self-absorbed bastard alert

Exactly how footling and superficial is this? And how most swiftly and effectively can we let him know so?

he should write video reviews instead.

If it's so awful, refute it, rather than just saying bad things about it. Show me where it's wrong, and convince me of your own POV.

blimey, phil, now I'll have to read it!!

Heh. :-) As a very bad songwriter I once knew used to sing, "The PAIN! The PAAAIIN!"

WHAT IS THE ANSU!?!?

He's right about DeLillo, you know. He's wrong about Wallace, though I have my own reasons for mixed feelings there. He can't possibly be quoting Zadie Smith on Eggers, b/c the guy is rilly a lightweight doof in the knowledge sweepstakes. So if she is talking about Eggars, I wouldn't be surprised, however, given what I've read from her. He's wrong on Pynchin, coz M&D is one of the most human and character driven novels I've ever read. I'm just disappointed he didn't mention moody. Also, he's dead wrong on Ellis and McInerny. As a literary misantrope, he groups too many disparate elements under a big banner. And fuck if Less Than Zero or Brightness Falls weren't above all human.

Sterling, I think the reason Zadie likes Eggers is she thinks he's a cutie.

Woods is metaphorically setting up his "Remember the WTC" t-shirt stall, charging retail.

If Ethan is saying what I think he's saying, that makes him (Ethan, I mean) the funniest and most spot-on person alive. Today, at least

The implication (actually, no, it's quite blatant) of the opening being that Woods alone is allowed to condemn triviality because only he is not trivial = he is a fuckwit.

He's right about glamorama though...

I thought the Woods piece was pretty awful too, and also noted that he's not alone, in theme if not in approach. There've been a few 'what does 11/09 mean for the arts?' articles around. My instinct is 'who knows?' (with a strong undercurrent of 'who cares?' - at least in these terms). I guess it's a pretty unreflexive response to the urge to keep alive the idea that 'everything changed' after WTC. The Woods article is particularly crappy in its insistence on turning an open question into a prescriptive polemic.

I think the trivia vs seriousness question is in principle an interesting one - not so much vis-a-vis the state of the novel, but more generally (I speak as a guiltly Heat reader who finds it increasingly difficult to suppress the instinct that something should - humanely - wipe out the worst excesses of celebrity culchur).

I'm probably alone in this, but I just don't see DeLillo's novels as unpeopled frameworks for the pursuit of 'big' cutural analysis (and Woods' Frankfurt School reference is just misguided); I think his novels often offer luminous characterisations ('Libra' and 'White Noise' in particular). And Mao II doesn't argue that terrorism _should_ take on the expressive function of the novel, but consider rather that it _might_ do so in cultures that for whatever reason don't venerate Literature in the way Woods seems to (and I mean cultures within Western societies as well as outside them). I would've thought that was more evident post-11/09 than before.

Thinking out loud...