Snark!.. (David Denby's book)

[SoCalDem]

This guy's an odd duck.. claims that "snark" has gotten out of hand, and he wants us all to BE-have!

Apparently he owed someone a book,and had run out of money.. I have seen him on two or three shows (he was just on with Tavis), and he;s hasn;t convinced me yet:evilgrin:

What would the world be without snark?...

What would DU be?..bo-rinnnng.


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from Amazon's blurb..

Product Description
http://www.amazon.com/Snark-David-Denby/dp/1416599452
What is snark? You recognize it when you see it -- a tone of teasing, snide, undermining abuse, nasty and knowing, that is spreading like pinkeye through the media and threatening to take over how Americans converse with each other and what they can count on as true. Snark attempts to steal someone's mojo, erase her cool, annihilate her effectiveness. In this sharp and witty polemic, New Yorker critic and bestselling author David Denby takes on the snarkers, naming the nine principles of snark -- the standard techniques its practitioners use to poison their arrows. Snarkers like to think they are deploying wit, but mostly they are exposing the seethe and snarl of an unhappy country, releasing bad feeling but little laughter.

In this highly entertaining essay, Denby traces the history of snark through the ages, starting with its invention as personal insult in the drinking clubs of ancient Athens, tracking its development all the way to the age of the Internet, where it has become the sole purpose and style of many media, political, and celebrity Web sites. Snark releases the anguish of the dispossessed, envious, and frightened; it flows when a dying class of the powerful struggles to keep the barbarians outside the gates, or, alternately, when those outsiders want to take over the halls of the powerful and expel the office-holders. Snark was behind the London-based magazine Private Eye, launched amid the dying embers of the British empire in 1961; it was also central to the career-hungry, New York-based magazine Spy. It has flourished over the years in the works of everyone from the startling Roman poet Juvenal to Alexander Pope to Tom Wolfe to a million commenters snarling at other people behind handles. Thanks to the grand dame of snark, it has a prominent place twice a week on the opinion page of the New York Times.

Denby has fun snarking the snarkers, expelling the bums and promoting the true wits, but he is also making a serious point: the Internet has put snark on steroids. In politics, snark means the lowest, most insinuating and insulting side can win. For the young, a savage piece of gossip could ruin a reputation and possibly a future career. And for all of us, snark just sucks the humor out of life. Denby defends the right of any of us to be cruel, but shows us how the real pros pull it off. Snark, he says, is for the amateurs.

About the Author
David Denby is a film critic for The New Yorker and author of Great Books and American Sucker. He lives in New York City with his wife.
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Love the comments... here's a few..


33 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars intellectually lazy , January 31, 2009
By okm - See all my reviews

This is a work defined by intellectual laziness and poor grasp of subject matter. It is a fine example of false teleology; The author attempts to construct a chronology of a recent cultural episteme without full knowledge of its discursive ..history then completely illogically projects it back throughout time. Also, in addition to turgid prose, it is wrought with factual errors.
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48 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars

Save your money for more important things. Like, well, anything., January 31, 2009

By WagTehGod "WTG" (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
I had a choice to spend my money on something at Amazon, and I should've picked the TruckNutz instead of Snark. If you like books that cherry pick examples and then either supplement them with made-up details or gross misinterpretations, then you will LOVE Snark. Why won't Barack Obama apologize for this horrible book Denby has written?

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59 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars

Totally worthless., January 30, 2009
By Kimba W. Lion "kimbawlion.com" (the East Coast)

This book is nothing more than an extension of the extreme nastiness that we had to endure during the 2008 election campaigns. While Denby tries to confuse the reader with scholarly pretensions, the book basically boils down to "people who made nasty comments I agree with are true wits; those I don't agree with are harming our culture". That's why people are saying they aren't getting a clear idea of what Denby means by "snark": he doesn't have one any better than that. Fortunately for him, he picks the correct people to praise, and so he can get favorable reviews in most of the press. For myself, I'm sorry I wasted my time with this book.

Some books are so bad, I refuse to inflict them on others by reselling them or giving them away. This book is in that category. Straight into the recycling bin.
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[northofdenali]

1. But I LOVE snarks!

So there, Mr. Denby!

:hi: SCD!! :hug:

[Mist]

2. Denby sounds like a humorless twit. nt

[Gabi Hayes]

12. amen to that....saw him w/Tavis smiley last night. he LOOKS the part, as well.

they fell all over themselves declaiming Dowd's brilliance, while decrying the snark.

a truly cringe-inducing segment, upon which I bailed after about five minutes' worth of pseudo-intellectual bathos

[SoCalDem]

14. I used to really like Tavis, but not so much these days

He seems to have a big chip on his shoulder, over the fact that PBO, did not attend his annual event last year during the early campaigning.. I understood why he did not, but Tavis still carries that grudge..

and lately, his show has gotten infintely "fluffier"...lots more celebrities & entertainment people..We can get that ANYWHERE, Tavis..

[Mist]

3. Totally off topic--but SoCalDem, are you ever bringing back that funny sig pic you

used to have--the one of the kitten drinking a glass of milk w/a straw? I know it was a long time ago, but I always
got a kick out of that one!

[SoCalDem]

4. It's too large for the severe limitations DU imposed.. But here it is for you

not as a sig..but just because:)

[Mist]

6. Thanks SoCal! I've saved it so can enjoy any time. I remember laughing so much

when I first saw it. Thanks again and happy Valentine's day!:loveya: :loveya: :loveya:

[SoCalDem]

7. Here's another fun one for ya..

borrow any you like from my website:

animated
http://socaldem.smugmug.com/gallery/77037_G4Kcw

http://socaldem.smugmug.com main site.

[Vattel]

5. well, Denby is surely correct

that snark is a common substitute for serious political discussion (e.g., most Maureen Dowd columns).

[ErinBerin84]

8. Wonkette

had a post the other day about how they went to a book party bc they knew they were featured in the book, but when they actually opened the book to read their section, the author had cropped/edited a bunch of their posts to be misleading, claiming that they made fun of Ted Kennedy's cancer and bs like that, when they didn't at all. I think the author is full of it. Though, Maureen Down does deserve to be made fun of as often as possible.

[hlthe2b]

9. I like snark--with the one exception...

In the work place, snark on the part of managers, supervisors, can be used to bully, humiliate and intimidate. That is one place where it truly doesn't belong, IMO.

[SoCalDem]

10. Yep.. snark, among equals is fine, but when it's done to bully

or humiliate, by a person who already has the power, it's not so good, because the person cannot retaliate without fear of losing a job, getting a bad grade, being arrested, etc..

[Gabi Hayes]

11. you decide what his opinion is worth:

I saw him on Tavis last night.

they don't much like the tone of Maureen Dowd's latest, snarky, work, but both slavered over her "brilliance"

they agreed that she only uses a few words to say what it takes others ''paragraphs'' to accomplish

so if you like Dowd, then you'll like Denby's take on things

if, on the other hand, you think she's a catty, sophomoric, frontrunning CW herdmember, you might think Denby's acuity isn't so....acute

I found the two of them last night to exemplify (with the rare exception; e.g. Moyers) the worst of the PBS race to the bottom of the intellectual barrel

that said, and to be fair, they both gave Stewart/Colbert the credit they deserve for their attempts to raise the level of discourse in the MSM

[SoCalDem]

13. Jon Stewart ripped him up, when he was on TDS last week

:)

[Stephanie]

15. The best response was Adam Sternbergh in NY Mag >

http://nymag.com/arts/books/reviews/53159/\\

==snip==

That’s the recurring blind spot in the criticism of snark. Can it be nasty? Definitely. Is Perez Hilton a repugnant Horseman of the Apocalypse? You bet. Is snark scattershot in its application? Of course—all too often it’s applied like a clawhammer to the soft skulls of undeserving targets. Does the reflexive glibness practiced at certain outposts of the Internet (which, contrary to Denby’s sensationalism, flourish mainly in the niche of media and celebrity gossip; snarky blogs about economics, business, politics, and technology are the rare exceptions) produce, in the regular reader, a wearying hopelessness, building up in your system like mercury poisoning? Yes, I’m afraid it does—though no more so than the wearying hopelessness that might come from watching too much Nancy Grace.

Charges against snark are valid, especially when backed up with cherry-picked evidence. But you could make the same accusations against all strains of humor, throughout history, when misapplied. In targeting snark, Denby sights a trendy straw man, but he misses the important point that snark is not an idea; it’s a conduit—an outrage delivery device. He claims that snark is the favored voice of a generation “who know, by the time they are 12, the mechanics of hype, spin, and big money,” and about this, he’s exactly right. But instead of moving on to denounce the toxic pervasiveness of hype, spin, and big money, he blames the refuseniks who rail against it, claiming that everything seems “lifeless and unreal to them.”

Current events are certainly unreal but snark’s response is hardly lifeless. Snark is not the poison; it’s a home-brewed antidote. It’s the angry heckler at the back of the room. But Denby can only hear the hecklers, not the ridiculous act they’re heckling. When you are living in a nation awash in bullshit, it should not be surprising when people cry out, The nation is awash in bullshit! and maybe throw in an extraneous And your mother dresses you funny! It should also not be surprising, I guess, when people like Denby, ensconced on their porches, their conversations interrupted, tut-tut and tell those people to keep their voices down.