Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

Was Adam Gopnik Put On This Earth to Annoy?
Thursday, February 8, 2007

Nothing gets the blood boiling more than a good, old-fashioned literary feud ... if you're in Britain that is. America seems mostly devoid of them. In this country, they seem mostly aimed at chipping away at the pedestal of some anointed one. James Wolcott, he of Vanity Fair, uses The New Republic to execute a take-down of Adam Gopnik, he of The New Yorker and the bestselling FROM PARIS TO THE MOON.

The great Amazon book blog (new but consistently fun), offers this review:

No semi-confessed murderers today, just the kind we're more used to in these parts: the literary evisceration. Today's victim: New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, at the bloody hands of James Wolcott in a New Republic review of Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York (I think you need to register--though not subscribe--to see the review). He starts with indiscriminate fire:

I sometimes wonder if Adam Gopnik was put on this earth to annoy. If so, mission accomplished. Mind you, he finds himself in fine company in my illustrious literary perp walk. Francine Prose, with her pinched perceptions and humorless hauteur--every time she brings out a new book (she is depressingly diligent), I find myself grumbling, "Her again?" I've never gotten the point of Paul Auster and his swami mystique and probably never shall, unless I move to Brooklyn and achieve phosphorescence. Walter Kirn, what a hustler. But no tactician of letters has shown a greater knack for worming his way into our hearts whether we want him there or not than Adam Gopnik.

But he soon bores in on Mr. Gopnik alone, and it's a memorable performance. I was once a Gopnik fan (and sometimes still am) but at some point the tide turned for me. Part of it was when he started writing about his kids so much, but partly I'm ashamed to say I must have been infected by Renata Adler's bitter New Yorker memoir, Gone, which subjects him to one of the cruelest literary portraits I've ever read. Wolcott seems under her sway too, as he quotes her twice, including this finely chiseled dagger:

I had learned over the course of conversations with Mr. Gopnik that his questions were not questions, or even quite soundings. Their purpose was to maneuver you into advising him to do what he would, in any case, walk over corpses to do.

Mrs. Feiler Faster is a big fan of Gopnik (though she recently saw him on TV and was a bit taken aback). I wonder what she'll think of this. For my part, I haven't read the book, but I think his essay on Kirk Varnedoe of the Museum of Modern Art, which is reprinted in the above eviscerated book, is the finest piece of magazine journalism I've read in the last decade.

Labels: Books

Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM
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1 Comments:

Poor Mad Peter said...: I found his portrayal of C.S. Lewis very useful. Probably slanted, but useful nonetheless, as he described the polarities of opinion on Lewis, and then steered straight up the middle.; February 8, 2007 3:37:00 PM EST