COLUMNS
Megaphone Guy & The Deadly Snark
/ Nick Sylvester
11.19.07
MEGAPHONE GUY AND THE DEADLY SNARK
BY NICK SYLVESTER
The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders
Riverhead Trade, September 2007
272 pages
The Gawker Guide to Conquering All Media by Gawker Media [Bridie Clark and Chelsea Peretti]
Atria, October 2007
192 pages
The media, nobody is surprised or should be, has a lot of opinions about the media. The thing is in disrepair, they agree on that, and you can imagine the cogent pitch letters born of this alarm. Big Reason #1: News is business. Business means staying in business, making a product people want. It means information masquerading as entertainment, then entertainment masquerading as information. It means that it's become pretty tough to tell the difference between CNN reporting nonstop on Anna Nicole Smith and SNL parodying CNN reporting nonstop on Anna Nicole Smith. It means we all know exactly who Kato Kaelin is. Big Reason #2: News is a human business. Human business means bureaucracy––employees subject to personal incompatibilities, power structures, favors, favoritism, backknives, distance from the final product and (following from that) feelings of ineffectuality––anything really that suggests their news gig is not an objective one at all, not beholden to meritocracy but to (subjective) personal politicking.
So why these two books. Why a satirist's when there are your Gitlins and Jenkins and McChesneys kicking it for serious. Why an Internet Media LLC’s when said Internet Media LLC all but came out and admitted the book was a cynical cash-in a la all other blog-turned-print efforts––when, in an 11/1 post titled "Metaschadenfreude: Website Vindicated As Its Publishing Brand Extension Tanks," the managing editor of this Internet Media LLC's namesake site shouted "we told you so!" at his Crosby St. bosses when the book reported poor sales, this guy really anxious apparently to distance his writers from this turd of a book they didn't even write. Bonus why: Why run the risk of comparing George Saunders, established author and MacArthur genius, to Bridie Clark, an ex-publishing assistant who wrote one of those thinly-veiled memoir-fictions about her totally villainous boss (not that I'm hating), or to Chelsea Peretti, a foulmouthed cryptoracist downtown comic who, if NYO's Ben Westhoff is to be believed, now trades primarily in cryptomisogyny. Double bonus why: Why assume either author (Saunders, Clark/Peretti) set out to slay here?
I don't think I have to defend my interest in Saunders. The guy can write. Even when I disliked some of his short stories in CivilWarLand In Bad Decline for their copout last-paragraph moralizing, I still scribbled sentences of his into my notebook, slaved over his syntax and joke construction, marveled at his economy. The guy can write and he seems to have things he cares about. I cannot say that about many authors. The Braindead Megaphone is a nonfiction collection, so I tend to swallow the moralizing since that's the mode some of these essays take. Elsewhere he's pitch-perfect. In particular I like his essays on Dubai ("The New Mecca") and border control ("The Great Divider") and that New Buddha kid ("Buddha Boy") because Saunders refuses to uncomplicate matters. He recounts all details regardless of their incongruities, leaves those dissonances intact. Constantly he spurns agenda. At worst, Saunders's agenda is to avoid or at least be aware of all possible agendas. Maybe this is some form of writerly insider baseball, but whatever, I tend to get a lot from it.
BY NICK SYLVESTER
The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders
Riverhead Trade, September 2007
272 pages
The Gawker Guide to Conquering All Media by Gawker Media [Bridie Clark and Chelsea Peretti]
Atria, October 2007
192 pages
The media, nobody is surprised or should be, has a lot of opinions about the media. The thing is in disrepair, they agree on that, and you can imagine the cogent pitch letters born of this alarm. Big Reason #1: News is business. Business means staying in business, making a product people want. It means information masquerading as entertainment, then entertainment masquerading as information. It means that it's become pretty tough to tell the difference between CNN reporting nonstop on Anna Nicole Smith and SNL parodying CNN reporting nonstop on Anna Nicole Smith. It means we all know exactly who Kato Kaelin is. Big Reason #2: News is a human business. Human business means bureaucracy––employees subject to personal incompatibilities, power structures, favors, favoritism, backknives, distance from the final product and (following from that) feelings of ineffectuality––anything really that suggests their news gig is not an objective one at all, not beholden to meritocracy but to (subjective) personal politicking.
So why these two books. Why a satirist's when there are your Gitlins and Jenkins and McChesneys kicking it for serious. Why an Internet Media LLC’s when said Internet Media LLC all but came out and admitted the book was a cynical cash-in a la all other blog-turned-print efforts––when, in an 11/1 post titled "Metaschadenfreude: Website Vindicated As Its Publishing Brand Extension Tanks," the managing editor of this Internet Media LLC's namesake site shouted "we told you so!" at his Crosby St. bosses when the book reported poor sales, this guy really anxious apparently to distance his writers from this turd of a book they didn't even write. Bonus why: Why run the risk of comparing George Saunders, established author and MacArthur genius, to Bridie Clark, an ex-publishing assistant who wrote one of those thinly-veiled memoir-fictions about her totally villainous boss (not that I'm hating), or to Chelsea Peretti, a foulmouthed cryptoracist downtown comic who, if NYO's Ben Westhoff is to be believed, now trades primarily in cryptomisogyny. Double bonus why: Why assume either author (Saunders, Clark/Peretti) set out to slay here?
I don't think I have to defend my interest in Saunders. The guy can write. Even when I disliked some of his short stories in CivilWarLand In Bad Decline for their copout last-paragraph moralizing, I still scribbled sentences of his into my notebook, slaved over his syntax and joke construction, marveled at his economy. The guy can write and he seems to have things he cares about. I cannot say that about many authors. The Braindead Megaphone is a nonfiction collection, so I tend to swallow the moralizing since that's the mode some of these essays take. Elsewhere he's pitch-perfect. In particular I like his essays on Dubai ("The New Mecca") and border control ("The Great Divider") and that New Buddha kid ("Buddha Boy") because Saunders refuses to uncomplicate matters. He recounts all details regardless of their incongruities, leaves those dissonances intact. Constantly he spurns agenda. At worst, Saunders's agenda is to avoid or at least be aware of all possible agendas. Maybe this is some form of writerly insider baseball, but whatever, I tend to get a lot from it.