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Bezig met laden... Rotten Reviews Redux: A Literary Companiondoor Bill Henderson
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. "Rotten Reviews Redux: A Literary Companion," edited by Bill Henderson, is a small book consisting of brief reviews of famous literature in which said literature is basically skewered by critics. For example, Mark Twain says of James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Deerslayer” that “In one place in Deerslayer, and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.” Or Joseph Warton in 1754 says of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” that “this drama is chargeable with considerable imperfections.” A very slight, but fun, quick read, covering a wide range of books. ( )
Bloggers and other online epigones are the impetus behind editor Bill Henderson’s reprisal of his 1987 bestseller Rotten Reviews. (Henderson is the publisher of the long-standing Pushcart Prize series, a labor of love and annual celebration of literary journals for which he deserves to be sainted.) Now called Rotten Reviews Redux, this priceless little compendium boasts a new preface by Henderson in which he castigates the “unfettered, unedited, unfiltered, and ridiculous rage” rampant on the Net. But it’s not necessarily the foppish rage that so incenses Henderson — it’s the anonymity: “Anonymous online critics ambush unprotected writers in bursts of verbal automatic rifle fire.” We now live, according to Henderson, “in an online Wild West.” The image is apt, whether or not your business is literature. “All civility gone. Empathy, balance, decency, knowledge, out the window. Everybody a blogger. Everybody an instant critic.”
A quarter century ago Pushcart Press took aim at ridiculous reviews that had trashed literary masterpieces through the centuries. Over 175 attacks were quoted in a little book that itself became a best-selling classic. Today much has changed. The rise of digital self-publishing has fired up hundreds of critical blogs. As the cliché has it everybody is a critic -- and they're often anonymous and far from nice. This collection, with a new introduction, by Pushcart editor Bill Henderson includes gems like: "The final blow-up of what was once a remarkable, if minor. talent." (The New Yorker, 1936, on William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!) "Diffuse?brackish?pretentious." (Virginia Wolfe, 1922, on James Joyce's Ulysses) "Whitman is as unacquainted with art as a hog is with mathematics." (The London Critic, 1855, on Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass) "It gasps for want of craft and sensibility." (New York Times Book Review, 1961, on Joseph Heller's Catch-22) Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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