CRITICAL HIT AWARDS: May 2012

Welcome back to the Critical Hit Awards for book reviews. This is a round-up, a recommended reading list, and—why not?—a terribly prestigious and coveted prize. Nominate your favorite review of the month by tweeting it at @electriclit with the hashtag #criticalhit or cast your vote in the comments section below.

 

As book reviews migrate from print publications to the digital wackosphere, the fear is that they’re becoming colloquial, improvised, and their quality is suffering. This month’s winners prove that’s not necessarily the case. On the dreaded web, book reviews can be colloquial, improvised, and still excellent as works of criticism. Even as they speculate about the “dead friends” who haunt a poet with their influence (as Ali Shapiro does) or embed a slew of James Brown videos from YouTube (as does Philip Eil), today’s best criticism doesn’t sacrifice anything.

Thanks to @Review31 for nominating a book review this month!

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CELEBRITY BOOK REVIEW: Jonathan Franzen on Adam Levin’s Hot Pink

In the vein of overt formal experimentation, Adam Levin’s short story collection, Hot Pink, reminds me of my childhood introduction to the branded breakfast cereal Froot Loops. Saccharine; excessive and ferociously colored, the pleasure one derives from reading Hot Pink is vivifying and caloric—the literary equivalent of a “sugar high.” Of the ten tales in this collection, I despised one; was indifferent to three; and found myself smiling through the other six: that is why I am giving this collection a positive review, and also why I have scheduled an X-ray computed topography of my cerebral cortex for next Tuesday.

As one unversed in the art of failure, I was terrifically bemused by Levin’s luckless characters. In “RSVP,” for example, the pathologically shy Donald pens “the world’s greatest love letter—four lines long, a mere seventy words” to the even shyer Janet, who, through a series of literal wrong turns, is promptly eradicated by a bus before receiving said letter. In “Scientific American,”—my favorite tale, I think—a hapless couple is rendered even more so by the appearance of a nihilistic gel oozing from their bedroom wall. When the nameless hero schedules an appointment with the builder for a time when neither he nor his wife can be present, this oversight causes him such overwhelming embarrassment, he comes to see himself as “a great imposition, not only on the builder but on his wife, the whole world.” Guilt, disorganization, disappointment, flailing—it’s fearful, the catalog of emotions experienced by people incompetent in life.
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CELEBRITY BOOK REVIEW: Sinéad O’Connor on “Nothing” by Blake Butler

Dear friends,

I am SO lucky to have such an important network of deep and loyal fans and very good friends, and these people are like family, and in the face of the recent nasty media coverage (especially the Irish media, shame onya), I was instantly surrounded by a lot of concern about my well being, not to mention my own. Lots of fans and internet friends sent me thoughts and flowers and one person sent me Nair (‘cause of my hairy arms on Gawker, LOL) and someone else, a book. And the book is called Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia. And it’s by Blake Butler. Well, Blake Butler, Nothing Compares to You!

The clever yam-banger who sent this to me did so because I’ve had trouble sleeping this last year. I was on MEDICATION and then there was my Irish Independent man advert and all the prudish people honking because I admitted liking the difficult brown in the classifieds. Well excuse me for talking about a#&^ sex and cave men! I thought we were in the year two-thousand-twelve but I guess we’re still in the ice age, you frigid bunch of cacks!
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REVIEW: The Tender Hour of Twilight by Richard Seaver

The Tender Hour of Twilight
Richard Seaver
FSG
480 pp / $35

We usually eat up memoirs of public figures, past or present, loved or loathed, because their lives, quite simply, are more interesting than ours.  Take George W. Bush’s Decision Points, for example (presently loathed): the 43rd president argues that all the decisions he made in the White House, though largely unpopular with the general public, were all “correct.”  Let’s not go there.  But even the staunchest liberal reader must concede that they’re interesting decisions regardless.

Occasionally, however, memoirs are indeed written by “regular” people.  Richard Seaver, for example, isn’t George W. Bush – he was never even president.  But like Bush, Seaver made decisions that affected, and will affect, millions of people.  Like his decision to publish Beckett’s short works in Merlin, Seaver’s upstart French avant-garde literary journal, which catapulted the Irishman to the top of the world literature heap.  And his decision to push Naked Lunch, Story of O, and Last Exit to Brooklyn, among others, through the ignorant hands of the censors ultimately diminished their sway.  And, finally, his decision to record his life in vivid detail (which his wife Jeanette posthumously compiled into The Tender Hour of Twilight Seaver’s vast and intimate memoir), will lead to new insights and new appreciation for the literature that captivated Seaver so very much.
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REVIEW: The Death of Arthur by Peter Ackroyd

The Death of King Arthur: The Immortal Legend
Peter Ackroyd
Viking
336 pp / $26.95

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail – a touchstone for any contemporary retelling of the Arthurian legends – knightly valor and violence are reduced (or enhanced, depending on your sense of humor) to Arthur’s encounter with the Black Knight.  “’Tis but a scratch,” the Black Knight says after one arm is lopped off.  “It’s just a flesh wound,” he again protests as blood begins spraying from both shoulder sockets.  There is no better modern example of the impossibility of chivalry in a time marked by violence and certain death.

Peter Ackroyd calls his The Death of Arthur a “retelling” of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur.  Here, Ackroyd seeks to rewrite Malory’s tale for current audiences, aiming to render Malory’s version in modern English with greater conciseness and clarity.  Besides simply translating Malory’s late Middle English, Ackroyd does a great deal to reconcile the inconsistencies in Malory’s rambling original.  The “Tristan and Isolde” section, for example, is markedly, and thankfully, shorter.  Ackroyd also adds subheadings to the chapters: “Read of a contest for love” (in “Tristan and Isolde”) and “See a great slaughter” (in “The Adventure of the Holy Grail”). The origins of “see” and “read” seem dubious, but the subtitles do serve to orient the reader when the narrative jumps, as it often does.
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REVIEW: The Fallback Plan by Leigh Stein

The Fallback Plan
Leigh Stein
Melville House
224 pp / $14.95

I first encountered Leigh Stein in a Classics course at Brooklyn College in the spring of 2010.  She sat adjacent to me, and as the professor recounted the Iliad’s instances of aristia, Leigh would write furiously in her notebook any words, phrases, or descriptions pertaining to the text.  I found this technique captivating because, already having knowledge of Leigh’s accomplishments as a poet and fiction writer, I imagined her entries as alternative versions to Homer’s epic, wherein Helen of Troy develops a chronic case of acne after promising to be bestowed to Paris, or Achilles becomes fatally dizzy after chasing Hector around Troy’s walls.

Similar to this fashion, Leigh Stein’s delightful and hilarious debut novel, The Fallback Plan, is a vertiginous rewriting of what do after college when even one’s fallback plan is hardly a sustainable option.  Stein’s narrator, Esther Kohler, accepts this fate as social common sense, i.e., is externally apathetic to moving back in with her parents or watching her capricious boy interest, Jack, fumble with his prettier girlfriend.  She is reservedly jealous of her friend Tierney who writes her letters from Rome, and bemused by her friend Pickle, whose preoccupation with weed and video games starts to rub off on her.  So what does one do when job searching becomes a laughable prospect and one’s Wellbutrin recreation runs dry?  Take a babysitting job, of course, set up by none other than Esther’s assiduously proud mother.
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CELEBRITY BOOK REVIEW: Michael Dell on the Steve Jobs biography

I’m writing this in my stainless steel bathroom, No. 017. The one without the fax. Susan thinks I’m taking a shower. I don’t have much time.

It was a mistake for me to read the Steve Jobs biography. I got kind of boastful about it, especially in the office. I told everybody it would give me key insights into the competition. I may or may not have sent out a company wide email suggesting others read it. And then I started reading it. I must be ready when they ask.

In the preface to my own book on business management, I wrote, “you don’t have to be a genius or a visionary…to think unconventionally. You just need a framework and a dream.” And I really believed that. I continued to believe that right up until the point five minutes ago when I finished this darn book.

Listen, I know I’m a square. I look back on interviews I’ve done and I want to upchuck. A board member’s wife once said that I made her feel like I was about to wipe my shoes on the back of my pants whenever I talked to her. I have a fear of blushing. It makes things very hard.

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REVIEW: The Age of Movies, Selected Writings of Pauline Kael

The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Library of America
750 pp / $40

The sad implication in the title of this selection of writings by the late movie critic Pauline Kael is that the Age of Movies has passed, that movies matter less than they used to. The big screen, after all, has been supplanted by a variety of little screens (the television, the computer, the smartphone), screens that we use to watch grisly traffic accidents, celebrity bloopers, cute kitten videos, and occasionally even movies.

If one thing is certain, it’s that no movie critic will ever again matter as much as Pauline Kael, who reviewed movies (Kael dismissed the words ‘film’ and ‘cinema’ as stuffy and elitist) for The New Yorker from 1968 to 1991. She was read avidly or fearfully not just by moviegoers but by filmmakers and fellow film critics.  She was caricatured in movies and comedy shows; her spats with other critics were cultural front-page news.

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CELEBRITY BOOK REVIEW: John Mayer on “The Marriage Plot”

Surface to air, motherfuckers. I’m back.

OK, yeah, I’ve been off the interwebs for a while. And by me being here today, it doesn’t mean that I’m back for good, it just means that I’m here, now, that I’m totally in this present, doing this present life thing, and I just love you all for sticking with me while I try on the different colors of myself.

I have been doing so much interpersonal thinking recently, it’s just fucking insane. Like, I’ve been living in a cabin and riding across the badlands of America on an honest to God horse in this amazing poncho I picked up in a health shop—like, it’s fucking blessed—and I’ve been thinking about some regrets I have about things I’ve said and really it all comes down to me not regretting anything I’ve said, because it was what I was truly thinking at the time, and you have to be yourself.

But I do have some regrets about not taking part in stuff. Like, parenthetically, yeah, it’s been all about me up until September 2010 where I was like, OK, fuck this, my life is not a movie, like maybe 3.5 million of you should stop finding out what my dick had for breakfast and get out there and like buy a stranger a latte. Just like, make a difference. Anyway, I was sort of into myself and my own play-by-play, but I wasn’t really into anyone else’s. So this past year, in order to enlarge my vision, I’ve been about intra-connectivity and reaching out to people and saying, OK, yeah, I’m definitely John Mayer, there’s that, but once you get past that, there is so much deepness. Let us dive.

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REVIEW: The Angel Esmeralda by Don DeLillo

The Angel Esmeralda
Don DeLillo
Scribner
224 pp / $24

Don DeLillo has been a powerful presence on the American literary scene for the past four decades, and his latest short-fiction anthology, The Angel Esmeralda, encapsulates some of his lasting concerns and themes. In it, the readers will find the familiar landscape of psychological alienation, sardonic treatment of mass media and western consumerism that absorbs and savages any meager attempts at transcendence.

DeLillo has the rare gift for capturing the linguistic verve of advertizing (he had worked as a copy writer), while simultaneously sabotaging it. He achieves the muscular rhythm of his prose by often using punch lines and refrains, with sentences whose content sometimes sounds so truistic that it has led some critics to accuse him of hollow existentialism. His technique can perhaps be likened to that of the American post-pop artists, who appropriate the objects and the language of mass culture, to manipulate them.

His use of postmodern/new-agey zeitgeist can be seen in the story “The Starveling.” The narrator comments on his drifting apart from his wife:

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