snark

i give to you, bits of the snarkiest review that the nytimes sunday book review has published in a long, long while:

Neither Here Nor There
Dead Man's Float by Nicholas Maes
Espianade, 438 pages, $22.95
Reviewed by the deliciously astute & bitey Thomas S. Woods

Third, and most important, Dead Man's Float ultimately sinks under the weight of artless writing. Few passages produce an "Alice Munro moment," that elusive aesthetic response that is immediate and visceral. Rather, the writing is strung from one end to the other with a daisy chain of cliches. Nathan refers repeatedly to himself as, "yours truly"; characters are "blind as bats"; they make a "beeline" here, then a "beeline" there, and have "delusions of grandeur."

...writing content that is derrivative, unsubtle and excessively laden with moral precepts that are not actually engaged by his narrative.

daisy chain! oh, mister thomas... that lemon you squeeze in your supple palms is my heart.