false<![CDATA[Hatchet Jobs: Writings on Contemporary Fiction]]>http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156871823m/55.jpg552Since the publication of <I>Hatchet Jobs</I>, the groves of literary criticism have echoed with the clatter of steel on wood. From heated panels at BookExpo America in Chicago to contretemps at writers' watering holes in New York, voices—even fists—have been raised.<BR><BR>Peck's bracing philippic proposes that contemporary literature is at a dead end. Novelists have forfeited a wider audience, succumbing to identity politicking and self-reflexive postmodernism. In the torrent of responses to this fulguration, opinions were not so much divided as cleaved in two with, for example, Carlin Romano contending that "Peck's judgements are worse than nasty—they are hysterical" and Benjamin Schwarz retorting that "in his meticulous attention to diction, his savage wit, his exact and rollicking prose and his disdain for pseudo-intellectual flatulence, Dale Peck is Mencken's heir."<BR><BR>Now <I>Hatchet Jobs</I>, with its swinging critiques of the work of, among others, Sven Birkerts, David Foster Wallace, Philip Roth, Colson Whitehead, Jim Crace, Stanley Crouch, and Rick Moody, is available in paperback.44242004Hatchet Jobs: Writings on Contemporary Fictiontotal:52|5:7|4:18|3:16|2:3|1:8|52169651213falsefalseSun Jul 22 09:03:33 -0700 2007Tue Aug 21 15:49:28 -0700 2007 Sour grapes much, Dale? At least Jonathan Franzen has some talent to back up his obnoxious public persona. With t...more...]]>
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There is some truth to Peck's claim that his critics are more interested in "the possibility of a brawl" than in what he has to say about today's fiction. Reviewers say they can't fathom how the highly regarded author of the novel Now It's Time to Say Goodbye and What We Lost, the story of...more...]]>
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Don't read this and then try to write anything, ever.
The first piece is hilarious, a long-deserved crucifixion of the unconscionably boring Sven Birkerts; but then I stopped laughing when I hit the subsequent reviews, in which he CARVES INTO Wallace, Franzen, Moody, DeLillo, et al....more...]]>
40falsefalseTue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007Mon May 28 18:07:45 -0700 2007Mon May 28 18:25:55 -0700 2007 Peck doesn't really assert these points so much as posit them on his way to dismember his contemporaries, but since I find them excellent literary axioms, I'll repeat them:
He says nasty things about writers and reviewers. Tehe.
It's all very rousing and silly in an entertaining way. Plus it's short and small and ...more...]]>
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