Proving that the words “hipster,” “literary,” and “joke” do not belong in the same sentence is this fake review published April 1 on Hipster Book Club.Both I and a good friend were hoodwinked by this entirely too subtle piece of satire. The only tip-off is the byline of "Juniko Katutani," which points to this being a send-up of Michiko Kakutani’s notoriously scathing New York Times book reviews.
I don’t know but that I almost wish they had printed a straightforward review that included the line, “Bock's dick of a book is even smaller than one of Updike's more flaccid entries,” as this one does. I’d like to see Charles Bock and his overhyped novel taken down a notch in a manner other than tongue-in-cheek. And if they had to do a satirical piece, couldn’t it at least have used the seven words the NY Times think should be banned from use in book reviews? That would have been amusing.
Looking further at the HBC website, one finds that honest reviews of real books are mixed in with faux reviews and made-up books. The moral here: don’t put silly pieces meant to fool us next to brilliant, actual reviews like this one (which you should all read). Otherwise you denigrate the integrity of your reviewers. Also, comedy is only funny when it’s clearly comedy. And really, HBC, you should leave practical jokes to Borscht Belt comedians and clowns in funny cars.
7 comments:
Shenanigans! I call shenanigans for that shameless abuse of hyperlinks!
Yes, but they are all worth it!
"the effort falls as flat as a pre-boob-job Vegas showgirl"
Classy.
Is there a way to make the hyperlinks open a new window?
If Mr. Google is reading this, please help us out. Thanks, bro.
The fake reviews were all posted on April Fool's Day; how more obvious can it get? Given your sleuthing, I'm surprised you didn't realized the fake reviews were all published on 4/1. These were part of a general joke update and not a mean-spirited plan to fool readers into believing fake reviews alongside real ones. Every other monthly update of the year is perfectly legitimate content.
Thanks for the input, antarcticlust, but I still take issue with the fact that legitimate reviews are mixed in with fake ones. Unlike a print publication that would be dated to one particular day, pieces posted on websites like HBC remain there for some time as viewers come and go, so the date they were put up is irrelevant. The only thing telling the reader which is which is the tiny tagline at the bottom of each review. The real ones say "April, 2008" and the joke ones say "April 1, 2008," which does not clearly enough delineate the two. This does a disservice to the contributors who worked hard to publish well-thought-out pieces, as well as diminishes the laugh factor for those who wrote the joke reviews. Ultimately, it just leaves readers confused.
Read that NYTimes piece you link to, and got a good laugh out of all the word nerds battling in the comment section. Did you read those, or eschew the thought? I thought this one was swifferingly good:
#
254.
April 6th,
2008
4:25 pm
You identify seven words critics should eschew (See? People do use it), but fail to provide struggling reviewers with useful alternatives. Here are seven suggestions:
Krinkly: Note the spelling: not “crinkly,” but “krinkly,” like those Krinkle Kut french fries you find in your grocer’s freezer (presumably while he’s not at home). This could connote a chilly, rough-hewn prose style, as in “a krinkly novel of the streets.”
Bituminous: Used only once, in a review of How Green Was My Valley, this is ripe for rediscovery as the world is flooded with books about global warming and clean energy.
Free-ranging: Like the chicken. Not to be confused with “wide-ranging,” free-ranging connotes a book that is best enjoyed with a side of garlic mashed potatoes.
Swiffering: An updated version of “sweeping,” as in “a swiffering historical novel.”
Downputable: An alternative to “unputdownable,” to describe a book that’s not quite as compelling as it might have been.
High-falutin’: To be applied to self-important, pretentious books, this has been used rarely in mainstream reviewing. The New York Review of Books once called a novel “high-faluting” but this doesn’t count because they included the final ‘g.’ Books can also be ranked “mid-falutin’” and “low-falutin’.”
Dawggondiest: Imagine Michiko Kakutani calling the latest Joyce Carol Oates novel “the dawggondiest book I ever read.” Can’t you just see it in the quote ads?
— Posted by Laurence Hughes
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xox
aimes
Thanks, Aimes!
Every time I hear the word Swiffer I am reminded of this article about a scandal at Horace Mann School:
http://nymag.com/news/features/45592/
For Horace Mann, this new reality emerged in the winter of 2004, when an eighth-grader e-mailed a cell-phone video of herself masturbating and simulating fellatio on a Swiffer mop to a boy she liked, who in turn forwarded the clip to his friends. In short order—as these things inevitably do—the video popped up on Friendster for millions to view. “Swiffergate,” as the scandal became known, roiled the Horace Mann community.
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