Jonathan Safran Foer, in a post that is likely fake unless Mr. Foer would like to corroborate it, has responded to Steve Almond’s takedown:
Me and you should hang out, really. With my ironic-ironic-ironic-ironic pretentiousness and profound postmodern invulnerability and your high-school / freshman-year-in-college ironic, I’m-not-pretentiousness-because-I-am-aware-that-I-might-be-pretentious-and-also-because-when-I-feel-that-I’m-being-pretentious-I-go-ahead-and-say-that-I’m-being-pretentious (and I use a lot of cliches in my language, just like on TV and in Hollywood movies) we can be really profound and postmodern and probably we can achieve true art really quickly, in like two minutes, and then after we can eat hot dogs. We can eat nuts from those profoundly sorrowful Nuts 4 Nuts people.
(Thanks, Chelsea!)
Magic Hours by Tom Bissell: This marvelous collection of essays chronicles everything from film shoots to novelists rescued from oblivion. (The essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, with its portrait of raucous factions, unexpectedly reveals how soft today's literary world has become.) But if you peer between the cracks of these smart pieces, you may very well see how cultural lives are formed from the most unexpected life choices. And as we follow Bissell's development as a writer over the years, that goes for Bissell as well. (
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway: Harkaway's latest novel greatly improves on his previous book, The Gone-Away World, which I'm already on record as praising. Angelmaker adopts genre elements without ever feeling like a genre book, and it leads me to believe that Harkaway is well on his way to a narrative grace close to China Miéville's. Yet inexplicably this very fun book, which includes an eightysomething badass named Edie Banister, a mysterious mechanical object that may destroy the world, farcical scenarios involving lawyers and the police, and some unexpectedly moving moments about fatherhood, doesn't appear to be getting much attention in American newspapers. Nothing from the snobs at The New York Times Book Review, nothing from The Washington Post. And since I can't get Harkaway on Bat Segundo, I hope this Jump Up and Down mention gets you hopping as well.
The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel: Unless you're really pressed for time, forget Jonah Lehrer. If you want to understand creativity and its relationship to neuroscience, then the bowtie-wearing Nobel laureate is your man. In addition to being a physically beautiful book (you will drool over many of the paintings), there are helpful overviews on optical illusions, science, biographical backgrounds, and many vital figures from the Vienna Secession. Kandel's enthusiasm (and his call for greater unity between the humanities and science) is contagious.
Almond is a little hard on Foer, but I think he also makes a few decent points.
Foer’s schtick is pretty funny to start (the whole Ghengis Khan crashing history thing is good), but it gets a little old. Dunno, maybe I’m missing some in jokes here or something . . .
What are the decent points Almond makes, pray tell?
Edward nails him, methinks.
Am I the only tall male Jew in America who likes Jonny Foer?
I’m really starting to get confused as to what is fiction and reality, but it’s funny anyway.
I think the JSF blog is fake. If you’ll look in the archives, it also has posts by John Updike, and a “Robot Machine.” Also, JSF refers to himself too often as postmodern and profound, and “John Updike” talks too much about “not getting” things.
Really, it has to be fake.
Robert,
On a second reading, I change my opinion.
I haven’t read more than 500 words + that many dingbats by JSF (part of an unreadable New Yorker story), so I have no interest in weighing on the merits of Almond’s reviewer’s remorse, but it is ignoble to write a conventional review for a large cirulation daily, keep the rhetoric down so as not to alientate the editors, and then, upon seeing that he’s coming in on the mild side compared to other reviewers, screed out on MobyLives for his regular audience. He says everybody’s bullshit detector is broken. Not so.
Hi, I’d like to corroborate the post. It’s real. Please visit my site. I need help urgently.