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June 21, 2004

HATCHET JOBS REVIEWS

Dale Peck's Hatchet Jobs is beginning to draw its fair share of ink in the review pages. First up, The Chicago Sun Times takes a look , and the view is decidedly mixed.

Peck is a solid analyst. He's the kind of guy you want to have on hand to look over the papers at a mortgage closing or the blueprints for a house. He's very good at form and structure, whether scoring Colson Whitehead's John Henry Days for "drowning in a swamp of extraneous material" or knocking fiction by Julian Barnes, a "terribly, terribly skilled" but "soulless" writer, for being "more concerned with telling than tale." He brings valuable context to his reviews, recognizing Philip Roth as "the only one of our anointed writers still willing to reinvent himself and his writing," and refers to materials as diverse as Sidney Sheldon's novels and The Illiad.

But for all that, unfortunately, Peck isn't much fun. For a man with his reputation for whacking reputations, you expect at least some of the acid pleasures provided by such ranking masters of critical bile as Christopher Hitchens, Martin Amis and James Wolcott. You expect someone who regards himself as such a guardian of the written word to provide linguistic spark himself.

But there's no lift to Peck's pronouncements, no real sizzle or sass. If Terry McMillan's How Stella Got Her Groove Back is "the most lazily written book I've ever read," Jim Crace's The Devil's Larder exposes that British writer as "the Betty Crocker of contemporary novelists" and Ian McEwan's books "smell worse than newspaper wrapped around old fish," dismissals like these hardly make Peck the Edmund Wilson of 21st century pundits.

Scott McLemee's write-up in Newsday is considerably less kind, although he spends a bit too much space rehashing the whole Snark Saga.

As little as Julavits and Birkerts might have in common, they could agree that Peck's transformation of criticism into a form of insult comedy was destructive. Now, it would be convenient if at this late stage of the dispute I could strike a contrarian pose and pronounce both of them utterly mistaken.

Unfortunately, I can't quite do that. If Julavits prefers commentary on books to be the finger-painting of the mind, while Birkerts wants culture to be as sober and edifying as an adult-education course, Peck seems to split the difference - making it a gesture of adolescent self-definition, an effort to get as many eyes as possible in the shopping mall of American culture turned in his direction, if only by name-calling in a loud voice. Even when this is entertaining rather than just annoying, the last thing you want is for anybody else to imitate it.

The San Francisco Chronicle offers the most thoughtful and nuanced look thus far, finding value with the book without letting Peck completely off the hook for his excesses.

Having read most of the pieces in "Hatchet Jobs" before reading this collection, I didn't always agree with Peck's conclusions, but I always found myself at least rethinking my views of his subjects because Peck always makes you work and he always makes you think. And that's what he does in the 11 reviews here (not all of which, by the way, are pure nastiness: He has nice things to say about Michael Cunningham, Rebecca Brown and ... Danielle Steel?). Peck also makes you work and think when he talks about negative reviews and why he won't write them anymore. He just doesn't make you work and think hard enough

Watch this space for my own upcoming look at Hatchet Jobs as part of my 1000 Words series of reviews. I plan to take a slightly different approach than any of the reviews I've yet seen and I suspect that, minimally, I'll blow the 1000-word mark ...

Posted at 12:30 AM |

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Comments

Bud Parr: Bookenomics & Policulture

This book is getting so much press, like a Benetton ad, that I became curious about the snarking trend myself. After reading an essay by Sven Birkerts in the last issue of Bookforum, adressing the snark phenomenon, I read a chapter from Peck's book at Maisonneuve about Mr. Birkerts, which damned everything about him right down to his name. I'm not sure how this is "serious engagement" as the editor of Maisonneuve says, because I believe that this type of attack puts literary criticism at the level of the political campaign (ULA comes to mind here also). But as tempting as it is to dismiss Peck as a mudslinger, perhaps he is at least tapping into a corotid artery of critical dissatisfaction. Hmm.

Articles referenced:
http://maisonneuve.org/article.php?article_id=310
http://www.bookforum.com/birkerts.html

Posted by: Bud Parr: Bookenomics & Policulture | June 21, 2004 at 04:38 PM

Ed

Having read most of these reviews during their initial run, I'll be very curious to hear your take, Mark. I think one of the reasons the book is getting so much press is that Peck has pointed to a major hole in review coverage -- namely, the summary, back pat and resultant feel-good atmosphere of reviewing. I'm not suggesting that Peck's is precisely the way to go, but certainly a little bit of honest muckraking never hurt anyone. What I find ironic is that the Julavits manifesto has unleashed the hidden beast. Perhaps negativity is a part of reviewing that that can't be avoided. My only hope is that a pinpointed attack can be somewhat constructive and cite specific examples when trashing instead of remaining exclusively inflammatory.

Posted by: Ed | June 21, 2004 at 09:56 PM

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