Synopses & Reviews
According to Dale Peck, contemporary fiction is at an impasse. Its place as entertainer and educator has been usurped by television and the movies while publishing has become a feeder industry to Hollywood. Faced with such diminished status, novelists have reacted in two admirable, if misguided, ways: writing for targeted socio-cultural groups, they produce so-called identity fiction, which employs a neo-Victorian realism and resembles anthropology more than art; or, they've pursued an ironic and self-reflexive postmodernism that can only comment on the real world with a mocking, impotent jest. Both solutions are reactionary and self-defeating, leading to books for the few rather than the many that isolate their readers instead of bringing them together. Hatchet Jobs methodically eviscerates such writing. Reviewing the work of Jim Crace, Rick Moody, and Colson Whitehead, Dale Peck scrutinizes the publishing climate that fosters what he deems mediocre work and the critical establishment that rewards it. Essays on gay and black women's fiction acknowledge the benefits and limitations of identity fiction, while critiques of Julian Barnes and David Foster Wallace show how twentieth-century literary movements continue to shape fiction for both good and ill. Rife with textual analysis, historical context, and insights about the power of fiction, Hatchet Jobs hacks away literature's deadwood to discover the vital heart of the contemporary novel.
Review
"This isn't criticism. It isn't even performance art. It's thuggee. However entertaining in small doses...as a steady diet it's worse for readers, writers and reviewers than self-abuse." John Leonard, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"[A] passionate, committed commentator who definitely has an axe to grind....[Peck vows] to write no more hatchet jobs. That's a shame: his partisan, nastily persuasive naysaying adds a valuable perspective to our cultural debates." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Smart, self-dramatizing, and pugilistic...[Peck's] essays possess true moxie....[H]owever narrow and hostile his critiques are, they are galvanizing, and serve to sharpen the perceptions and ethos of his fellow, more balanced, critics." Donna Seaman, Booklist
Review
"For those who like their literary criticism strong, emotional, and salty, this is essential to finish an era. Recommended." Library Journal
Review
"Shatteringly honest, disturbing, and provocative." David Weingard, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
Review
"In his meticulous attention to diction, his savage wit, his exact and rollicking prose, his fierce devotion to stylistic and intellectual precision, and of course his disdain for pseudo-intellectual flatulence, Peck is Mencken's heir (although he's got to curb his lazy use of expletives). He writes that this collection marks the end of his hatchet jobs. For the sake of the republic of letters, he'd better change his mind." Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic Monthly (read the entire Atlantic Monthly review)
Synopsis
Since the initial publication of Hatchet Jobs, the groves of literary criticism have echoed with the clatter of steel on wood. From heated panels at Book Expo in Chicago to contretemps at writers’ watering holes in New York, voices—even fists—have been raised.
Peck’s bracing philippic proposes that contemporary literature is at a dead end. Novelists have forfeited a wider audience, succumbing to identity politicking and self-reflexive postmodernism. In the torrent of responses to this fulguration, opinions were not so much divided as cleaved in two with, for example, Carlin Romano contending that “Peck’s judgments are worse than nasty—they are hysterical” and Benjamin Schwarz retorting that “in his meticulous attention to diction, his savage wit, his exact and rollicking prose and his disdain for pseudointellectual flatulence, Dale Peck is Mencken’s heir.”
Hatchet Jobs includes swinging critiques of the work of, among others, Sven Birkerts, Julian Barnes, Philip Roth, Colson Whitehead, Jim Crace, Stanley Crouch, and Rick Moody.
Synopsis
The acclaimed novelist takes a vigorous swipe at contemporary fiction and its progenitors.
About the Author
Dale Peck is the author of three widely acclaimed novels—
Now It’s Time to Say Goodbye, The Law of Enclosures, and
Martin and John— and a memoir,
What We Lost. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and two O. Henry awards. He lives in New York City.