Saturday, August 21, 2004
And who shall review the reviewers?
In today's Irish Times Brian Dillon reviews Hatchet Jobs, a collection of reviews by the implausibly named Dale Peck, famous for the following sentence: "Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation."
Gratifyingly (especially when one sees Peck's face), Dillon's review is not, on the whole, a positive one:
Gotta like that.
Gratifyingly (especially when one sees Peck's face), Dillon's review is not, on the whole, a positive one:
"And then there is the matter of his own style: a medium in which "transition" is a verb, and banal metaphors so belaboured that by the time he announces (of an obscurely significant hole in the ground) "I want to embrace that image, but also let it go", this reader could only sigh: yes Dale, please, give it up... And if that sounds "snarky", consider this: "genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby". That was Walter Benjamin, a critic who deserves better than to be seen in the same sentence. As Dale Peck."
Gotta like that.
