Can’t anybody just savor a metaphor anymore? This past weekend, John Leonard wrote a scathing takedown of Dale Peck’s volume of collected criticism, Hatchet Jobs , for The New York Times Book Review . In the piece, Mr. Leonard variously referred to Mr. Peck as a “hot dog,” a “vampire bat” and an “East German Read More
Hatchet Jobs: Cutting Through Contemporary Literature , by Dale Peck. The New Press, 228 pages, $23.95.
Dale Peck is not the best literary critic of his generation. He’s not even second-best. It’s also true that there are pitifully few writers in his generation who could plausibly be called literary critics (the rest just write Read More
A Reader’s Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American
Literary Prose , by B. R. Myers. Melville House, 149 pages, $9.95.
Who dares attack Don DeLillo, the colossus who gave us Underworld , Mao II , Libra , White Noise ? Mr. DeLillo, winner of many prizes, is backed by the love Read More
Now It’s Time to Say Goodbye is the name of Dale Peck’s new literary thriller, but it also describes his relationship with his publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux. For in late May, as his book was enjoying some rave reviews, Mr. Peck, the author of Martin and John and The Law of Enclosures , with Read More
