Comments on: Virginia Heffernan: The Sarah Palin of Journalism

By: ummmm

ummmm — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 18:14:17 +0000

right, but Heffernan writes a weekly column for the NYT magazine, and her review appeared in the New York Times Review of Books. you, howev, are ranting like a lunatic to nobody in favor of sarah vowell. this rant freaked me out, and it made me love Virginia Heffernan even more, an amazing feat!

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:24:00 +0000

I haven’t read The Wordy Shipmates, but I read Assassination Vacation and all I can say is I agree with Heffernan on most points. I happen to be Heffernan-like in my distaste for quirkiness, and, for some reason, there’s something vulgar about being cute in public like Vowell does. Vowell is so easy to make fun of that I can hardly respect her, and the first impulse I get is to separate myself from her and her writing and career. Heffernan’s view, in my opinion, should be treated with respect, and possibly be referenced in more diatribes against what has increasingly become an annoying and typical thing, the “look how quirky I am” identity.

By: Imani

Imani — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:30:04 +0000

I look to the NYTBR to provide more than reviews filled with “witty putdowns” – a debatable description — of a non-fiction history text even if it is pop history. I don’t recall any blogger insults only that the most basic premise of a book review — to convey to readers a book’s content and ambitions, the writer’s intentions and an evaluation of her execution — was not fulfilled. Take away all the review’s “witty putdowns” and it holds as much information as the jacket copy.

As usual the NYTBR goes for the biographical approach — no one’s gonna care about this book unless one gets some juice on the author’s personal life whether or not it’s relevant to the book — but Heffernan gives a petty and trivial interpretation of that mandate.

I swear, ever since I was 19 and heard how awesome the NYTBR was supposed to be I’ve tried to get into it. I must not be a newspaper book review kinda girl (except for an occasional dip into The Guardian/Observer). During the 2000s its offerings are meagre and trivial compared to any random issue of the TLS, LRB or Bookforum unless one is a foodie. (I do give it props for covering children’s fiction, an area lit mags ignore.)

For a better example of clever book pans sample pretty much any review done by Steve Donoghue over at Open Letters Monthly. Surprisingly, he manages to make it about the *book* and not the *author*: a radical approach, I know, but often successful.

By: mary poppins

mary poppins — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:13:04 +0000

Virginia Heffernan writes witty putdowns. She puts bloggers down along the way, and Ed reacts, as he does, with witless, cumbersome ressentiment. And yet still Ed does not get the invite he so richly deserves to write for the NYTBR himself. Who can explain it? What a mystery. Hey Ed, if the NYTBR offered you a review, would you tell them to fuck off unless they fire every one of the employees you’ve trashed during your glittering career?

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:59:07 +0000

Heffernan – the same that wrote that horrid piece on her Kindle love?

http://tinyurl.com/66grv7

By: JoeBu

JoeBu — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:24:17 +0000

I have a feeling that this review was an attempt, badly failed, at parody. It contains too many elements of the very thing it’s decrying to be otherwise.

If I’m wrong, then it is indeed atrocious.

By: Burnished Filth

Burnished Filth — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:16:40 +0000

The main difficulty for this embarrassingly failed rant is that Vowell is terribly overrated and Heffernan’s review was pitch perfect.

By: Imani

Imani — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:28:09 +0000

While I wouldn’t presume to assess the reviewer’s IQ level from this review it does read alarmingly personal. It’s as if Heffernan met Vowell one day at a Paris Review party (at which she didn’t get an invite but had to suffice with being a “+1″) and found her really annoying. Then she looked up Vowell’s career highs and became even more embittered. She gnashed her teeth in the dark for many nights aching to fight back at this injustice and finally! the book came up for review. (To get the assignment she, again, had to act the toady, sell her record player, something.)

How did the NYTBR let that go to print? Bizarre.

By: James

James — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:22:09 +0000

I’ve griped here from time to time about your going over the line when you savage critics who’ve written bad reviews, but I’m not doing that now.

I was hoping you’d weigh in on this Heffernan piece, which was truly atrocious.