The grand smear

Dude. You’ve got to witness Lee Siegel clobbering the fuck out of Alice Sebold’s new novel The Almost Moon in today’s Book Review. Seriously: this is Must-See TV, folks. I wouldn’t want to give everything away, but I can’t help mentioning that he compares the thing to “one very long MySpace page.” And concludes with these lines:

The real shame is that “Reading Alice Sebold” isn’t listed in the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” After you’ve finished this insult to the lumber industry, your health care provider won’t cover your search for a cure.

YOUCH! Let’s hope Ms. Sebold is enjoying her brand-new asshole.

Siegel also dismisses Dostoyevsky, Nabokov, and Sophocles–but he’s being sarcastic, darlings! His point is that Alice Sebold is a talentless hack who has written a plotless, pointless, silly, opportunistic book.

If this all seems a bit excessive to you, it’s because it is. It’s cheap shot city! Which is, of course, fun to watch. But that sort of thing can’t help but make one feel a little dirty, too.

Siegel writes for The New Republic–Scathing Review Headquarters, U.S.A.–and he got in trouble last year for defending himself on the magazine’s website using a sockpuppet with the (actually sort of charming) moniker “sprezzatura.” One could pretty easily dismiss his efforts: dude’s a snark maven and a loose canon, and possibly crazy.

And yet.

I can’t help admiring something about a review like this one–even as it makes me a little sick to my stomach. Isn’t it vastly preferable to the prevailing book review style of our times, The Book Report, which is lazily polite and a complete cop-out, because the author never really risks stating an actual opinion about the subject at hand? (See Liesl Schillinger’s review of Tom Perotta’s new book, also in today’s paper. Or don’t, because it’s a fucking waste of time.)

It would not surprise me if Alice Sebold’s new book was a ridiculous mess, because The Lovely Bones did not deserve its fame. (Surprise!!!) The opening did make me cry on the subway, and I’m still not sure what that was about (a. PMS? b. it was manipulative? c. it was good? d. some of each?) because I haven’t revisited it, but the rest of the book was basically a sloppy, absurd first draft. And I agree with the Lee Siegels and Dale Pecks of the world: it is an outrage when such mediocrity gets embraced by the public.

The secret nucleus of snark is disappointment. And who with a heart and a brain isn’t disappointed by this shabby, grubby world of ours? I mean, I get it.

Last week I saw a sullen schoolgirl on the train–pale blue uniform skirt, wheat-colored hair, patrician nose, and a seriously bad attitude. She lacked the usual ballpoint pen tattoos and raccoon eyeliner of teenaged rebellion, but her disdain for pretty much everything was perfectly clear. This was way beyond fashion: it was in her flesh. It made her dangerous. A wounded animal! God, I had such a surge of sympathy for her. I wanted to apologize to her for the sorry state of the world. And tell her that she is probably right to roll her eyes and boycott everything.

So it’s a bit like Lee Siegel: she was weirdly noble to me, but I could also see how one could argue that she’s just a little bitch.

by Pistol Whip | 21 October 2007 | reading, haters | Comments