Topic 2: Enough Already!

Robert: I was tempted to inflict my own self-serving (in the sense that I might enjoy a moment of revenge for being compared to Regis Philbin [whom Rick Moody rightly refers to in The Diviners as a mutant]) disdain for the self-serving blathering of publicist and publicity hound, Steve "Candyman" Almond, but a chorus of those few of my better angels weighed in against such indulgence.

What was Scott Fitzgerald thinking about second acts? America has famously become the land of reinvention or to use current argot, re-branding and the most recently troubling example of American amnesia is a person I would have hoped would go away, far away - Mike "Brownie" Brown, former FEMA head. I had hoped that he either return to his Republican frat-boy enclave or that he be indicted for crimes against humanity (as Dr. Kissinger, Brown should be happy that his fellow Republican frat boys have blocked attempts to make the US a signatory to the International Criminal Court). But no, Brown has resurfaced with his own emergency planning/consulting business: "If I can help people on preparedness, how to be better prepared in their homes and better prepared in their businesses - because that goes straight to the bottom line - then I hope I can help the country in some way" (The Rocky Mountain News). What’s next - Robert Novak hosting Nightline?

Oh my, is there a better poster boy for the banality of evil than this pathetic jerk? Currently, I think not, though there are some contenders - Scott McClendon, perhaps for comparing multiple-decorated Marine Colonel Hank Murtha with Michael Moore. Pat Robertson for a variety of idiotic outbursts (assassinate the President of Venezuela was a good one.)  

This year has been short on really vivid, juicy literary controversy except for the by-now predictable cluster banging of Jonathan Safron Foer. Maybe something will come to me . . .

Jessa: My answer to this one might seem a little weird, but I am sick to death of Jesus Christ being used as a character in novels and short stories as comic relief. Unless the story is written by Shalom Auslander. For whatever reason, he's the only person who gets it right. As for the rest of them, yes, we get it. God is funny. Religion is funny. But making Jesus say "fuck" is a cheap laugh, and I really wish this whole trend would end. For everyone other than Auslander. (Seriously, Beware of God is fantastic.)

I am also sick to death of interesting, well-written nonfiction books being ruined by too much first person. It seems that no one can write a book about a topic without dragging all of their friends, their apartments, their pets into the picture. Both Julie & Julia and Zioncheck for President had great ideas and capable writers behind them, but were eventually ruined by
too much personal information. I didn't need to know about the dating habits of Julie Powell's friends or who left what comment on her blog, just as I didn't need to know about problems Phillip Campbell was having with his roommate. Both books left bad tastes in my mouth - even though for the most part I liked them - for this very reason.

Alex: I was ready to call off the funny Jesus thing after Dogma. Which wasn't funny.

The competition in this category was intense this year. So much phony hype and buzz is built in to publishing now you just want to say "Enough already!" to all of it. For example: I suppose Jessa might disagree, but I think I've heard enough about graphic novels. It's a genre that's managed to go from ghetto to mainstream, from unfairly marginalized to faddish and overblown, in about a year.

But with so many other targets out there, I'll cut straight to the two people who really earned it.

I have to give a first runner-up prize to Chip Kidd. I guess it says something about our sense of what's important to lavish so much attention, and fawning praise, on a guy who designs book jackets (that is, advertising). But what gets me is this: His work sucks. I guess I first noticed it this year when I picked up Kafka On the Shore. What a strikingly ugly cover. And it just didn't connect with anything about the book for me. It was so bad I had to check the back flap to see who was responsible and was a bit surprised to see the name of the guy everyone was talking (and talking, and talking, and talking) about. From there it just got worse. Lunar Park (See! It's called Lunar Park and it's a picture of the moon!). No Country For Old Men (It's all red, like blood!). Ugh. Then I went and checked out some of his portfolio online.

You have to be kidding.

I'm sorry, but since when did arranging clip-art images that have virtually no connection to the book at all turn into evidence of genius? This is cutting edge? It's amateur and banal and stinks of the '80s. You have to wonder if anyone is going to call his bluff. Now that he has a new book out celebrating his work, the answer seems to be a big No.

Like the rest of you, I see a lot of book jackets. Some of them I like so much I have to show them to friends or ask them to check them out online. There's good work being done in book design. But it's not being done by Chip Kidd. Enough is enough.

But that's an aside. My Big Winner in the Shut-the-Fuck-Up Already category is Christopher Hitchens.

It's bad enough listening to this clown being a non-stop spin machine for Imperialism. Apparently a bunch of lame one-liners and some shrill name-calling elevates you to the level of a "polemicist" these days. Even when I agree with him I find his stridency intemperate and embarrassing. But what's even worse, and what forces me to include him here, is how he keeps getting asked to give his opinion on books.

You might think that someone used to getting his larfs out of the "War on Terror" would welcome the chance to discuss literature just for a change of pace. Not this guy. Instead he just uses whatever it was he was supposed to be reading as an excuse for more of his stand-up. A review of The Da Vinci Code? Well, not really. In fact he brushed the book off in the first couple of sentences and then went on to tell us why the Downing Street Memo really didn't mean anything at all. (Spin, Chris! Spin!). A review of Shalimar the Clown? Who cares if the book sucks? Rushdie's politics are the important thing. (A further note: Why didn't more people notice the obvious conflict in the Atlantic giving this review to a friend of the author? The Washington Post had to issue an apology for far less.)

Harold Pinter wins the Nobel Prize? Who you gonna call for an opinion? Christopher! And what does he have to say? Well, just what you knew he was going to say! Another political squib. Indeed what he said is that the award should not have gone to "someone who gave up literature for politics decades ago, and whose politics are primitive." From someone who should know.

What is intellectual about a reactionary blowhard whose every line, on every subject, can be scripted months in advance? It's beneath self-parody. More to the point, if you are a book page editor, why would you give him a book to review when you already know he's just going to indulge in his usual political shtick? 

Enough already! His act has worn thin and he should just shut up.

Michael: Celebrity books - especially forays into fiction - and the attendant publicity have long been tiresome. The continuing trend of celebrities writing children's books is especially worrying, but this year it's been the attention lavished on politicians' novels that I've really had my fill of. Most of the old books (Scooter Libby's novel!) are (or were) out of print
for a reason, and many of the new ones (Barbara Boxer's novel?!?) surely do not deserve attention on the scale they're getting.

(But, yes, I could also really do without Christopher Hitchens . . . )

Maud: I'm with Alex on Hitchens.  

I'm also disgusted by the unsound yet curiously prevalent argument that criticizing a particular work of "chick lit" - and, presumably, any book written by a woman about women and relationships - is anti-feminist. The logical fallacy here is so obvious (i.e., is it antifeminist to accuse Phyllis Shlafly of bad logic and dangerous thinking? "Victoria Holt" of bad prose?) that it hardly seems to merit rebuttal. But if the argument persists I'm sure I'll shoot my mouth off one of these days.

Robert: I must take exception to Alex’s disdain for Chip Kidd and Christopher Hitchens. Regarding Kidd - to dislike his cover design work is just  a matter of taste and while I find many of his covers interesting and some compelling, the criticism here is about something more. First, it is a mistake to conflate (product) design with advertising. Dust jacket covers are as much a part of book design as type and pagination and chapter headings et cetera. Second, Kidd’s work is consistent with the work of the Knopf art department headed by Carol Carson Devine and including Archie Fergusen and Barbara De Wilde and others. Third, Kidd is lionized because not only has he worked on numerous best sellers and literary gems but he has also edited and championed the work of numerous graphic artists and has published a well-regarded novel. And finally, Chip Kidd is a charming, voluble and witty person who plays well in the Manhattan media echo chamber. Alex is dismayed that so many people talk about Kidd’s work - that’s not exactly Kidd’s fault.

As for Hitchens, while I am not at all in agreement with his position on the Iraq war and find some of his some of his new bedfellows despicable (Victor Davis Hanson comes to mind), I still find Hitchens to be an original and critical analyst and even a funny commentator on subjects literary and political. Alex may find him predictable, but if one looks over his intellectual history it is hard to say he has been predictable. Except that for him politics is the measure of human endeavor, obviously an arguable position. In Hitchens’s defense though he comes off tough, and perhaps strident on the page, in person he is wonderfully charming. He does come from a British tradition of rhetorical combat that treads closely on the boundary of zealous debate and ad hominem argument. Also, unlike many of the characters that are aptly named reactionary blowhards, Hitchens does, in fact, travel to areas which put him at risk - Iraq, Sarajevo, Afghanistan, North Korea and Pakistan among others. Which counts for something. And one reason book editors look for Hitchens is that he is a good writer with an excellent command of historical detail. Finally, I would argue that over his own history he has been on the "right" side more often than not.

Alex: What an eloquent rebuttal, Robert! We disagree on some points that I think it's fair to disagree on. I do conflate product design with advertising/marketing. Especially when it comes to books, where I think it's something totally extraneous to the (shudder) "product." But I can see the other side. And I agree wholeheartedly that the media barrage on Kidd is not Kidd's fault. But this category is for stories and people we've heard too much about, however we came to hear about them, and I certainly thought Kidd's name earned his honorable mention.

As for Hitchens . . . well, I've never experienced his charm. And for what it's worth, I think he is smarter than he writes. Which is, unfortunately, part of the problem.