David Denby is best known for his movie reviews in The New Yorker and for his brilliant GREAT BOOKS and his story about his porno addiction and day-trading fiasco in American Sucker. SNARK is nothing like anything Denby has written. The text meanders around its 128 pages in a schizophrenic fashion. First, Denby is concerned about snarky behavior on the Internet, but he admits not much can be done about it. Then Denby goes back into time to claim the Roman writer, Juvenal, was the original snarky writer. Finally, Denby rambles around writing about contemporary writers he finds snarky: Maureen Dowd, Gore Vidal, and Joe Queenan. Not to be snarky, but this book sucked.
Sounds odd.
I loved his stuff when he reviewed movies in New York and I loved Great Books.
He’s not wrong about Maureen Dodd but that doesn’t make me want to read it.
Denby’s American Sucker, the story of his online porn addiction and his daytrading fiasco, is also worth reading. But Denby will be remembered for Great Books which is…a great book.