by Edward Champion

n+1: A Worthless Rag

Garth at The Millions has some choice words to say about an “essay” that appeared in Issue 5 of n + 1, attacking litblogs. I’ve read the article in question.

Let me just say that I’m not against third parties taking litblogs to task. In fact, informed criticism is a healthy manner of keeping the conversation alive. What I object to is an uninformed statement that goes after any target without using supporting examples. n + 1, with this essay and the adolescent posturing seen in “The Decivilizing Process” has cemented its status as a worthless publication that is intellectually unfit to stand up against The Believer. I’ll confess that it took me a few years to warm up to The Believer, but, after a shaky start, it seems to be turning a corner, expanding its scope, penetrating more obscure and darker pastures and offering all manner of helpful reference points for the curious within its articles. Sure, The Believer still has a bit of a naive sense of wonder attached, and I’m not sure if its play-nice review coverage is entirely honest. But I’ve read the March 2007 issue of The Believer and greatly enjoyed this quirky article on Roberto Bolaño and Stephen Elliott’s lengthy essay, which is one of the most candid essays I’ve seen in The Believer‘s pages.

n + 1, by contrast, is nothing more than hollow posturing. More noise than signal. It believes that risk can be found through poorly thought out statements of outrage. It dabbles in masturbation, literally and figuratively, in a manner reminiscent of obnoxious liberal arts majors with too much time on their hands. Take this excerpt:

At one point the feminist writer Lonnie Barbach even suggested that men’s propensity to ejaculate before their female partners had achieved orgasm was the result not of selfishness but of an oppressive anti-masturbatory regime that taught boys to come as quickly as possible so as to avoid detection by their parents and schoolmasters.

Now to me, regardless of whether I agree with this or not, Barbach’s is an interesting idea. And a good essayist would address the current masturbation situation, either though specific quotes or interviews, or attempt to examine why Barbach drew this association. But instead of trying to place this Barbach paraphrase into context, or to even consider Barbach’s premise at face value, this assertion is followed up with these sentences: “Now this—this was solidarity. Masturbation had achieved the height of its moral prestige.”

$12 for this nonsense? For generalizations more content to waltz around an idea rather than plunge into it?

Why pay $12 when I can have some starry-eyed undergraduate hand me some pamphlet laced with this kind of doggerel for free?

by Edward Champion

Work in Progress

From Gwenda:

Turn to page 123 in your work-in-progress. (If you haven’t gotten to page 123 yet, then turn to page 23. If you haven’t gotten there yet, then get busy and write page 23.) Count down four sentences and then instead of just the fifth sentence, give us the whole paragraph.

Here’s mine:

Kate stretched out her arms, as Alex removed her coat in a manner that struck Jack as vaguely seductive. As the coat slipped off, Kate looked to Jack like a beardless Christ with a good body. He didn’t know whether to be horrified or turned on.

by Edward Champion

Tanenhaus Won’t Have You at Hello

The underrated filmmaker Samuel Fuller said that a good story has to grab the audience by the balls from the get-go. Combing through the ledes in this Sunday’s NYTBR, it would appear that Sam Tanenhaus wouldn’t know crotch-grabbing even if Michael Jackson gave him personal lessons.

I’ve culled several ledes from this Sunday’s NYTBR because they all share something in common: the need to say something generalized and painfully generic in a seemingly sophisticated but ultimately hollow manner. It’s an approach that would probably piss off B.R. Myers, but I object more to the gormless grandeur and the sneering stance towards readers. A good editor would have recognized these topic sentences as conceptually sophomoric and condescending and demanded a peppy modifier at bare minimum. But the NYTBR‘s faux intellectualism and listless tone, resembling the staid syntax of an escrow agreement, appears to be house style. And these are the folks who call bloggers sub-literary!

Before I tsk-tsk Tanenhaus, to be equitable, there are a handful of good but not great offerings in this week’s issue, including this interesting David Orr essay, Geoffrey Wolff’s review of Kurt Andersen’s Heyday (peering through the language, it appears that Wolff may have been going for something quirky, but there do seem to be many telltale dashes here; did intervention come from humorless editors?), and decent coverage of a Winifred Wagner bio.

Of course, praising Tanenhaus for these minor morsels is a bit like ignoring the green chunks on a hunk of molded sourdough. It’s all moot when compared to the rest. So let’s go through the culprits one by one.

Ted Conover: “There’s a lot of stuff we consume while barely pausing to consider where it comes from; it is easy, these days, to be insulated from production.”

Translation: Yes, there is lots of stuff, good golly! Heya there, dumbass yokel! Yeah, you! Reading the NYTBR, trying to edumucate your mind. Do you want to read about oil? I reckon I might get through to you if I refer to your shopping items as stuff! But have no fear, pardner, because while Lisa Margonelli’s book deals with some COM-PLEXXX issues, everything’s going to be A-OK! The boys at Houston will make shure our li’l bitty spacecraft is INSULATED FROM PRODUCTION!

Pete Hamill: “Prohibition was one of the longest, dumbest chapters in the history of 20th-century American folly, and the impulses behind it are still alive today.”

Translation: You probably don’t remember your high school history class. You probably can’t be bothered to look things up, much less Google things. So let me tell you something. I’m guessing you remember this little period in 20th century American history called Prohibition. Yes? You don’t? Okay. Think carefully. Remember The Untouchables? Yeah. Bootleggers. Well, it had HUMONGOUS consequences for all of us.

Kim Severson: “Barry Glassner has made it his business to set credulous consumers of mass media straight.”

Translation: Even though Glassner’s previous book, The Culture of Fear sold through the roof, we’re assuming you’re an idiot who doesn’t even know who William Whyte is, much less Malcolm Gladwell. He’s made it his business, you see. The same way, you make it your business as a B&T day trader. Everything copacetic?

Steven Heighton: “Survival stories, in their elemental simplicity, can be deeply appealing to those seeking escape from complicated, densely scheduled lives.”

Translation: You haven’t set foot outside of your comfortable suburban neighborhood for years and the terrorists could bomb you at any second. We’re assuming that you pick up a sensationalistic book from time to time and, hey, here’s this one. Because we’re assuming you’re scared.

David Kirby: “Why devote oneself to that aggressively minor genre, poetry, when novels and screenplays and tell-all memoirs get more notice and make more money?”

Translation: Poetry is, of course, for all the pansy-ass intellectuals starving in garrets. But I’m one of you! I have an accountant on my payroll! And I’m going to dictate why you should read poetry in the most unsubtle tone imaginable!

Dave Itzkoff: “Is there anybody out there? Give the question some thought before you answer, because it’s more perilous than it seems.”

Translation: I haven’t a fucking clue about how to grab your attention. Hell, I’m not even sure why Master Sam picked me. I’m not really that familiar with speculative fiction anyway. So let’s see: this audience probably listens to classic rock on FM radio. That is, after all, what Master Sam says. Surely, they’ve heard of Pink Floyd!

by Edward Champion

Roundup