It’s open season on book critics apparently. On the heels of the Alice Hoffman-Roberta Silman feud, Alain de Botton is upset with the fact that Caleb Crain gave his book, The Pleasures of Sorrow and Work, a bad review. De Botton commented on Crain’s blog:
Caleb, you make it sound on your blog that your review is somehow a sane and fair assessment. In my eyes, and all those who have read it with anything like impartiality, it is a review driven by an almost manic desire to bad-mouth and perversely depreciate anything of value. The accusations you level at me are simply extraordinary. I genuinely hope that you will find yourself on the receiving end of such a daft review some time very soon – so that you can grow up and start to take some responsibility for your work as a reviewer. You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that. So that’s two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review. You present yourself as ‘nice’ in this blog (so much talk about your boyfriend, the dog etc). It’s only fair for your readers (nice people like Joe Linker and trusting souls like PAB) to get a whiff that the truth may be more complex. I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude.
Geesh. Hoffman’s remarks pale in comparison but are still pretty bad. Hoffman got a lukewarm review for her new novel, The Story Sisters, in the Boston Globe by critic Roberta Silman. Hoffman on her twitter called Silman a moron and an idiot. She also insulted the Globe and the city of Boston. Hoffman goes on to give out Silman’s email address and phone number. Hoffman apologized and took down her twitter account but was mad at the fact that Sillman, gave away the plot of her novel. Memoirist Diane Joseph said that Hoffman’s apology was pretty passive aggressive.
Mary Elizabeth Williams has great article in Salon about Hoffman and past author-critic feuds. There are some good ones. Stanley Crouch vs. Dale Peck. Caleb Carr vs. Laura Miller. Richard Ford vs. Colson Whitehead and ironically Alice Hoffman was once the in the critic’s place when she gave Richard Ford a bad review for The Sportswriter. Mrs. and Mrs. Ford went out back and shot copies of Hoffman’s book with a gun.
Touché!
{image courtesy of Salon.com}
