Now this is how to stand up for your beloved. (Not to mention how to handle a snooty review.)
I can't let pass the tag-end of a sentence in the final graf of the Lucking Out notice in The New York Times Book Review (or as I charmingly call it, "that small-pox rag") which goes: "...the author of this book went on to write for Harper's Magazine and The New Yorker, in addition to Vanity Fair, and wound up marrying a dance critic."
That dance critic has a name, her name is Laura Jacobs, and she is not "a dance critic," she is the dance critic for The New Criterion, the best dance critic in the country, as well as a fashion writer, the former editor of Stagebill, a longtime contributor to Vanity Fair (the author of the cover story on Grace Kelly, among other features), and a novelist of two exquisitely rendered, emotionally depth-charged works, Women About Town and The Bird Catcher, of which the Times Book Review took zero notice, being too busy preparing Joan Didion's reliquary and fawning over the latest literary genius farted aloft from the borough of Brooklyn.
Laura Jacobs is, in brief, an accomplished writer and figure herself, not some negligible nothing attached to my personal narrative of service to the Times reviewer solely for the purpose of making some petty, dubious, sexistly reductive point.
For the record, here's the snooty review to which he is so brilliantly responding.
(Photo: Scott Abelman/Flickr)
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Well done, Mr. Wolcott, on drawing attention one of the many pernicious ways sexism is still embedded in our society.
Excellent! James Wolcott has been the platinum standard for deft, on-target fisking for decades.
Young adult fiction is the biography of our lives and the path to the future.
Booya!
Hehehehe nice. This polite but firm elavation of Mr. Wolcott's spouse reminds me of Stephen King's "Lisey's Story". I won't give out spoilers; if you've read it, you'll know what I'm referring to.
Well done, Mr. Wolcott.
I read the review of Mr. Wolcott's work earlier in the week and thought, "he has a way with words." Plus, that quote from Patti Smith, one of my idols for the last 30 years, is classic. Now, of course, I MUST go buy the book!
With so many examples of men behaving in dishonorable ways in the news at the moment, it's good to have this example of a guy getting it right, and doing so without needing to be prompted.
^ Single guy, taking notes. Well done, sir, well done!
Or don't you love when they say "Mr. & Mrs. James Wolcott"? As if the women exist solely because they are 'attached to' a man.... disgusting! Well done, not many men go out of their way to set the record straight.
What a remarkably eloquent defense of Mr. Wolcott's wife and such a magnificent, full-handed swipe at the Times book reviewer. "Fawning over the latest literary genius farted aloft from the borough of Brooklyn" is a line that will stay with me forever.
If you read it through a diamond you can easily examine the many facets of this review.
I'm about halfway through his new book and it's stunning. He's quite simply one of the best writers in the country.
after having read David Kellys review, i was unimpressed by all of the verbiage and no substance to the review. Let alone learning anything of importance about Wolcott. It was great to see him defend his wife against such inconsiderate remarks. Loved the last line about the "genius farted aloft from the borough of Brooklyn".
I thought that review was remarkably superficial, full of name-dropping, with very little substance, and didn't really give Mr. Wolcott his due.
The review is not focussed well. He is overwhelming with blah, blah, blah.
I agree. David Kelly's review is sorely in need of a good editor.
Although I did appreciate his use of the word "rumbustious". Little-used but extremely evocative, IMHO.
Ah, the ways in which I have wanted to smash the fingers of reviewers so full of their own self-importance that they barely saw you or your work at all. Well done, Mr. Wolcott.