Anis Shivani. Very keen critic or very angry (or disappointed, or hurt, or 'misunderstood') author? You decide. At least his damning critique of pomo writing is very, very funny. Read for example what he has to say about celebrated poet John Ashbery:
More responsible than anyone else for turning late twentieth-century American poetry into a hermetic, self-enclosed, utterly private affair. Displays sophomoric lust to encode postmodern alienation into form that embodies the supposed chaos of the mind. (...) Ran away with postmodern irony, eccentricized it to the point of meaninglessness. Now we have no working definition of irony anymore--thanks, John Ashbery! (...) Among the writers listed here, I want to like him the most--it's too bad he's been a parody of himself for so long.
Very angry
ReplyDeleteSo right about Safran Foer. Though I really enjoyed Everything is Illuminated.
ReplyDeleteVery, very angry, but I think he is mostly right. Especially about Safran Foer. One trick donkey, really. I think the only one he is wrong about is Junot Diaz. It's too early to judge him. His short stories were awesome, his novel an immense disappointment.
ReplyDeleteVery daring though, this piece. I wonder what Michiko Kakutani will say about his new novel...