A Reprimand in Part for
A Reprimand in Part for A Man in Full
The following are hereby forbidden to Mr. Tom Wolfe, author, until such time as there is evidence of rehabilitation:
- The use of the words lubricious and lubricity, esp. with reference to the female body and in particular to its curves.
- Similar use of the term massive when applied to the physiognomy of any male character.
- Any attempt to mimic or parody the lyrics of either hip-hop or rap-metal songs.
On a related note, the
current Atlantic Monthly features “A Reader’s Manifesto” by one B.R. Myers, a lengthy screed denouncing the current state of literary fiction as a massive conspiracy by the reviewing staff of the New York Times, Oprah Winfrey, and other powers-of-culture to force feed us “self-conscious, writerly prose” under the guise of Literature. The argument is reminiscent of Wolfe’s own “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,” a call to return to the Balzac/Dickens mode of novel, which he made in Harpers’ a number of years ago. Myers makes some reasonable points, many more unreasonable ones, spends pages on a close-reading dissection of writers he hates (Annie Proulx, Cormac McCarthy, Paul Auster, Don Delillo and Rick Moody bear the brunt of his assault), and keeps mentioning Stephen King as an exemplar of the kind of “great storyteller” who just can’t get credit from the snobs in the Times Book Review. In a towering pet about how these writers have no sense of humor, he quotes a passage from
White Noise that made me laugh when I read it again.
Michael Kelly’s introduction to the issue says that Myers writes “as a reader, outraged and seeking to be outrageous in turn,” notes that he is “thirty-seven and lives in Los Lunas, New Mexico.” According to Kelly, “he wrote ‘A Reader’s Manifesto’ for himself, and then sent it to The Atlantic on speculation.” I’m heartened by this news, and am going to spend the rest of the day polishing up my 10,000 word monograph on why all these yuppies with their big, ungainly dogs are ruining Prospect Park. Get set to be outraged!
Posted by B T at July 30, 2001 08:38 AM