Roundup
Miró Killer Joke Peaks Open Low
1. At Burnaway, an Atlanta arts blog, I’m curating a new column of “writers on art,” which today features Heather Christle on Joan Miró: “I wanted secrets, and I wanted to laugh, so I snipped letters from my head and sorted them by shapes: those which slant, those which curve, those which face left or face right.”
2. At Thought Catalog, Christian Lorentzen writes a long screed for the nonexistence of hipsters, with reasoning including that our generation has never had a good serial killer.
3. At The New York Times, Joshua Cohen turns in a take down on the brand new 1,000 page book from McSweeney’s, Adam Levin’s The Instructions, calling it “a very long joke.” Other readers: yay, nay?
4. At Montevidayo, Johannes Göransson writes about the “ambient violence” of Twin Peaks.
5. Submissions to New York Tyrant are now open.
6. I forgot about this great old music video from Low:
Tags: christian lorentzen, Heater Christle, Joshua Cohen, The Instructions, twin peaks
I have to say, I agree. I’ve not read The Instructions yet (too heavy) but that review seemed a bit in poor taste which is a shame because Cohen’s primary critique is one I’ve wondered about–can a book that long be sustained by a precocious child protagonist. Unfortunately, that critique is obfuscated by the pettiness.
Can it be true that no one here has mentioned Joshua Cohen’s takedown of Tao Lin in Bookforum?
http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/017_03/6361
it’s a good video.
“Who better to review a 1,000-page Jewish book that comes out in the fall than the author of an 800-page Jewish book that came out in the spring? Adam Levin’s first novel, “The Instructions,” appears a summer after my own novel “Witz,” whose title translates to “joke,” though it’s no laughing matter: it’s about the Last Jew in the World.” Jesus Christ, that’s shameless.
A-Fucking-men. Truth is I’m less surprised by Josh’s shamelessness than by the editor’s decision to allow it.
“Just as Titus, who destroyed Jerusalem’s Second Temple, was bad for the Jews, so is David Foster Wallace — Levin’s tutelary goy. Nebuchadnezzar, who decimated the First Temple, was said to have the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle but the head of a man, and Wallace wrote Nebuchadnezzarian sentences: similarly motley, mutant. Levin’s attempt to ape Wallace’s caffeinated chatter, to mimic that ferocious power, is unseemly and disastrous — an instance, almost, of a man playing God.”
haha
damn. not only is it shameless but it made me feel like cohen was slightly threatened by the book (i mean if you really hate something and you have to review it, it seems to me that trying to make the best out of it is much more gracious than just slamming it and promoting your own book). has anyone taken a peek in the instructions? is it all that bad? apparently there can only be one big jewish book a year.
Totally agree. It is just too easy to become a Freudian in situations like these. I can just see Levin and Cohen holding their respective doorstops near their crotches, sizing each other up, and Cohen saying to Levin, “Well, you’ve got the length but I’ve got the girth.” Et cetera.
i usually stay away from publishing gossip, but just got a sick visceral feeling about josh cohen when i read that; he seems like an asshole. sure, brilliant etc., but an asshole to me.
I have to say, I agree. I’ve not read The Instructions yet (too heavy) but that review seemed a bit in poor taste which is a shame because Cohen’s primary critique is one I’ve wondered about–can a book that long be sustained by a precocious child protagonist. Unfortunately, that critique is obfuscated by the pettiness.
Between this and his takedown of Tao Lin in Bookforum — http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/017_03/6361 — JC is killing the reviews (and the reviewed) right now.
it’s a good video.
Define “killing”. Because if you mean the fact that petty self-absorption and gossip are out-pacing the critical aspect of the review, than yes, he is killing the review. This is pretty much exactly why people hate the NYT Book Review.
this one doesn’t bother me as much. at least here there’s an Auseinandersetzung with the material and a demonstration then explanation as to what he doesn’t like about the book (the great irony of that review, however, is that he’s slyly damning transparency but begins the review with transparency; oh the meta-levels!), as well as some tact (the whole Pessoa comment is charitable and suggests that it could be just a schtick that Lin has developed and that Lin potentially has the possibility to develop further). the other one is just damning and self-congratulatory at the same time, which kinda makes my skin crawl.
The Lin review is incisive and smart, although I don’t fully agree with it. The Levin review (which I neither agree nor disagree with, since I haven’t read The Instructions–although I did see Levin read, and liked what I heard) is just obnoxious. Like Kingsley Le Corbusier, I’m really surprised an editor let it get published. There’s a self-satisfied impenetrability to Cohen’s writing that gets old fast.
Had Cohen not led with the Esau/Jacob crap, the anti-self-promotion mob would be crowding onto the hate-the-hidden-agenda bandwagon.
After that first paragraph, the rest of the review hews antagonistically to the book. Even the anti-School of DFW hostility is targeted, accurately or not, at Levin’s book.
Where, in the review, is Cohen himself trafficking in “gossip”??
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On the other hand, as bellicose as most anti-Semites think Israel is is an analogy as spherical as most anti-Semites think the Earth is.
great twin peaks post, thanks for the link.
that first stanza of ‘caveat’ was enough to not trust the rest of the article. and studying cohen’s summary, i’m not sure what the hell actually happens in The Instructions given his hiding of the story in a landfill of wikipedia and apparent fearful or jealous teeth grinding.
if i see this book in a bookstore, i’m going to pick it up and figure it out for myself.
fair point. which just brings me back to ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all’ or rather: i think i would have passed on this venture in cohen’s shoes. risky business.
i think this is first time i’ve seen you justify bellicosity in writing. i mean, who exactly is meant to empathize with this?: “In the spirit of that joke, consider one of our books the Jewish novel you’ll never begin and the other the Jewish novel you’ll never finish.” blecgh.
Assigning the review to Cohen was a too-cute move on the NYT Book Review’s part. Cohen, once he decided he didn’t like The Instructions, should have declined to participate. Once he did decide to do a review, though, he was ethically bound to mention his own Judeo-centered doorstop.
And that’s a fair point: it’s fine for reviews to be negative, but a review might not be the most judicious place – informing readers of a book’s outlines and effect on one reader – to jump into a feud.
But Cohen’s just telling us that he didn’t like the book – ok: strongly telling. Don’t many people who might complain here about an unconscionable hit piece also complain about a Times review being little more than a glad-handing marketing tool?
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I’m a bit interested in the content of Cohen’s criticism: Levin’s book is a wandering compilation of gags and a long joke with a soggy-to-non-existent punchline. Didn’t I see these two ‘problems’ spoken of concerning Witz??
yeah, that was a good piece on kubrick and lynch and corridors. kate marshall’s book sounds awesome.
I’m reading the Instructions right now and definitely recommend it to everybody. It’s true that DFW is channeled here a little bit, but many authors of a certain age have been influenced by him, so I don’t think that’s enough to condemn the book. I think it was a terrible decision by Tanehaus to assign this to Cohen. The Instructions has probably received more attention than Witz, especially recently, so the obvious thought, as soon as the review turned negative, was to ascribe jealousy to Cohen in writing this takedown. Which isn’t fair to either Cohen (if he actually had no motives in writing the takedown) or Levin, since this will be the most high-profile review written of The Instructions, and now will be ignored by a huge audience who just flip through NYT Book Review without knowing the back story, and who might have been interested in checking this very readable and very entertaining book out. Now they won’t: who wants to read a 1,000 page setup without a punchline?
Total conflict of interest. Cohen should have declined, but I blame Tanenhaus for his cynicism.
I’m not sure I buy the conflict-of-interest narrative here. Does anyone really believe that Cohen dissing The Instructions in the NYTBR is going to raise the sales of Witz, beyond the normal bump (if it exists) of having your name featured in the NYTBR to begin with? I agree that he was ethically bound to explain his situation right at the beginning, because the parallels are obvious, and he does; but I disagree that this was self-aggrandizement: he never returns to the topic of his own book, getting it out of the way—fast—and getting on with the review. And I think the review’s really good.
As for Tanenhaus giving him the review, I don’t know enough about how this dynamic usually works, but Cohen’s sure as hell qualified: I think he’s one of our best critics now working. I just don’t get the problem here. And to those who like the book (I haven’t gotten to read any yet, though I held a copy earlier today… what a doorstop), Levin’s everywhere right now. I wouldn’t worry for him.
zusya, I’m not sure what you mean by “justify bellicosity in writing”!
I like “bellicosity” when I think it ‘justifies’ itself by not being hypocritical or rote. I don’t think it’s usually constructive to crank out hit pieces just because (one thinks) it’s easy to look clever by being obnoxious – cf. Anthony Lane, or what little I’ve read by Shivani. But if a reader is genuinely repelled by a book (or whatever) and produces specific arguments/evidence to make clear that experience?
And, in the remark you’re replying to, I’m not “justify”ing the criticisms themselves, am I? I’m simply saying that Cohen put his relation, as a long-novel writer and as a Jewish writer, to Levin and the book all the way up front, and that the criticisms of that here are critical of a Good Thing.
As far as goes the sentence whose antipathy you retch at, Cohen plainly says “In the spirit of that joke”, meaning (as I take it), ‘the real chances are that you’ll begin the former and might even finish the latter book’ – he’s being sardonic, isn’t he? In the context of the joke, Cohen is saying (I think) that Jewish people pathologically look for conflict with each other – especially but not exclusively with each other’s Judaism (maybe that’s thematized in the two novels?) – : ‘So, take that into account when you read my review.’ That he’s pleading for pity, as you (?) and Charles think? That’s not what I got, but maybe.
Sort of like the “conflict of interest” when teachers/mentors write reviews of their students (and the other way ’round)?
This review was negative and maybe even ‘unfair’, but it was fun and provocative. More reviews like this, please.
I don’t think that is what Cohen is saying, Neil. The gist of “that joke” referred to in the sentence you quote is that one Jewish person is enough to constitute schism; in the context of “that joke”, Cohen is mocking – preemptively? ok; that’s a different argument than the one made on this thread so far! – his own debunking of Levin’s book. That is, the “contest he sets up” is set up in the light of the joke that ‘one Jewish person = a heart-felt but fantastic contest’: that set-up says, to me, that the “contest” between Cohen’s novel and Levin’s is (at least a little) bogus.
Whether The Instructions really is as tedious and dissipated as Cohen says . . . well, hell.
I don’t think that is what Cohen is saying, Neil. The gist of “that joke” referred to in the sentence you quote is that one Jewish person is enough to constitute schism; in the context of “that joke”, Cohen is mocking – preemptively? ok; that’s a different argument than the one made on this thread so far! – his own debunking of Levin’s book. That is, the “contest he sets up” is set up in the light of the joke that ‘one Jewish person = a heart-felt but fantastic contest’: that set-up says, to me, that the “contest” between Cohen’s novel and Levin’s is (at least a little) bogus.
Whether The Instructions really is as tedious and dissipated as Cohen says . . . well, hell.
Agreed. I thought the Lin review was savvy. This one strikes me as clumsy and batshit insane.
So I wasn’t the only one who found that line self-pitying.
He also published this week: http://www.tabletmag.com/arts-and-culture/books/49382/moving-pictures-2/
Which is more positive.
I liked the low video and I hate videos
I agree that he didn’t explicitly market his own book, but he still is basically saying that there isn’t room for two doorstop Jewish novels in one year. “In the spirit of that joke, consider one of our books the Jewish novel you’ll never begin and the other the Jewish novel you’ll never finish.” He turns this review into a contest between two books, where one of them is worth reading. Luckily for him, he is also the judge of the very contest he sets up, and Witz wins by default after he eviscerates The Instructions, so he doesn’t need to bring up his own. You say he gets Witz out of the way–fast–but he spends 15% of his review on the fact that Witz and Instructions are similar, which, I would argue, is a little much given the limited amount of space he has to critique a huge book.
zusya, I’m not sure what you mean by “justify bellicosity in writing”!
I like “bellicosity” when I think it ‘justifies’ itself by not being hypocritical or rote. I don’t think it’s usually constructive to crank out hit pieces just because (one thinks) it’s easy to look clever by being obnoxious – cf. Anthony Lane, or what little I’ve read by Shivani. But if a reader is genuinely repelled by a book (or whatever) and produces specific arguments/evidence to make clear that experience?
And, in the remark you’re replying to, I’m not “justify”ing the criticisms themselves, am I? I’m simply saying that Cohen put his relation, as a long-novel writer and as a Jewish writer, to Levin and the book all the way up front, and that the criticisms of that here are critical of a Good Thing.
As far as goes the sentence whose antipathy you retch at, Cohen plainly says “In the spirit of that joke”, meaning (as I take it), ‘the real chances are that you’ll begin the former and might even finish the latter book’ – he’s being sardonic, isn’t he? In the context of the joke, Cohen is saying (I think) that Jewish people pathologically look for conflict with each other – especially but not exclusively with each other’s Judaism (maybe that’s thematized in the two novels?) – : ‘So, take that into account when you read my review.’ That he’s pleading for pity, as you (?) and Charles think? That’s not what I got, but maybe.
I don’t think that is what Cohen is saying, Neil. The gist of “that joke” referred to in the sentence you quote is that one Jewish person is enough to constitute schism; in the context of “that joke”, Cohen is mocking – preemptively? ok; that’s a different argument than the one made on this thread so far! – his own debunking of Levin’s book. That is, the “contest he sets up” is set up in the light of the joke that ‘one Jewish person = a heart-felt but fantastic contest’: that set-up says, to me, that the “contest” between Cohen’s novel and Levin’s is (at least a little) bogus.
Whether The Instructions really is as tedious and dissipated as Cohen says . . . well, hell.
If he has to work that hard to mock the perceived contest preemptively, doesn’t it shows that he wasn’t the right choice for a review? If he had to joke/walk on glass about his book and its relation to The Instructions before he could even discuss the book he was paid to review? I understand your viewpoint, and I’ll reiterate that I think Cohen was in a no-win situation in this review. It’s unfair to him, too.
Deadgod,
What I was referring to was the statement that his was the Jewish novel that you would never start. I don’t think he’s pleading for pity, but rather bemoaning the fact that he’s aware of his own comparable cultural obscurity as a result of what is, I think he would himself admit, his intentionally crafted esoterica. I don’t read that as a clever engagement with the text at hand, and far from being sardonic, it seems to me to be painfully (and embarrassingly) sincere.
I dunno. Maybe he’s smarter than all that, but to me it seemed like he was expressing personal disappointment rather than espousing an arch polemic.
i mean, yeah. he’s being sardonic: ‘grimly mocking or cynical’ by my dictionary’s definition. The Instructions, just after reading about it skimming-about-online, seems to be about defiant optimism, something i’d much rather get behind than solipsistic, unfunny joke-making.
maybe i shouldn’t be surprised at your reaction, deadgod, because that’s what i take you for being good (if not great) at, finding the amoral center of moral arguments, while a pretty damn cool thing to be all about doing, kinda doesn’t help when someone being a dick (note: i’m not referring to you) is ruining it for the rest of us.
if not clumsy and moonbatty, then at least rather inartful. it’s probably not a good idea to try to blow up the moon when you’re given a national platform as big as the NYTimes is for the first time.
cohen could’ve pulled off a win with a sly acrostic – perhaps: “B-U-Y-M-Y-B-O-O-K-I-N-S-T-E-A-D” – as the only mention of his tome.
Well, after reading the review I felt more interested in reading both books. They both win.
Well, Charles, he does preface the crack with the joke about one Jew alone resulting in religious faction. We simply disagree. A first for me, too.
I’d not suspect that I have the power to ruin things for people with reasonable priorities!
I don’t think there’s much question but that Cohen is attacking a pseudo-, quasi-, para- competitor. But maybe he just didn’t like the book? The point that he really could have passed on the review (and conducted/started (?) a feud somehow else) is a pretty good one.
Fair enough, Neil. From the Tao Lin review, one can tell that Cohen doesn’t mind being obnoxious, at least. I agree with Zusya’s perspective above in general: take a copy from the shelf and read 20 pages. But, as a consumer of reviews who’d like them to be useful as well as entertaining, I’d prefer the lens not to be tinted by rancor. Still think putting his connection (as a Jewish novelist) to Levin up front was the way to go.
zusya, has the print edition been examined for one of these tricks? If I take a look at it, will I be unable to resist buying a book I don’t want??
I just read the Tao Lin review and kind of loved it. The fact that I thought the Levin review was unfair and the Tao Lin review was fair probably says more about my biases than Cohen’s.
At least they’re both circumcised.
I actually wouldn’t put that past him:
http://www.tabletmag.com/arts-and-culture/books/24507/repurposed/
print edition? i don’t live in NY…
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