Cheap Hatchet Jobs: Cutting Through Contemporary Literature (Book) (Dale Peck) Price

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This is not because he is himself a novelist of only mediocre accomplishments--after all, many great critics had no talent for the writing of fiction itself. It is because he is guilty of the same kind of dubious back-scratching and addle-brained marketing hyperbole that is responsible for the degenerate state of contemporary publishing.

In his blurb for Jonathan Safran Foer's _Everything Is Illuminated_ he writes breathlessly that it is the best first novel ever written.

Excuse me?

Now, let's give Peck the benefit of the doubt that he actually believes this and has good reason to do so, although we know that he is a family friend of the Foers' and works together with Jonathan Safran Foer's brother, Franklin, on the staff of The New Republic. Yes, let's forget all that. But has Peck ever heard of _The Tin Drum_ I wonder? That was a first novel. So was _Invisible Man_. So was _Catch-22_. So was _Buddenbrooks_. So was _Amerika_ by Kafka. So was _Wuthering Heights_. And _Sense and Sensibility_. This is, of course, to say nothing of _The Tale of Genji_. The list is long and exceedingly distinguished.

Regardless of what one thinks of _Everything Is Illuminated_ (I personally found it a mixture of cleverness, good intentions, and overweening self-indulgence), to say that it is the best first novel ever written is to say something stupid and irresponsible. Such a statement can only be the product of favoritism or abysmal ignorance--neither of which are qualities I value in a literary critic. When he then goes on to call Rick Moody the "worst writer of his generation" in this book, he demolishes his credibility entirely. Rick Moody is an uneven writer who has written some halfway-decent books. The "worst writer of his generation"? No. That is called "writing for effect." I do not read critics for their pathetic attempts at effect (and exaggeration is the cheapest, most witless form of such)--I read them to find a model of how to be an intelligent, sensitive, and yes, sometimes dismissive, reader. I do not read them to chortle over how much they resemble Fox News commentators. We have enough of that in our society. Too much, in fact.

In order for a critic to earn the right to launch such withering frontal assaults on people who are merely trying to practice their craft, he must demonstrate that he can not only tell good from bad from mediocre, but also that he can tell the great from the "almost-great" and the "merely good." AT THE VERY LEAST, he must desist from the corrupt game of writing meaninglessly effusive blurbs for his friends.

Must-Have
An astonishing book full of trenchant insights. Peck is setting a new standard for criticism of contemporary fiction.

Loving the Hatchet
Dale Peck's "Hatchet Jobs" is the best brain massage I've had in years. Previously, I'd just known him as the bad-boy Emperor's New Clothes reviewer. Of course, he's disingenuous all over the place here, but I had so much fun with this collection of his critical essays. What I expected when I opened this book was the acerbic one-liners that have now become infamous; of course, I found those, but I also found someone who loves the world of writing so much that he hates it when writers with genuine talent squander their gifts. There is both bombast here and humility. I think one of the reasons Mr. Peck bothers the critical and literary establishment is not so much that he can be mean, which he can - I mean, who else says in the middle of a review, having summarized the plot and theme that took the author maybe years to produce, "well, duh" - but because there's that niggling suspicion that maybe he's right about a few things and that maybe it's a few more than a few things and that if the emperor isn't quite buck naked, his taste in clothing is both questionable and minimal. I only hope that someday my own novels are important enough that they show up on Mr. Peck's radar and he decides to take a hatchet to the things I'm doing wrong.