Sloppily-written slam on moderately celebrated writers is amusing nonetheless

Via J. Robert Lennon, I discovered this amusing blog by Anis Shivani on “The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers.”

Lennon found it so annoying that he refused to even link to it, but I actually enjoyed Shivani’s bit of performance art. The literary criticism I see is so focused on individual books that it’s refreshing to see someone take on an entire author’s career in a single paragraph. I agree with Lennon that Shivani’s blog doesn’t have much content–it’s full of terms such as “vacuity” and “pap,” compared to which “trendy” and “fashionable” are precision instruments–but Shivani covers a lot of ground and it’s fun to see this all in one place.

My main complaint with Shivani, beyond his sloppy writing (but, hey, it’s just a blog; I’m sure he saves the good stuff for his paid gigs) is his implicit assumption that everyone should agree with him. I’m as big a Kazin fan as anyone, but I still think he completely undervalued Marquand.

The other thing I noticed was that, apart from Amy Tan and Jhumpa Lahiri, none of the writers on Shivani’s list were people whom I would consider bigshots. To me, they seemed like a mix of obscure poets (even a famous poet within the poetry-and-NPR world is still obscure compared to other kinds of writers), obscure critics (ditto), and some Manhattan-insider types. And Junot Diaz, who I like, even if maybe Shivani is right that he’s just riffing on old Philip Roth shtick.

P.S. Following the links from Shivani, I came across this. I still think Andrea did it better, though.

P.P.S. Shivani mentioned “Antonya Nelson.” The name rang a bell, so I searched the blog and found this. She’s the one who wrote the John Updike story! (“Not angry enough to be a John Cheever story, not clipped enough to be a Raymond Carver story, not smooth enough to be a Richard Ford story.”) I’m surprised Shivani didn’t mention that one.

P.P.P.S. Thinking a bit more about Lennon’s reaction . . . I guess I’d be pretty annoyed to see an article on “the 15 most overrated American statisticians.” I know two or three people who’d probably put me high on such a list. It’s a good thing they don’t have blogs!

2 thoughts on “Sloppily-written slam on moderately celebrated writers is amusing nonetheless

  1. 1. I am so sick of lists presented as slide shows;

    2. Making critical assessments in real time is extraordinarily difficult and yet Shivani's list of bad Pulitzer choices contains, by his own admission, three clearly deserving authors and two great novels. On top of that, half the authors of the books he said were unfairly neglected did win Pulitzer's at some point. All of this makes his "We can dismiss the early Pulitzer winners by claiming that a bunch of old white men probably decided back then." even more bizarre. He agrees with half their author choices despite the fact that he has a century's worth of hindsight to draw on.

    To sum up, he presents evidence that indicates that the Pulitzer committee does a pretty good job then states the opposite conclusion.

    It is possible that Shivani has said smart things in other venues, but when he works for free he's badly overpaid.

  2. Mark: I agree that Shivani's article was pretty brainless. But it was entertaining. The idea of summing up a series of authors, each in a single, irreverent paragraph is a good one. A good enough idea that, even though Shivani didn't do it particularly well (for example, picking a bunch of obscure poets who I could care less about), I still enjoyed reading it. Just think how good it could've been had he put some thought into it!

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