out

he comes across as very naive and sheltered

And though he disliked the atmosphere of the magazine's office, that doesn't amount to disliking the magazine itself -- in fact, he has a lot of nice things to say about it.

see, i think he *does* dislike the magazine. and one of the points i think baum is trying to make is that though he likes the magazine itself, he hates the atmosphere there, and it's hard to separate the two

The biggest disappointment was learning that, after all, it’s not only about the work on the page.

and yeah why he's doing all this via twitter is a big ol mystery

i think baum looks a little bad just because theres an element of pettiness to the whole thing that lingers no matter how fair-minded he attempts to be about the nyer and remnick and the whole thing about the atmosphere - u dindt work there! u visted like a dozen times over three years how do u know how happy anyone else is?

also and i can lol sympathize with this but it seems really defensive and i can imagine having some many of ur stories killed will do this but its a little sad to be seeking affirmation via twitter imo

Can I ask a question? Who actually cares what Dan Baum thinks about the New Yorker or what Susan Orlean thinks about what Dan Baum thinks?

xpost: I think Baum looks bad because of that fucking hat.

orlean is like the "good" ilxors who show up on I MUST PROTEST threads to back the mods and tell the meta/zing dudes to stop whining

^^^^^
(signs i spend too much time on ilx)

the new yorker is not a democracy, baum

Can I ask a question? Who actually cares what Dan Baum thinks about the New Yorker or what Susan Orlean thinks about what Dan Baum thinks?

― Alex in SF, Tuesday, May 12, 2009 2:40 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dunno i thought it was kind of hilarious/interesting

well its kind of the opposite of self-destructive given that he has a book coming out

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Tuesday, May 12, 2009 6:36 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

if twittering about the new yorker makes his book a bestseller and gets him set for life, sure. if it doesnt i cant imagine he's going to have an easy time finding freelance work, which he says is his bread and butter, in the future.

Can I ask a question? Who actually cares what Alex in SF thinks about Dan Baum or the New Yorker?

I kept reading the Baum piece thinking okay here comes the part where he confesses he fucked Remnick's wife. That'll bring the drama. Instead pffft.

Orlean's response isn't worth the twitter it was twitted on.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/original/danbaum.jpghttp://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/original/danbaum.jpghttp://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/original/danbaum.jpghttp://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/original/danbaum.jpg
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/original/danbaum.jpghttp://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/original/danbaum.jpghttp://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/original/danbaum.jpghttp://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/original/danbaum.jpg

wow, game set match

I understand why his daughter left now

lol i keep thinking the atmosphere @ the ny office seemed so tense because he showed up for story meetings wearing that hat

nyer editor 1: someone has to tell him... maybe we can mention etiquette precludes wearing a hat indoors?
nyer editor 2: yeah but even mentioning the hat - last time carol did she got a twenty minute lecture on the origin of the word "boater"
nyer editor 1: okay, we'll have an intern do it

Lamp OTM

Lamp LOL

I think it's probably a mistake for him to post about this so publicly, but I sympathize with him a great deal. That may say a lot about me, though.

lol jaymc wears a boater hat

Lamp FTW

lol @ mr que

This story was edited and ready to run when I happened to mention to
my editor, John Bennet, that I’d spent the afternoon hanging Kerry
literature on doorknobs. Twenty minutes later, I got a call from both
Bennet and David Remnick, telling me they had to kill the story
because of my obvious bias. “What would happen if Fox News found
out?” Remnick asked, to which I replied, “What would happen if The
Nation found out that the New Yorker killed a good story because it
was afraid of Fox News?” I argued that I was not a paid operative of
the Kerry campaign, but just a citizen participating in democracy. And
if they couldn’t trust me to keep my politics out of my writing, how
could they trust me to be on staff at all? It’s conversations like this
that explain why I don’t write for the New Yorker anymore.

i tried to read it on twitter but reading a story like that backwards anything in broken-up 140 character tweets is stupid.

― s1ocki, Tuesday, May 12, 2009 2:24 PM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

fixed

seriously can we move onto the next hopefully less incomprehensible web 2.0 trend already? i can't take this bullshit.

but al! fake paul wall punchlines!

this is important and deserving of my time

David Remnick liked this story so much he called me at home on a
Saturday morning to congratulate me on it. But then another editor at
the magazine decided it was too much like a story Malcolm Gladwell
had written eight years earlier. Said I: I told you about Gladwell’s
story when I pitched the piece, and you didn’t think it was a problem
then. And besides, in the field of genetics, eight years is a lifetime.
Everything has changed. (And in fact, the two stories were about
entirely different technologies.) No matter: the story died.

i'm posted up like the chip on weingarten's shoulder
xpost

this is important and deserving of my time

― "the whale saw her" (gabbneb), Tuesday, May 12, 2009 7:07 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

unclench.

lol Gawker

lawyergay
8:05 AM on Mon May 11 2009

Please tell me that pic of Baum is from a community theater production of "The Music Man."

---

Rumpelstilskin
9:36 AM on Mon May 11 2009

At first I thought it was Matt Drudge in Summer mode.

Baum's is a good cautionary tale for me to hear, as someone who has little restraint in saying "B-b-but that's the thing I was telling you about six months ago!"

susanorlean Also: Don't think any mag, esp. New Yorker, kills pieces for spite or fun. It's expensive, depressing, wastes everyone's time. No one wins.

seriously. does this guy expect to ever work for a major magazine again??

he might as well just buy a jaunty pink boater and post a picture of himself wearing it on his website!

lol

Gotta say that susanorlean's above comment makes quite a bit of sense.

lol she's funny!

Q: Is horribly misreading an institution a good sign in a reporter? Aren't we supposed to be good at figuring out people & places?

yeah when you read his notes about why pieces were killed its like... dude did u really hang kerry door signs in florida while writing about the election? how long have you been in this "journalism" game for?

i usually try not to let a writer's personal life influence if I read their stuff or not, but this guy seems like such a dildo, i don't think i'll be reading his stuff if i happen to see it in an in-flight magazine (lol, the only places he'll be writing for after this).

Don't think any mag, esp. New Yorker, kills pieces for spite or fun

yeah, don't know about the fun part but thinking editors don't do shit out of spite occasionally is rong (not saying that's what happened to baum)

lolllllllllll

http://gawker.com/assets/resources/2007/06/dan%20baum.gif

wtf with this guy and his consistent hatfail

yeah, don't know about the fun part but thinking editors don't do shit out of spite occasionally is rong (not saying that's what happened to baum)

― velko, Tuesday, May 12, 2009 9:30 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sure but... killing pieces really is a humongous waste of time. you're playing yourself if you do it out of spite.

its hard to believe that a grown drama geek that wears retarded hats would be so annoyingly insecure that a) he consistently has to lecture his boss about mexican politics, having that idea six months ago &c and b) after being told his creative work wasn't up to par would trawl the internet looking for ppl to affirm that others were jealous of his forthright manner and he's actually really the best writer around his articles are totally awesome, seriously

I finally broke down and read this dude's account of what happened. Basically, he has convinced me he is an idiot. (Also, hatfail.)

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/inauguration-watch/baum.jpg

http://users.lycaeum.org/~maverick/baum.jpg

here we have hatfail AND shirtfail

it hardly bears saying but im also having a bit of trouble rousing sympathy for a guy who f-ed up a 90,000/year staff writer job at the nyer. and who was making 3.40/word before that

^^^^^ When I got to the part about "only" making $75K, I wanted to smack him.

the whole thing is a big hot mess--his reaction to the nyer as an institution, his dealings with the editor, his wtf hanging Kerry stuff on doorknobs, his whining to the editor about moving to costa rica, his dumbass story in reverse on twitter.

btw it bears mentioning that he actually basically cowrites all of his stuff w/ his wife

so this guy is balding, right?

the whole thing is a big hot mess--his reaction to the nyer as an institution, his dealings with the editor, his wtf hanging Kerry stuff on doorknobs, his whining to the editor about moving to costa rica, his dumbass story in reverse on twitter.

― Mr. Que, Tuesday, May 12, 2009 5:46 PM (25 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes its pretty awesome in it own way

btw i imagine that the "i love the nyer fact checkers" aside is basically "the only friends i could maker were nerds"

no i am def. not denying it's not awesome, it is--also max otm the whole co-writing thing with his wife????

but anyway i maintain that i dont think hes THAT retarded just clearly better suited for freelance work than contract gigs since he doesnt seem to be able to figure out how to work for someone rather than with them

btw i imagine that the "i love the nyer fact checkers" aside is basically "the only friends i could maker were nerds"

yo lay off fact-checkers!!

his wife is basically his pre editor editor doing some apparently pretty heavy rewrites yet remaining uncredited everywhere but their shared website - i read abt this in a blog

so this guy is balding, right?

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/randoEMS/Nine_Lives._SX320_CR0,0,0,0_PIen-us-vendor-play-shuttle-off,BottomLeft,0,43_.jpg

silent partner--she edits with silent lucidity

also max otm the whole co-writing thing with his wife????

yah but shes cool w/remaining uncredited its all about whats best for the brand "dan baum"

also, pretty much everyone on staff at the nyer is a nerd. trick is to not wear dumb hats so that even the nerds think you're a dork

uh

http://www.youtube.com/user/dannybaum

Each of those freeze frames is note perfect.

(It would be overkill to poll his hats, right)

no energy to care about this

please post more hat pics. photoshop if necessary!

I value the stability and flexibility that editing Dan's work allows. Also, freelancing work pays very little. By working together, we were able to shoot into the stratosphere, earning more than a dollar a word -- which many magazines have been paying for the past two decades. Dan's New Yorker wages and his advance for Nine Lives allowed me to work on fiction, for which, as yet, I haven't been paid.

Posted by: Margaret Knox | May 8, 2009 4:43 PM

So wait they are a single income family on $90,000 (or so) a year w/out health benefits?

alex u should audit them

Oh don't worry I plan to.

think he tries to claim hats as a business expense?

I suspect his daughter is smuggling those hats into the country from Costa Rica.

http://www-tc.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/images/a/6982.jpg

Hat envy:

http://i39.tinypic.com/xfbxts.jpg

how can you be so bad at hats

That tie is awful too.

(Note: After this first day, several bloggers suggested – yea, demanded – I not break sentences. They were right; it reads better.)

goddamn

Yea

dude did u really hang kerry door signs in florida while writing about the election?

is this what happened? that would be bad, but it sounded like he said that after the piece was all approved and edited and the kerry thing happened when he was back in colorado

the deal w/his wife co-writing the articles -- uncredited -- is unusual to say the least. do his editors know they're getting 2-4-1??

MrInBetween
9:38 AM
The New Yorker will obviously seem to be a gloriously happy, wonderfully nurturing place if you, like Susan Orlean, have a job there for life and no one utters even a hushed whisper about how rarely you write for the magazine.

JEALOUS MUCH

she's on book leave, as i recall from her twitter

# I'm cracking up over people complaining, "S.O., does she even write for the New Yorker anymore?" I'm on book leave! Really long book leave!about 4 hours ago from TweetDeck

Still, it's true: she's published exactly one article a year for the last five years.

Dude looks like a young, drug-free Wm. S. Burroughs!
http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/chg/content/images/2008_6041.jpg

he's high on hats!

OK, Susan Orlean's book that she's writing? A biography of Rin Tin Tin.

omg

i didnt even know who rin tin tin was until the norm mcdonald joke @ the saget roast but my god lady

better a book about rin tin tin than one about how skinny she is
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/18/style/a-night-out-with-the-skinny-women-thin-in-a-den-of-fat.html

Can't wait for the Charlie Kaufman screenplay for this one.

someone link these people to this thread

Okay that skinny book is fucked up.

i don't mean to suggest that people who had a chance to write for the nyer don't get to complain about anything, but man.

also lol @

lol i keep thinking the atmosphere @ the ny office seemed so tense because he showed up for story meetings wearing that hat

nyer editor 1: someone has to tell him... maybe we can mention etiquette precludes wearing a hat indoors?
nyer editor 2: yeah but even mentioning the hat - last time carol did she got a twenty minute lecture on the origin of the word "boater"
nyer editor 1: okay, we'll have an intern do it

― (Palm) springs sprungs (Lamp), Tuesday, May 12, 2009 2:50 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

(i haven't read these twitters)

Re: hat and leaving the New Yorker: Tom Wolfe dressed dandy and was persona non grata at the New Yorker, and I think Baum's following in his steps.

that's extremely generous of you

I'm a nice guy that way. I mean, it's not easy writing about Dynacorp and Kellogg, Brown & Root.

Those hats, wow.

lol, orlean still at it

@pete_wells Hmm. I disagree -- I'm not a brown-nosing boss suck-up. Talent should be happy. But picking stupid fights w/editor is...stupid.
about 4 hours ago from TweetDeck

I'm not well-versed on the twitter thing; how can you extract any message traffic containing compliments re: this guy's hats,
and can you graph this traffic in an artistic way?

If you could do that plus some other cool thing, that would be a hat trick.

http://gawker.com/5303534/look-whos-snarking-now-novelist-uses-twitter-to-trash-critic

haha what is wrong with these ppl

the main problem is that they are all bad at what they do

Ah I wanted to see Alice Hoffman go insane on twitter, but apparently it's been taken down.

http://gawker.com/5304168/alice-hoffmans-non+apology-apology-for-her-bout-of-twitter-rage

lol

twitter would be 1000 times better if it didn't allow anyone the option of taking down whatever dumb shit they said in the heat of the moment

more lol: http://gawker.com/5304322/alice-hoffmans-reviews-have-driven-other-writers-into-fits-of-rage

what a bunch of shitty people. so glad i don't read anything.

thanks, kanye

i see alice hoffman books in teh thrift store very frequently fwiw.

goole digger

aint messin with no broke writers

It's funny how the internet is finally exposing a lot of the private insider spite around writers and book critics, something I think used to be hidden within their circles -- also still funny to me that it ever exists in the first place, because book reviews as a whole tend to be way more polite and fair-minded, way less visceral or ad hominem, than most any other category of criticism I can think of.

I guess that's why so much of the spite registers as insidery -- it's not really about who wins an argument in front of the public, it's an issue of place within the industry

I'm sorry if I offended anyone.

awesome

Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation

Really? i dunno off the top of my head i can think of a lot of nasty book reviews

why does alice hoffman say "twit flap" in Story Sister?
I've always wondered

this is a pretty great one, i think ford spit on Colson Whitehead because of it

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/03/books/the-end-of-the-affair.html?pagewanted=all

When asked last year by The Kenyon Review what kind of relationship he has with his characters, Ford replied: ''Master to slave. Sometimes I hear them at night singing over in their cabins.'' Singing. So that's what that was. It sounded like whining.

professional writers are, by and large, socially inept creatures

and that's a vast generalization, but it sure seems true.

also still funny to me that it ever exists in the first place, because book reviews as a whole tend to be way more polite and fair-minded, way less visceral or ad hominem, than most any other category of criticism I can think of.

And this was a very innocuous review to crazy over. I can't imagine how sensitive or thin skinned you'd have to be to take offense over it, and I'm speaking as someone who is sensitive and thin skinned.

and she's been a reviewer herself! i'd like to think that being on both sides would give her some perspective. like, if i ever put out a record and catch feelings about a bad review, like, kill me.

do any of these psychos get on reality tv?

i would also imagine if you put something out there (book, movie, whatever) you're gonna get some shitty, vicious, unfair reviews and the best thing to do is probably just let it be

twitter.com

professional writers are, by and large, socially inept creatures

― wacky out of context phrase is the worst look (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, June 30, 2009 2:34 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

umm you technically work in the music/entertainment industry, right?

two sides of the same coin imho.

let's not even get started on how socially inept biochemists are!

The commonplace used to be that writers were quite charming and social, back in the days where they were presumed to be gadding around stealing everyone they met as characters -- but these days, yeah, being a professional writer means spending a great deal of time by yourself thinking about stuff nobody else cares about yet, so it's not hard to guess where the stereotype comes from. By and large, though, apart from a little self-selection for that type, writers don't strike me as particularly different in social facility from anyone else -- I don't know that a roomful of writers would really be more awkward than a roomful of dentists.

yeah i wouldn't want to see a dentist flip out if like the ADA magazine said his last run of crowns were all subpar

nabisco when you say writers do you mean novelists, or are you including bloggers and columnists or what

i write shopping lista, and to-do lists sometimes.

self-identified "writers" or just MFA professor types

I dunno, thinking mostly of novelists and non-fiction book writers (who aren't mostly journalists or academics or memoirists) and like professional essay / feature / literary / magazine writers (who aren't mostly journalists etc.)

Hoffman's first tweet was "How do some people get to review books? And give the plot away."

This can drive a writer to rage more than a negative review.

Has an artist ever put out any kind of public response to a negative review that ended up reflecting well on them?

im a writer & i like to party & hang out with people and steal them

I think Zadie Smith / James Wood came out looking nice for both, but I suspect that's because people wanted to hear her reaction -- she wasn't just complaining or defending

Has an artist ever put out any kind of public response to a negative review that ended up reflecting well on them?

― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, June 30, 2009 3:08 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

good q. answer must be no

doesn't really count, because it's not the artist, but some people thought Jack Green was William Gaddis--anyway Fire the Bastards is totally hilarious

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_the_Bastards!

http://www.nyx.net/~awestrop/ftb/ftb.htm

Tom Wolfe took on his three stooges: Mailer, Updike, and Irving.

What he discovered was laziness (some reviewers either didn't read or didn't finish the work) ; incompetence (almost half the reviews contained some factual errors) ; cliché ("too difficult", "too long", "too negative", "ambitious", "a promising first novel") ; and outright fraud (one critic purloined part of his review from another review).

haha if calling Gaddis "too difficult" or "too long" is a cliche, it's a cliche for a pretty good reason

he's not really difficult at all, is the thing. just different. but that's just me. the recognitions is a little on the long side, sure, but calling something "too long" is pretty dumb.

it doesnt seem like it would be that hard to write a funny, measured, self-deprecating response to a negative review that could act as a defense

yeah but bad reviews make HULK ANGRY

but calling something "too long" is pretty dumb.

i guess i should clarify here and say calling The Recognitions too long in a book review is pretty dumb

Mr. Que I would bet anything that at some point on this board you have said that a film, song, book, album, or something is longer than you think it should be.

oh xpost never mind

but the recognitions is too long

who the fuck needs all those words to say something

'bisco, I wouldn't suggest that entertainment industry people are LESS obnoxious than writers! But I think on a par is not uncommon.
And yeah, I would argue that an average room of writers, while much more interesting than a room of dentists, would be more socially inept.

yeah i agree some things are too long, but if you're going to write about a book and only have a tiny amount of space in which to do it, you should probably focus on stuff other than "waaaah this book was too long."

he's not really difficult at all, is the thing

we've been over this before, que, but:
I found the civil war drama portions of a Frolic of His Own too much an impediment to be enjoyment of the rest of the novel. It read, to me, like an extended joke that never paid off.

and in some ways, it kind of is a cliche to say that big books are too long, i mean it's kind of funny in some ways you know, like your first response: "this book is too long! i'll never finish it." etc etc

there are three different types of spiders outside my window

And yeah, I would argue that an average room of writers, while much more interesting than a room of dentists, would be more socially inept.

― an average room of dentists (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, June 30, 2009 2:25 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

how many dentists do you know

the thing about gaddis is that right before he died he put out a short book that was better written than all of his bloated books while also capturing everything that they were trying to say

I found the civil war drama portions of a Frolic of His Own too much an impediment to be enjoyment of the rest of the novel. It read, to me, like an extended joke that never paid off.

yeah, i have a lot of problems with Frolic! The thing that really bugged me about it was the legal opinion he threw in there didn't read like a legal opinion at all, in my eyes. but really, i don't think it's difficulty, i mean it's not like the play is hard to read and understand it's more like "i don't understand why this is in the book, and you're losing the reader."

I think my point was just that in general-readership reviews of a book like that -- or even specialized literary reviews of it -- I can't really find fault with anyone pointing out the salient and non-controversial facts that it is pretty long and relatively difficult

it's lazy

you're lazy.

i'm lazy.

a puppy is lazy.

i don't see how dentists as a species would be less engaging or personally compelling than writers tbh, the latter would seem to have way more personality disorders and the former take lots of cool vacations and have expensive hobbies

dentists have nitrous going for them at least.

most of the dental students i've encountered are pretty bland. but i'm sorta required to think that dentists are lame and myopic and overpaid, so

and i don't think the Recognitions is that difficult, unless we're working with vastly different ideas of difficult, which is possible

I can't really find fault with anyone pointing out the salient and non-controversial facts that it is pretty long and relatively difficult

i mean this is just complete strawman right here

I read Alice Hoffman's Seventh Heaven in a Contemporary American Fiction class in college, and it was neither long nor difficult, which is why I got through it and did not get through Absalom! Absalom! in my American Lit class that same week. Good, plot-driven novel.

(the relatively difficult part, not the pretty long part, i didn't feel like fixing the formatting)

dude can just hang his head over his desk and drool out 500 pages of gibberish but you can't say that its unnecessary?

writers talking about dentists, dentists building miniature tallships

I know three dentists and several dozen writers. So maybe I just need to hang out with more dentists.

dude can just hang his head over his desk and drool out 500 pages of gibberish but you can't say that its unnecessary?

― cool app (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Tuesday, June 30, 2009 2:34 PM (23 seconds ago) Bookmark

if he had just been to the dentist then its probably v necessary

Umm if a book just came out and I know nothing about it, I don't see how it's "lazy" for a critic to communicate to me salient features of it, length and difficulty among them

NB I didn't say dentists were less interesting than writers, I said I wouldn't expect a roomful of writers to be any less socially skilled than a roomful of dentists (or office managers, or people who grew up in Michigan, or people with different-sized feet)

i am saying that dentists are less interesting than writers

Umm if a book just came out and I know nothing about it, I don't see how it's "lazy" for a critic to communicate to me salient features of it, length and difficulty among them

ummmm, it's going to pretty much be impossible to prove as a "fact" that a book is relatively difficult. difficult to whom? how is a books' difficulty level assessed? is there a scale i should use to evaluate the prose. i just don't think this is what book critics should do

ummmmmmm

you think literary criticism should only consist of FACTS and no opinions?

if we're talking about what we think book critics should or shouldn't do I think they should eat shit

PS please note that the whole root of this discussion was that the book's "difficulty" was agreed upon and noted by enough critics for someone to consider it a "cliche" (note: not a falsehood!), so it strikes me as pretty fair to say that general opinion, however you might feel about it, came down on the side of its being relatively difficult

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l171/sicklesdawg/33cqarojpg.gif

you think literary criticism should only consist of FACTS and no opinions?

that's not what i said

PS please note that the whole root of this discussion was that the book's "difficulty" was agreed upon and noted by enough critics for someone to consider it a "cliche" (note: not a falsehood!),

no, actually, Jack Green, who wrote Fire The Bastards! considered it a cliche to talk about the Recognitions being difficult in a review because instead of engaging with the book, talking about different aspects of it, critics just dismissed it as being too difficult. or too long. it's kind of lazy. and you know, just because a bunch of critics call something difficult, doesn't exactly make a book difficult, does it? shouldn't that be something for the reader to decide on his or her own?

or maybe you think it does. . .

you know what a difficult book is? the bible. too many characters and insane gaps in the narrative.

seriously. all those different names!

any book can be difficult

if you read it

upside down

umop episdn

I tried

also, my use of the word "facts" refers to your use of it back here

I can't really find fault with anyone pointing out the salient and non-controversial facts that it is pretty long and relatively difficult

i'll give you a book review: this argument is terrible

i give my work on this thread a D+

Mr. Que, come on! even if you don't find The Recognitions difficult, you can recognize why someone might describe it that way!

yes! in conversation! not in a book review!

well, if all the book review said was "this book is difficult," it would be a shitty review. using the word "difficult" in the review seems okay.

"difficult" seems to imply some sort of willful obfuscation on the author's part. i prefer "challenging" which places the blame on the lazy reader where it belongs.

shouldn't that be something for the reader to decide on his or her own?

Surely half the point of reviews is for readers to get an outside opinion on what something is like, so they can make informed choices about what they do or do not feel like experiencing on their own? This is why people read things like newspaper-style reviews -- so that if critics seem to agree that something is "difficult," they can bear that in mind when thinking about reading it. Which really isn't complicated or sinister or particularly different than asking a friend whether they liked something.

Anyway, I obviously haven't said that "too difficult/long" is an excuse for not engaging with a book you're reviewing -- I just think that writing them off as "cliches" in this particular case is kind of funny, because it's not as if they're vapid content-less cliches, they are (in a great many people's opinion) accurate and relevant statements about what the book is like. Maybe not the statements Green or Gaddis or you might have preferred to hear, but pretty defensible/valid descriptions of what the thing is like.

"man, this book was easy"

i think elmo just proved my point way way better than i ever could dream of.

"difficult" seems to imply some sort of willful obfuscation on the author's part. i prefer "challenging" which places the blame on the lazy reader where it belongs.

i mean, this is just a potayto potahto thing. i called nightwood difficult in that worst novels thread because it seemed willfully obfucaty to me, but i'm sure t.s. eliot would just gleefully call me an idiot.

lol elmo

is the distinction between ease of reading, ease of digestion or just intentional obfuscation of meaning by the author in an attempt to look clever?

haha I'm not sure what point Elmo proved -- general-audience book reviews are constantly describing things as undemanding, light, breezy, quick reads, page-turners, good "beach reading," etc. ... it's a staple of the form to let people know how demanding a book is relative to others

ilx is good beach reading. i print out threads like this to bring to the beach with me.

btw, as an aside, i don't know anyone aside from an old roommate who reads book reviews as an attempt to figure out what to read next.

i don't know a single person as far as that goes.

i don't know a single person who reads book reviews AND books

this book was a total CINCH

i dunno how i can explain it any clearer--it's a totally lazy, dumb, cliched, silly thing for a book reviewer to say about a book either way you slice it "man this book was easy," versus "man this book difficult." i would like to think that book reviewers can go a little more into depth about stuff.

i don't know anyone aside from an old roommate who reads book reviews as an attempt to figure out what to read next.

OTM, i treat book reviews as "Books that have been released within the past few months," versus gaining any kind of knowledge about books. i wish book reviews were better. i do the same thing with music, too.

"good beach reading" always sounds like a backhanded compliment to me, like there's not much to get out of it so it's okay if you don't put the effort in

nabisco if you want to learn more about my thoughts (lol i doubt it at this point) go ahead and read fire the bastards, a lot of the original book reviews are included there and you can see how insipd and stupid they are (or not, make you'll like them, but it will probably be a lot more enjoyable than listening to me prattle on.)

insipid

a word that kinda sums it all up doesn't it

sums up ILX? yes.

i sometimes read the NYT book review or the NYReview of books or the New Yorker or whatever for suggestions of what to read next

but i hardly ever read novels, so there's that.

Wow, I would not have expected it to be controversial to believe that the bulk of people who read book review sections do it less out of spite and more to collect information and opinions about new books, so next time they're in a bookstore they can think "hey, this book sounded interesting, maybe I will pick it up and look at it," etc.

Que, I totally believe you that there are insipid reviews in that book -- I just can't help giggling over the Wikipedia quote casting "long" as a big cliche about a 1000-pager!

bulk of people who read book review sections

the bulk of people don't read book review sections. not even the bulk of regular readers, i bet.

I think you are interpreting that syntax weirdly, dude!

oh, i know what you're getting at and what you mean for sure. i'm just being snarky. you know.

ian was "reviewing" your post nabisco

i think your posting is a bit lengthy over all nabisco, though only occasionally difficult :\

ilx nerds are fighting on ilx guys

xp I'm like forks - I'll read book reviews from time to time for reading suggestions - but I read mostly non-fiction.

"fighting"

me and Que were about to take it outside on that one

there hasn't been enough name calling on this thread.

pistols MLA Handbooks at dawn

we should invite more dentists, those guys get foul

they might really sink their teeth into this argument

they could really get at the "root" of its cause

"drill" some points home

you've been saving those up haven't you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHhMNGhcwMo

best dentist ever!

Que it seems like you want your 'reviews' to be something else entirely. Like nabisco I read reviews to see if something is interesting or 'good' or whatever. The more critical analyses you're looking for are more rewarding after you've read the work , most of the time, and IMO are a different animal altogether

so what has dan baum been up to lately

writing about his gun, in harpers

http://www.theawl.com/2010/08/real-america-dan-baums-sexy-gun

Earlier today we linked to a selection of questions answered by author Dan Baum about his latest Harper’s cover story, “Happiness is a Worn Gun.” Baum’s examination of the feelings about carrying a concealed handgun may on the surface appear reasonable and inoffensive. A deeper look proves this is not the case. That's not all that surprising from a writer who starts his reasoning on gun research, “Why do we need to explain why we like guns? Nobody feels a need to explain why people like guitars, or radios, or model trains. What makes guns different?" The obvious answer to Baum's dumb question is "because guitars and model trains don't kill people." But Baum’s is the wrong question.

The right question (besides "This guy really had a job at The New Yorker?") is "Why does Dan Baum like guns so much?"

he probably keeps his gun in his hat

http://sonofboldventure.blogspot.com/2011/03/profile-writing-basics.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/scocca/archive/2011/03/09/esquire-writer-chris-jones-explains-how-profile-writing-works-if-you-have-no-desire-to-publish-a-profile-story.aspx

http://sonofboldventure.blogspot.com/2011/03/tom-scocca-is-wrong.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/scocca/archive/2011/04/21/what-would-chris-jones-think-of-the-new-chris-jones-article.aspx

http://sonofboldventure.blogspot.com/2011/04/response-to-tom-scocca.html

lol @ ppl that write for esquire

wow, this scocca guy seems like a real bore

ha i think jones comes off as the boot in this but ymmv

*boor

tom's a caca

I wouldn't consider either of those people writers

jones: here's how you do a thing

scocca: wtf are you kidding, u suck

jones: no i am not, i am really good at this, how dare u

scocca (later): lol this fuckin guy, still sucks, i shall prove it to u

jones: TELL ME HOW MY ASS TASTE

this is total "lock them both in a box and drop said box into the ocean" territory

Jones would come off better not digging at Scocca's employer, but he is responding to someone taking shots at him for no reason.

Esquire has gotten kind of shitty lately, though - more empty celeb profiles and less of the stuff Jones is pointing too that are good reads.

no reason? scocca is a media critic!

It's pretty much a classic arguing-past-each-other situation. But Jones seems to be more right -- if you're an aspiring magazine writer, which is who jones is presumably targeting, you're not going to get the chance to profile Clooney, so it's irrelevant how many times Clooney has been on the cover of Esquire. You're also not going to get the cover story, for that matter, and it's not like cover stories represent the full range of pieces in Esquire. And there are other magazines that are less celebrity-driven.

re: distinctive cutaway, the '59 Chet Atkins is a single cutaway where the '62 is a double-cutaway. before I criticized that point I might have GISed "Country Gentleman"

the 'wah i didn't win an award' post is . . . something

scocca's being a dick but jones is being a crybaby. i know who id rather hang out with.

and they wonder why people don't read magazines anymore

i like tom scocca, i remember he did some parody of j safran foer that was hilarious? or am i thinking of someone else

I was walking George in the park again earlier this hour when she suddenly lunged and gobbled up half the remains of a dead squirrel. Five minutes later, she vomited it all over the grass. She vomited it up so easily and nonchalantly, it gave me a pang. Dogs have such pure, honest reactions to things–both coming and going.

apparently scocca looks like james spader and jones is canadian

this alters my thinking slightly

I'm w/Jones on this one.

I was walking George in the park again earlier this hour when she suddenly lunged and gobbled up half the remains of a dead squirrel.

Having not read the links beforehand, I read this going "Okay I think there are some issues with this person."

talk about a bun fight

idgi, jones is being such a sensitive baby abt this stuff? While scocca is being hilar? also his Jeff bridges profile sucks?

haha exactly

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/rupert-murdoch-janet-malcolm-6075803

what a fart butt

i don't even know who tom junod is but now i dislike him

he is a fart butt

it's not clear to me that he even understands janet malcolm's critique of journalism--he never engages with it.

he also misquotes it

i loved that malcolm piece about the murder trial in queens

After all, Malcolm is well-known for her flat declaration that journalism — without qualifiers — is "morally reprehensible," and in the pages of the Times the story of Rupert Murdoch's entanglement in Great Britain's hacking scandal would seem to bear her out.

i think u mean morally indefensible bro

sort of wish malcolm would respond to that post with "oh, wow" but i'm sure she has better things to do

the best part of the original malcolm quote--"every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible"--is that it pre-calls out tom junod as either too stupid or too full of himself. probably he is both!

i know, right? not that i know what i'm talking about but i over-identify with journalists through my sister. when she was starting out with freelance reporting, she was like, "journalism is basically learned sociopathy."

but he has a point, there is basically no difference between janet malcolm and rupert murdoch. morally speaking, i mean.

(she is the Henny Youngman of self-hating journalists)

is he referring to the Hennesy Youngman and if so from whence does he get the authority to refer to him in the familiar???

lol bro henny youngman is a famous old comedian

oh...man...you have no idea how many doors are being shattered right now

oh man hennesy youngman really does look like a black henny youngman

whoa