that this debate on the obsession with being NICE (mostly in terms of book reviews) has now reached critical mass. Everywhere I look there are articles about it. Hell, I blathered on about it myself. There's a ton of different links I point to in that post about this issue. I'm telling you - it's like a zeitgeist moment, or something. It's everywhere. Dr. Frank wrote a big thing on it too.
And now here is the piece Jessa Crispin -aka Book Slut - wrote on it, brought about by the well-publicized "feud" (kind of a namby-pamby feud, really) between Neal Pollack and Dave Eggers.
I've been following it because it's kind of entertaining. They bitch at each other through the op-ed pages of major newspapers and personal websites. Neal Pollack is calling Eggers on some of his shit, and I think it's about time.
Just go read her whole piece, but let me pull out two paragraphs that I love:
As for the writers who Pollack was skewering—the ones who, according to Eggers, “would fight with each other publicly, backstabbing and insulting and generally making the book world look like the playground of too many antisocial and insecure teenage boys…”—bring those guys back. Bring back the feuds, the wife-stabbings/shootings, the fistfights. Bring back the bravado and the overwrought prose. Because if this is the new era of American writing, with hippie-dippy hand-holding and an incessant need to talk about our feelings, I want to regress.The closest we’ve come to a good feud has been Franzen vs. Oprah, and we’re still talking about it years later. It never came to blows, apologies were issued all around, and the level of ire never reached past whining, but it made reading the book section interesting again. The Believer credo doesn’t make literature better or more interesting. It hasn’t fostered a previously unheard-of writer worth reading. What has all of this crying about writers being precious, fragile little snowflakes accomplished? It’s produced an overpriced, boring magazine that costs twice as much as the Atlantic Monthly and has half the amount of readable content, if that.
I say: Yes. Bring those guys back. Bring 'em back. Being NICE hasn't made our literature any better. It's not that you have to be a son of a bitch either to write a good book (James Frey appears to be an asshole, and he is a terrible writer) ... but this "let's all be NICE to each other, and let's not write MEAN reviews" obsession seems infantile.
Art isn't neat, polite, and it should not play by the mainstream's rules. Artists are on the outskirts of things, and I think that's the way it should be. This energy of "let's all hold hands and never criticize each other and only validate" is SUFFOCATING. Can you imagine Hemingway putting up with that shite for one second? Or Joyce??? Hahahaha. They would look at Dave Eggers, take in his entire personality in -oh - half a second, and go off to find a nice bar where they could slug back some alcohol, and argue about life, literature, and everything. Not be so goddamned NEAT and POLITE.
Eggers is a pussy. Sorry. I used to like him, but over the last couple of years he has started to seem more and more precious with everything, there's a coyness to his work, and his novel SUCKED. So ... maybe you were validated too much, Dave? Maybe you actually needed some harsh criticism??
Besides, writing a book is a SOLITARY event, not a COMMUNAL event.
Surrender the "nice". It's not worth it. I want to regress, too.
Posted by sheilaGod, Sheila. I once loved Eggers, too. I once wanted to peel him grapes and give birth to his children.
I've tried really hard to love his latest works but I just can't.
I hate that.
I also hate to see that he's lost his sense of irony.
Neal Pollack has it in spades but Eggers is taking himself WAY too seriously these days.
I propose a duel at high noon....or a cream pie fight, at least.
Posted by: DeAnna at June 30, 2005 06:25 PMDeAnna - ha!!
I wonder if Eggers got spoiled by the reviews of his first book (and - I wouldn't blame him. Those are reviews a writer DREAMS of getting) ... so then when his second book, the novel, was universally panned - he stepped back from the edge, and started talking about how it's important for writers to be "nice to each other".
hmmmmm.
Yeah, I was a little bit in love with him too. I know the bars where he hangs out in Brooklyn. I have considered "just being in that neighborhood at happy hour time" on occasion.
Posted by: red at June 30, 2005 06:28 PMHmm.. I by-passed the Egger phenomenon when the wave broke.. so all I have had to work on has been a series of occasional short stories that have crossed my path.. and I found them to be style before substance.. to be cliched about it.. fittingly, perhaps.
As for reviews being NICE.. sheesh.. YES.. What IS the point of that?? Of course.. that's partly why Joyce left Ireland.. the interconnectednesss of all things.. but now it's internationalised. And that may be the new problem.
Posted by: peteb at June 30, 2005 06:50 PMI have never loved any man enough to peel him grapes. I am jealous, DeAnna.
Posted by: Emily at June 30, 2005 07:06 PMI love The Believer. I love it because it is not a magazine about what people think "sucks." The "This is what I think sucks" conversation is often the most mind numbing converation to participate in. And it seldom leads to anything other than a sore throat. And we all do it. We all have been at a dinner party, bar, social gathering of some sort where someone mentions a book or a film or a television program that they've enjoyed, and rather than leaning in and learning something about that person and their perspective and why they might have enjoyed it, we lean back and say: "Really, I thought it sucked." (the book, movie, tv show) And then we start listing the reasons why it sucked, showing off how much of a hater we can be, how smart we are. How creative and witty in our hating we can be. Some people even do the stealth asshole version which is to act like they're interested in someone eles's perspective, yet say "Really? Hmm. I don't get it." Or the most dismissive: "Not a fan." I've made it a point to avoid everyone who uses these phrases and I avoid myself when I tread near the same expressions.
Just try for a week to not talk about what you think sucks, and you will be astonished how much you do it.
And I don't mean the obvious things like war, poverty, etc.
You know what I mean.
Try taking a week off without saying someone else's creative output sucks. Music, book, films, tv. It's not easy.
Some people might say "Well, why do that? Saying what sucks is fun." And I'll just say that when you remove the reflexive habit of saying things suck, the space fills with more positive thoughts. And maybe that's too hippy-dippy for some people, but not for me.
And that's what I think The Believer folks are trying to do.
I have bought many subscriptions to The Believer as gifts, and actually today had on my desk a renewal subscription for you Sheila, as a gift.
It is a magazine that has introduced me to many writers, worthy ones such as George Saunders, in addition to an interview each month with a philosopher! It is a bit more expensive because it it published on paper that makes you think they care about what's going into it... Paper that makes you want to come back for more... It is so evident that the effort they put into it is full of respect and devotion for writers, musicians, and individuals they admire, rather than a forum to trash people. And I love that I can read an entire magazine without the sarcasm everyone mastered in the 8th grade. And I mean everyone mastered.
Thank God for Eggers, The Believer and all of those folk. I mean it.
It's nice to see some members of a generation with class.