Joe Queenan: Incurious Harbinger of Death
Written byPosted on October 29, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized
Pity Joe Queenan, who with his sad, bitter, and predictable essays has secured his position as the Bobby Slayton (or perhaps, more appositely, the Bobby Slayton knockoff) of the literary world. The amaroidal (or perhaps hemorrhoidal?) lout actually thinks he’s being funny with this smug piece that pillories Henry Petroski for having the effrontery to dwell at length upon the history of the toothpick. Who knew that those reckless microhistorians were the true brutes of our world? Forget sexism, racism, or even the Bush Administration. As far as Queenan is concerned, the true wrongs of the world are being perpetuated by the good professors at Duke University, the secret cabal no doubt headed with clandestine memos dispatched by Petroski and the handshake known only to a handpicked few. If you’ve ever wondered what it must be like to live such a myopic life, or to abdicate curiosity for the everyday objects that do indeed possess a hidden historical trajectory, then Queenan’s essay represents a fascinating specimen of oafish hubris and, above all, a restless determination to flaunt a presbyopic pestilence that slides across his saggy body as smoothly as a comfy counterpane clutched in desperation.
I suspect that Queenan doesn’t like ice cream very much. Much less anything at all.
This is the work of a man who is no more curious about the world than a agoraphobic reality TV show junkie. He neither addresses Petroski’s scholarship nor his shortcomings. Queenan simply declares, “So what?” Queenan is not one to ask why, nor can he tilt his pig’s head even one degree in the direction of what Petroski might be fired up about. He merely cites one passage — no more, no less — and declares the book dead, without even casual expatiation. That’ll teach those academic upstarts!
There once was a time when Queenan wrote funny and subversive pieces for Spy, but that was before he moved to Tarrytown, where 63% of households make $50,000 or more a year. Which makes you wonder about a man who is best known for the lackluster volume, Balsamic Dreams: A Short But Self-Important History of the Baby Boomer Generation, which even Curtis White had to conclude a few years ago was “one of the nastiest books I’ve read in some time.” Here is a small sample:
I was, if nothing else, being true to the ethos of my generation. When faced with unsettling developments like death, Baby Boomers always react in the same way: We sign up for self-improvement classes. A Baby Boomer par excellence, a prototypical product of the Me Decade, I only knew how to respond to the world insofar as it responded to moi. Everything I had ever learned as a Baby Boomer had oriented me in a single direction: further into myself. Now I had to face the ugly truth, not only about me, but about us: We were appalling. We had appalling values. We had appalling taste. And one of the most appalling things about us was that we liked to use appalling words like “appalling.”
No hope then for looser and more lissome definitions, a la those found within the Chambers Dictionary, much less a receptive ear upturned to stirs outside Queenan’s immediate taxonomy. What do we make of such a man? Is this guy guided by inveterate self-loathing for the tool he has become? Or maybe it’s just Queenan’s begrudging acceptance that he’s no less a part of the Establishment than Pat Boone.
Joe Queenan is a life lesson for any young critic or satirist. Be very careful about the targets you place into your crosshairs. If you are not careful, you will see everything in bitter and reckless terms and you will grow up to be another Joe Queenan, a flaccid hack devoid of joy and enthusiasm. I suppose that, as far as Tanenhaus and company are concerned, Queenan is the kind of purposeless and prehistoric piss-and-vinegar that apparently represents the intellectual discourse of our time.
Comments
9 Responses to “Joe Queenan: Incurious Harbinger of Death”
Leave a Reply
Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
Thanks for the sound warning.
My rules of thumb for satire are:
1. Kick upwards. Mock the mighty, the rich, the self-important, the vain, the cruel and the arrogant.
2. Break down false barriers. If someone complains that the poor are filthy and smell, point out that the rich take a crap just like everyone else; Donald Trump’s farts are not perfumed.
3. Remember to Have Fun. If it ain’t funny, it’s failed satire.
I ‘ve learned to avoid Queenan over the years,especially if he’s doing a book review. Not only does he tend to sneer at the author but in the case of fiction,will reveal major plot points that ruin the book for others. He’s not the only spoilsport to do this but I just hate it when a reviewer feels the need to stomp all over the plot surprises(even if they’re pretty obvious)just because he/she can!
The sad thing is,Queenan used to be funny-it’s like what Marcellus Wallace said to Butch”,You see, this profession is filled to the brim with unrealistic motherfuckers. Motherfuckers who thought their ass would age like wine. If you mean it turns to vinegar, it does. If you mean it gets better with age, it don’t.”
You’re point’s well taken. And I did think that for a guy complaining about another guy writing so terribly much about the toothpick, Mr. Queenan had painted himself into an especially sticky corner: to write the piece he had to churn out an awful lot of words about the toothpick himself.
But I’d add another caveat to anyone who’s driven to entertain or create points of interest: you’re not going hit the moon every time. No one does, not even my hero Michael Jordan.
Plan that landing.
Getting ornery in his elder years I guess. Although, from the perspective of an outsider looking at the boomers, that passage sounds dead on haha, though not particularly funny.
Maybe Queenan’s sarcasm wasn’t very witty, but I agree with basic premise of his review. A 443-page book about the toothpick is ludicrous.
Not having read Queenan’s review, or the toothpick book, I’m still not surprised he didn’t like it. I tried to read another of Petroski’s books on a very narrow engineering subject- the bookshelf in history. I’m sure other book geeks salivated as much as I did when they saw the cover, but Petroski wrote a very boring and rambling book, at least the first 20 pages were so. I wonder what Nicholson Baker would have written on the same topic.
He’s still hilarious and a very nice person (in person) and a lot funnier than you. Have you been to Tarrytown? Old town, modest homes. Not exactly Scarsdale. And 50,000 a year? That’s probably the median income in Greenpoint. I guess the only satirists worth reading are those who live in Starrett City.
What i especially loathe about Queenan, is his self-loathing against his own White Race. Specifically, his views of the “Rocky” movies. He mocks all Whites who expect a White to one day become World Heavyweight Champion. Apparently, the alledgedly hipper-than-thou Joe has been completely unaware, that over the last year,or two, that four White Russians have held all four Heavyweight titles. Hear that,Joe? It’s still possible.
[...] Edward Champion’s Return of the Reluctant » Joe Queenan: Incurious Pity Joe Queenan, who with his sad, bitter, and predictable essays has secured Queenan is not one to ask why, nor can he tilt his pig’s head even one [...]