(no subject)
This review of the book Zone One, by Colson Whitehead ia absolutely breathtaking in it's obnoxiousness. The review is a week old at this point, and has already been very handily ripped to shreds at I09, but I didn't read it until yesterday, so it's still fresh to me.
Zone One is a zombie novel, but Colson Whitehead is a "literary" writer, and the reviewer (Glen Duncan, who has himself written a werewolf novel while considering himself a literary author, and I guess received some harsh comments from reviewers on Amazon.com or something, judging from his attitude here) just can't get past how wacky a notion it is that "genre" and "literary" could both be words used to describe the same book. Or, as he says in the opening line of the review "A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star". Because porn stars are always stupid and intellectuals are never sexy! Get it? He goes on to explain:
Broad-spectrum marketing will attract readers for whom having to look up “cathected” or “brisant” isn’t just an irritant but a moral affront. These readers will huff and writhe and swear their way through (if they make it through) and feel betrayed and outraged and migrained.
Personally, I only feel outraged and migrained after being confronted with intellectual snobbiness of this degree. Seriously, I don't think any genre fan has ever taken to his or her fainting couch because they were introduced to vocabulary words they don't know. And huffing and writhing? Am I reading this book while at pilates class? (Note: I have never been to a pilates class, but it seems like the kind of place where one would both huff and writhe.)
Ironically, while I hated this review and have zero interest in zombies, I think the book itself sounds pretty good. I like to imagine that author Colson Whitehead was facepalming like Mulder in my icon after reading it, while thinking "Dude, I'm glad you liked it, but why so much effort to piss off the people most likely to buy a book about zombies!?.
Zone One is a zombie novel, but Colson Whitehead is a "literary" writer, and the reviewer (Glen Duncan, who has himself written a werewolf novel while considering himself a literary author, and I guess received some harsh comments from reviewers on Amazon.com or something, judging from his attitude here) just can't get past how wacky a notion it is that "genre" and "literary" could both be words used to describe the same book. Or, as he says in the opening line of the review "A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star". Because porn stars are always stupid and intellectuals are never sexy! Get it? He goes on to explain:
Broad-spectrum marketing will attract readers for whom having to look up “cathected” or “brisant” isn’t just an irritant but a moral affront. These readers will huff and writhe and swear their way through (if they make it through) and feel betrayed and outraged and migrained.
Personally, I only feel outraged and migrained after being confronted with intellectual snobbiness of this degree. Seriously, I don't think any genre fan has ever taken to his or her fainting couch because they were introduced to vocabulary words they don't know. And huffing and writhing? Am I reading this book while at pilates class? (Note: I have never been to a pilates class, but it seems like the kind of place where one would both huff and writhe.)
Ironically, while I hated this review and have zero interest in zombies, I think the book itself sounds pretty good. I like to imagine that author Colson Whitehead was facepalming like Mulder in my icon after reading it, while thinking "Dude, I'm glad you liked it, but why so much effort to piss off the people most likely to buy a book about zombies!?.