- from “Young Love,” Charles Bock’s 9/24/2010 New York Times review of Tao Lin’s Richard Yates.
I’m going to try to keep things classy and not use the word “shithead” here, but I’m about as tired as I can be of critics using the so-bad-I-wanted-to-kill-myself-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha line. Look, here it is again in Jay McInerney’s 1996 New York Times review of David Foster Wallace’s weird but funny, wrenching, majestic Infinite Jest:
If Mr. Wallace were less talented, you would be inclined to shoot him — or possibly yourself — somewhere right around page 480 of ”Infinite Jest.” In fact, you might anyway.
Clearly, it would be messed up to blame McInerney for not knowing that David Foster Wallace would end up committing suicide twelve years later. But suicide existed before David Foster Wallace. McInerney presumably knew that it was a real thing. McInerney presumably had heard tell of spouses or children or siblings or parents walking into a room and finding brains on a wall or a cherished neck in a noose.
McInerney knew this and wrote what he wrote about Infinite Jest.
Bock knew this and wrote what he wrote about Richard Yates.
There’s a meanness to that. There’s a lack of empathy that’s ultimately incompatible with writing great fiction, incompatible with writing even passable fiction. Maybe the reviews were just a lapse for these guys. Maybe they write wonderful fiction. But I’m not motivated to find out. I just want to stay as far away from them and their work as I can.
Partly, my love for Infinite Jest is talking here. But the Bock review set me off before I remembered the McInerney review. I haven’t even decided yet how I feel about Richard Yates. I started Richard Yates Thursday and finished it a few hours later. That’s rare for me. I don’t hold my nose and sprint through books just to get them over with. If I finish a book, it’s because it’s working for me. If I finish a book fast, it’s because it’s really working for me.
