Cheryl Truman on books

There’s a point in Snark: It’s Mean, It’s Personal and It’s Ruining Our Conversation in which you begin to understand why Gawker.com has such a roaring good time taking apart David Denby.

“Ruining our conversation” does not mean, literally, our conversation. It’s Denby’s conversation with those who purchase books, and he’s holding up the losing end.

“At what point is spoof no longer naughty but just out of it?” Denby asks, the plaintive voice of entitlement in the intellectual wilderness, setting the futile bar for those who just want an LOLcat or two, who think that “O hai” may be, in fact, anarchic and witty discourse. This would be the Internet-savvy but not Denby-reverent, those who would like to take the acknowledgements page in which Denby yammers about his pan-Pacific dinner in Seattle, his Singing Fish Satay and Pow Wok Lamb and the deed to the intellectual property known as “snark” being handed to him, because he is just that good, and set it ablaze with a low-culture Bic lighter.

Let me save you the trouble of buying the book, lest you be tempted. Denby likes: Stephen Colbert when he’s not funny, Pauline Kael, Juvenal. Denby doesn’t like: Keith Olbermann, Perez Hilton, Mike Barnicle, Fox News, Wonkette.com. Alexander Pope seems to get a pass on meanness for being brillliant. Bashing Dick Cheney is not snark; they take away your liberal ID card if you don’t. Also: South Park, The Simpsons and Family Guy are not snark, “but somethng finer, or something crude and free, bold and happy — satire, spoof, lampoon, burlesque, all heaven-sent forms.” It’s a terrible thing, that day when Eric Cartman goes mainstream.

Denby comes across as one of Teh Olds who wish that the Internet was more deferential to those so richly enamored of themselves. Criticism is more than invective? Right you are, sir. Readers may come away thinking that if only Gawker.com felt for Mr. Denby an iota of the love he feels for himself, this book would not have been necessary.

Denby touches on a handful of points about Dah Evils of The Interwebs, none of them particularly original. Anonymous commenters can invent vile anonymous identities for themselves, say nasty things that live on forevermore in Google, and depart the field of battle, having soiled the ground but provided no light, defended no principle, forked over no money for a literary clip job priced at $15.95.. Bloggers do this kind of work at a deep discount, often for free.

And if not for asking readers to defend his honor by buying his book, Denby could have then moved on to trickier turf, like my new fav blogger Alexandra Penney.

Alexandra Penney’s The Bag Lady’s Papers on thedailybeast.com is my new Internet guilty pleasure. What this means is that I’ll read every episode, as long as it’s free, and snort a little at the screen — but if Bag Lady is a book pitch, it’s already remainder-bin.

Alexandra Penney made some money for writing ’80s-era sex books like How to Make Love to a Man. Most of us would have the grace to take that bit of lightning in a can, bank it and forever after live the kind of ascetic life that makes people forget that you wrote sex books.

If you’re deconstructing the divine Ms. Penney, please note that she modestly admits to still having white shirts from decades ago. Honey, just say it: You think you’re still exactly the same size as you were as a dainty co-ed. Gravity does not affect this AARP maiden! You are a goddess, except, of course, for the whole Madoff lost-your-life-savings thing. You have a “consort,’ whereas the rest of us have deadbeats who won’t buy a ring and set a date.

Ms. Penney decided to invest with Bernie Madoff and now, honey, she’s down to her last Florida cottage. But she’s got spunk! Also, apparently a trunkful a blowup sex dolls used in her “art,” which she is inexplicably ferrying down to Florida in the latest chapter of Bag Lady. In my mind’s eye, I see Alexandra’s “cottage” as being oh, a wee thing, smaller than maybe the 2,000 square feet in which you are raising a passle of muddy younguns, sprinkled with sunshine and decorated in something like the Scarves of Many Nations motif. Broke but not unaware of the finer things, Penney now divides her time between hectoring Domino’s pizza attendants for a better deal and making the brave obserrvation that people who eat at Popeye’s can be –oh, the horror! — fat.

She is still better reading company than David Denby.

Alexandra, I’ve been so moved by your plight that I’ve scoured my car: I’ve got a Chick-Fil-A biscuit coupon and a voucher for two White Castle hamburgers. Stop by one your way back up to the metropolis, and Trailer Brunch is on me. We’ll do Wal-Mart. Call me!