A deeply needless book
December 23, 2019 10:15 PM   Subscribe

 
No Naomi Wolf?
posted by knoyers at 10:25 PM on December 23, 2019 [1 favorite]


I'm not surprised Andrea Long Chu only wrote one of these, since how fun is a list like this when they're all by the same person, but every review of hers I read this year was fabulously scathing and all of them were richly deserved.
posted by potrzebie at 12:39 AM on December 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


I came here to post Andrea Long Chu's marvellous takedown of Jill Soloway, which makes her Bret Easton Ellis review look like a sponge bath.

This list is great (Feinberg on Trump Jnr is one for the time capsule) but needs Tom Ley on Gladwell.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 12:46 AM on December 24, 2019 [21 favorites]


This seems to be focused on books released this year, but Patricia Lockwood's Updike retrospective probably still makes sense here in case anyone missed it.
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:05 AM on December 24, 2019 [14 favorites]


I came here to post Andrea Long Chu's marvellous takedown of Jill Soloway, which makes her Bret Easton Ellis review look like a sponge bath.

Worth it for the Thiel joke alone.
posted by atrazine at 3:21 AM on December 24, 2019 [2 favorites]


> I came here to post Andrea Long Chu's marvellous takedown...

That's a brilliant and entertaining writeup but it came out in 2018.
posted by ardgedee at 4:14 AM on December 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


Ugh, I still have flashbacks to the first story in Kristen Roupenian’s book. It's up there with Gene Weingarten* describing just how exactly a child dies in an overheated car.

*One Day, on the other hand, is in my top 10 of 2019. If you want to skip to the best part (the heart transplant story) it was adapted as a WaPo article.
posted by Flannery Culp at 4:48 AM on December 24, 2019


No Naomi Wolf?

That 'death recorded' interview was funny AF, but as an Aussie I can't not love her for her responses to Angus Taylor's bullshit.
posted by pompomtom at 4:54 AM on December 24, 2019 [2 favorites]


I really enjoy Long Chu's reviews, even if her own work doesn't do it for me. Thanks for this!
posted by Braeburn at 5:29 AM on December 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


The most devastating literary take-down of 2019 wasn't a book review at all, but came in Matthew Sweet's BBC radio interview with author Naomi Wolf. We discussed it here in May.
posted by Paul Slade at 6:09 AM on December 24, 2019


It occurs to me what self-satisfied, unpleasant people the reviewers come off as
posted by thelonius at 7:28 AM on December 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


Maybe I'm projecting the vanity and pettiness and pretension of some wannabe literati types who I have known onto them, I guess
posted by thelonius at 7:32 AM on December 24, 2019


This criticism of the Jonathan Safran Foer book is odd What’s so unsettling and even tragic about Foer’s book is that his moralizing is illustrative of a broader self-flagellating despair among many liberals who are troubled by the ominous climate forecasts but who have absorbed right-wing nostrums that it’s a problem of our shared making …

The critic seems to be suggesting that a) right wingers generally admit to climate change and that it is man-made and b) that they are the only ones responsible for it. Are there people who really think that? Or am I not understanding correctly what she's trying to say?
posted by Brain Sturgeon at 8:39 AM on December 24, 2019


Based on a glance at the full review, she seems to be arguing against the (right-wing-promulgated, I guess) idea that we can fight climate change effectively on a personal level just by eating less meat, recycling etc., rather than by making fundamental changes to industry and agribusiness.
posted by dfan at 10:02 AM on December 24, 2019 [3 favorites]


she seems to be arguing against the (right-wing-promulgated, I guess) idea that we can fight climate change effectively on a personal level just by eating less meat, recycling etc., rather than by making fundamental changes to industry and agribusiness.

Pretty sure that the actual right doesn't endorse this line of thinking either

The reviewer's parody makes Foer sound pompous, windy and trivial. But then the next part just sounds like she wants his book to be something that it isn't (identifying macro solutions, capitalism, blah blah). And that poses a challenge that much bigger fish than Foer obviously have been unable to rise to. Without reading the book, one can't say whether this criticism is fair, but it may not be.

And climate change isn't not a problem of our shared making, is it?
posted by knoyers at 10:36 AM on December 24, 2019


I know nothing about the book, but that red fox match box cover is pretty cool.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:26 AM on December 24, 2019 [2 favorites]


I know nothing about the book, but that red fox match box cover is pretty cool.

I think there is a whole series of these...maybe? I saw something cross my tumblr dash a few days ago, but I have no idea how I'd ever find it again, given tumblr. I'll go peek.
posted by maxwelton at 3:58 PM on December 24, 2019


It occurs to me what self-satisfied, unpleasant people the reviewers come off as

That doesn't make them wrong. There's something peculiarly satisfying about watching one literary asshole eviscerate the work of another literary asshole--like a litfic version of Alien vs. Predator.
posted by betweenthebars at 4:25 PM on December 24, 2019 [4 favorites]


Sort of similar matchboxes except starring kitties, which may be what I'm remembering.
posted by maxwelton at 8:05 PM on December 24, 2019 [2 favorites]


"This is what omertà would sound like if you bought it for $79.99 on Etsy."

Smack! Most critics couldn't make a sentence like that. Andrea Long Chu sounds like a writer I want to read more of. What is the best place to find more of her reviews and articles?
posted by Termite at 1:41 AM on December 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


If you can't get enough of this kind of thing, check out the Lexicon of Musical Invective, a compilation of the last couple hundred years of negative music reviews.
posted by rhizome at 10:59 PM on December 25, 2019


I am enjoying this list of Too Ten Hate Reads of 2019 which is good for those of us with short attention spans.
posted by vespabelle at 10:16 AM on December 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


10. A Jewish Wedding for Two Non Jews

I can only assume one or both of this couple also read All-of-a-Kind Family at an impressionable age and thought "these holidays and traditions are way better than my boring Catholic life", but kids, as beautiful as chuppahs and ketubahs can be, it does seem like a participant besides than the rabbi should be Jewish if you're going to call them that instead of just "check out our flower arch and this awesome calligraphy of our vows!"
posted by Flannery Culp at 10:43 AM on December 26, 2019


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