Quick Hits: Reviewery Edition

Yellow Ribbons and Flag Waving

Nathaniel Fick, author of the first-rate memoir One Bullet Away, has a nice piece up at the Poetry website:  a review of recent war poetry. A highlight is Nate's personal use of poetry while commanding Marines in Afghanistan--and his appreciation for Brian Turner's Here, Bullet. I gave Here, Bullet a rave review last year in Rain Taxi.

The Savage Critic

I don't think Heidi Julavits got the credit her essay against snark deserved (it wasn't as namby-pamby as people said it was), but you know: I don't think I could live without snark. I love a good negative review. Especially of over-hyped books or books by famous authors who aren't living up to their talent. They can go overboard, as Michiko Kakutani did with her Caulfield-eque review of Benjamin Kunkel's worthwhile freshman effort, Indecision, a couple years ago. But still: keeping up our USRDA of schadenfreude requires negative reviews, and no one does a negative review better--more accurately, with more humor and understanding--than William Logan. His piercing of Pynchon's Against the Day in this summer's Virginia Quarterly Review is a must-read.

Comments

[K]

I'm also a qualified friend of the snark. One of my favorites is Colson Whitehead's vivisection of Richard Ford in the New York Times. I suspect they cook at a very precise temperature, somewhere between the wisecrack and the tantrum. I think that, however deft, they have to be passionate, rather than glib, and yet the passion has to clarify the writing. A certain self-knowledge on the part of the reviewer probably doesn't hurt, either "If self-absorption, vague yearnings and a nagging sense of incompleteness are sins, then surely I will burn for all eternity, and I will save you a seat." (Whitehead)

[minnesotaj]

K -

I missed that one... will have to go look it up. Maybe that could become a permanent Hotel Zero page (something in the spirit of my pal Dack's Savage Critics page).