And You Think You Got Bad Reviews
Anyone who has ever received a bad book review will be strangely comforted by
this evisceration of historian Doug Brinkley and his new book, "The Great Deluge," about Hurricane Katrina.
The link may be subscriber-only, so I will quote:
[Brinkley's] bestknown writings seem to have three things in common.
First and foremost is their relentless mediocrity. I cannot think of a historian or public intellectual who has managed to make himself so prominent in American public life without having put forward a single memorable idea, a single original analysis, or a single lapidary phrase - let alone without publishing a book that has had any discernable impact. Mr. Brinkley is, to use Daniel Boorstin's famous words, a historian famous for being well-known.
Writing in the New York Sun, historian Wilfred McClay has written one of those reviews that is simultaneously delicious reading and leaves those of us who write books with just one thought:
Thank God it isn't me.....
Oh, heck, let's enjoy the schadenfreude just a little longer. Here's another quote....
All of this would be forgivable if Mr. Brinkley had written a book that was lively and evocative. But "The Great Deluge" turns out to be a book worthy of its title. It just goes on and on and on, a veritable Mississippi of sludgy, sophomoric, rebarbative prose, with gimmicky human-interest stories, transcriptions of press releases, gratuitous quotations from great writers about hurricanes, and potted history.
For those of us who needed to look it up, "rebarbative" means "
tending to irritate; repellent."
It may be time to start subscribing to the New York Sun.....
