SUBSCRIBE NOW WELCOME BACK. Do you want to continue reading where you left off? New Republic subscribers can pick up where they left off no matter which device they were previously using. SUBSCRIBE NOW

Go Home How Not To Write a Book Review

THE PLANK SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

How Not To Write a Book Review

BY ISAAC CHOTINER

In Slate today, Peter D. Kramer has a very strange review of Richard Powers' new novel, Generosity. Kramer begins as follows:

Novels can suffer from bad timing, and here I mean not in plot arc or prose rhythm but in the relationship of their publication dates to current events. I know this truth from experience. My only novel concerns a thoughtful anarchist who communicates with those he loves through blowing up buildings. It appeared to mostly good notices in August 2001; after Sept. 11, the book was all but undiscussable.

This might be excusable if it was the only instance of Kramer's solipsism, but things get progressively worse. Generosity appears to be about happiness and genetic enhancement, which gives Kramer the opportunity to add:

In Against Depression (2005), I wrote that the Science report had "raised eyebrows on a number of grounds," and I expressed doubts that the finding of absolute stress immunity would hold up.

Okay, I thought, he has now mentioned two of his books. Of the second book, he adds, "In Against Depression, I made what I hope is a complex argument about the association of melancholy and literary creativity..." Enough already, you might be thinking--just review the damn book. Alas, Kramer only has this to say:

It's a problem for Generosity that in the field of enhancement, the medical ethics literature is so strong that it reads like accomplished science fantasy. Look, for example, at Carl Elliott's Better Than Well (for which I wrote an introduction) or at the theoretical contributions, my own aside, in the anthology he helped edit, Prozac as a Way of Life. There you'll find philosophers assessing neuropsychiatric research in detail and using it, often in playful fashion, to construct thought experiments that frame precise critical questions...

Uncle!

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Show all 13 comments

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

13 comments

I just counted them. There were 7 previous posts of mine that anticipated at least 12 more I would have written about Chotiner's failure to mention any of them in his post above. In fact, I once had a novel rejected about a novelist who had his novel rejected just before all novels were rejected for 48 hours after 9/11. This all goes back to the moment after my birth when I realized the world did not revolve around me. And that it should have did not seem to perturb anyone. That's when I realized the only way my importance would ever be recognized is to embrace solipsism, tie the knot with narcissism and live happily ever after in my own head. So, what the fuck are you doing here? Build your own goddamn pedestal. gw

- iambiguous

September 28, 2009 at 4:12pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"That's when I realized the only way my importance would ever be recognized is to embrace solipsism, tie the knot with narcissism and live happily ever after in my own head." This may be the most accurate statement george has ever made.

- adaglas

September 28, 2009 at 6:24pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Hey adaglas, anything that has one posting on it, I never open it because I know it will just be walton and his inane and insane ramblings. it is a shame TNR doesn't have an ignore function, so that every thread I open I would not see him, yes I know I would see the very few others who respond to him, like you above, but that is fine. If I had any ability writing code I would do it.

- blackton

September 28, 2009 at 7:05pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

adag, For christ sakes, don't you remember---I was inside your head when I thought it up!! But, true, I don't remember seeing you there. Just like you're not here now. But then the more time you spend inside Blackton's head the fuzzy all these things become anyway. Guess whose head I'm in now? I'll give you hint: me, myself, mine. It's fun being really, really clever, isn't it? Especially when it's at the expense of folks like [wink, wink...giggle, giggle....snort, snort] you. Do you want me to teach you how? ; o ) gw

- iambiguous

September 28, 2009 at 7:15pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Q: What is the ignore list? A: Ignore lists are used for those people whose messages you wish not to read. By adding someone to your ignore list, those messages posted by these individuals will be hidden when you read a thread. You may add any member of the forums to your ignore list by viewing their profile or by going to "Buddy / Ignore Lists" in your "User CP". Come on TNR, will it really be so hard to add this function? Everyone can be happy, even walton will be since it is apparent that the only person he is interested in talking to is himself.

- blackton

September 28, 2009 at 7:21pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Yes, I wish TNR would install an "ignore poster" option.

- jacksondyer

September 28, 2009 at 8:55pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

As somebody put it so well a few weeks ago, george is a daily reminder that freedom of speech, no matter how much we value it, is not without its costs and its profound irritations. We don't get it with frosting on, and perhaps that should be so.

- ironyroad

September 28, 2009 at 10:01pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

What the fuck are you guys pissed off about here---posts you don't even have to read? You can ignore me simply by not reading me. Right? How can it possibly be any easier? You don't want an "ignore function"; you want me censored; you want me kicked out of there. That way you can go back to a time when no one troubled you with points of view that unraveled The Way Things Are. In other words, the way you see them. And, more importantly, the way you could discuss "the news" with others who reduced the world down to liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. The way all the pundits talk about the news in the mainstream media. Bottom line? Vis a vis me, you have no intellectual courage, no intellectul integrity, no intellectual honesty. I disturb you so you just want me "disappeared". Now, again, I'll explain what really bothers you about me. I can do this of course because none of you are reading it anyway. ARE you? Or, if you are, WHO makes you? You know, other than yourself? After all, I don't come in here and whine endlessly about you, do I? 1] I'm annoying when I poke around in things that generally discomfit people who like their topical discussions linear or literal. The irony challanged denizens of the mainstream media in particular. 2] Having been born and raised in the crude, scatological world of a hardcore working class community outside Wilkes Barre, I can be crude and scatological in a way that allows for many Preening Intellectuals to reduce my points down to that. I don't sound like them and that is often more important than whatever it is that is actually said. They interact as colleagues. And that's fine. But you don't have to be the colleague type to have piercing perceptions about human interaction. 3] Philosophically, I yank political pundits into the infinitely problematic thickets of Cioran, Pessoa, Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein and Rorty. I deconstruct identity and situate it in ever evolving contingency, chance and change. I'm less intrigued with what people think they know about something and more fascinated instead with how much thought they have given to the limitations of human knowledge. In particular, the inherent limitations of human language in professing moral and political value judgments. 4] I'm ever introducing human emotional and psychological narratives into their linear academic models george walton

- iambiguous

September 28, 2009 at 11:51pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

I thought my remark was pretty clear that you shouldn't be censored or kicked out.

- ironyroad

September 29, 2009 at 12:59am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

irony: I thought my remark was pretty clear that you shouldn't be censored or kicked out. george: You're right. I apologize. g.

- iambiguous

September 29, 2009 at 3:08am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

I was surprised that this item had so many comments (what else is there to say but "gosh yes, that is a rather self-absorbed reviewer"?), but now all is clear. The Greasemonkey Killfile script (http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/4107) used to work on TNR a few iterations of the site ago, but not anymore, even with the latest version. The author of the script originally added TNR at my request (so I could get my dissertation done rather than argue pointlessly with certain users), so try e-mailing him out of the blue as I did; maybe he'd update it.

- frippo

September 29, 2009 at 9:43am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

per Irony, I am not looking to kick anyone out or censure anyone, I simply wish to have the freedom to choose an option that exists at many other websites, which is a troll filter. It is dispiriting to see that a thread has 6 responses and to open it having to search for the one non walton posting while walton, in his verbal diarrhea and his multiple personalities, battle it out on some non-existential realm of bullshit. I pay for the privilege of posting here so this is not too much to ask, and I am also certainly willing to accept that there will be those who choose to use the ignore function on me. TNR has been an enjoyable way to spend my time between classes. I only want it to continue to be so.

- blackton

September 29, 2009 at 10:41am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

black, I wear many hats in here. On lots of occassions I respond no more or no less like anyone else. I express my opinion straight up---no hyperbole, no polemics---and then more on. And other posts are given over to the sound of laughter. I bring an abundant sense of humor into my efforts here. And then there are times I don my political cartoonist hat and aim [sometimes wickedly] for that kernal of truth beneath all the bullshit on the surface. I emulate my op-ed heros, Herblock and Maureen Dowd. Or sometimes I probe "the news" philosophically...or I probe it politically for my philosophical friends. Not to mention exposing the foibles of my own personal favorite claymation characters: the pointy head intellectuals [especially the "liberals"] in the mainstream media who count inflection points all the way to the banks on Capitol Hill and Wall Street. And I do it over and again because I write like most other's breathe: effortlessly. Now there's something for you to pounce on. You know, if you were reading it. george

- iambiguous

September 29, 2009 at 6:16pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

SHARE HIGHLIGHT

0 CHARACTERS SELECTED

TWEET THIS

POST TO TUMBLR

SHARE ON FACEBOOK

Close