Hatchet jobs

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Fun to write, fun to read

This review of Tennyson's second book by John Wilson Croker almost stopped thin-skinned Tennyson from publishing again. Byron and Shelley blamed Keats's untimely death on Croker's review of 'Endymion'.


Tennyson and Keats were revenged, ofc, by Croker becoming a footnote in their biographies.
 

sufi

lala
Good to see somebody, anybody, casting a critical eye on Banksy for a change
For the Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones, all this is a sign that Banksy “has gone establishment”.
“He’s become a national treasure, and that’s not a good look for a street artist,” Jones said. “Our collective obsession with these new cutesy images is not a good look for us either. It’s a bit pathetic really.
“These bland silhouettes of animals would not be out of place in the Royal Academy summer exhibition. What’s provocative, insightful or interesting about them? Is anyone really excited to see which animal comes next?”
Jones said there was obviously a place for beautiful art that made us happy but doubted whether anyone would turn to Banksy for that.
“He does crude stencils without nuance. These animals are no exception. They give you nothing visually, just a social media buzz. He makes images to talk about, not art to reflect on. He is the enemy of sensitivity, the philistine’s revenge, an artist for people too lazy and narcissistic to open themselves to real art.”
For Jones, the best thing Banksy could do next was “quit monkeying about, retire and reveal who he really is, because these insipid stencils have nothing to say or to show us. Or perhaps we’ve all got it wrong and this is a commercial teaser campaign: in a few days Banksy will announce his new tropical soft drink or clothing brand.”
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The reviews of films and games they used to do on SomethingAwful were great to read, but I don't know if they're really what we're looking at here because they were always of low-budget garbage products that no sane person would ever enjoy. It's generally more enjoyable to read a comprehensive demolition of something that's generally highly regarded, or at least popular.

Neil Kulkarni's thermonuclear hatred of @luka's all-time favourite artists Oasis is the kind of thing I mean.

 

william kent

Well-known member
@craner might enjoy this one:


In an afterword to the NYRB edition of Kaputt, Dan Hofstadter reports that Lino Pellegrini, a young journalist who was Malaparte’s driver during his wartime travels, “recalled that the first part of Kaputt was originally drafted with the conviction that Hitler would win the war… Later, seeing how the wind was blowing, Malaparte rewrote the manuscript.”

This should be appalling, probably, but the quiddity of Malaparte is such that it also seems hilarious, consistent with the absence of moral inflection that gives Malaparte's work its macabre comedic drift. For despite the dire, desperate, atrocious situations Malaparte conjures up in his books, his narrative poker face, his unexcited stare at things that should be unbelievable but really aren’t at all, transmit a repulsive but irresistible sense of cosmic absurdity. Pellegrini's disclosure unravels Malaparte’s dramatic introduction to Kaputt, “The History of a Manuscript,” the exciting saga of a secretly written exposé of Nazi insanity, parts of it dispersed across Europe via diplomatic confederates, some chapters sewn into the lining of the author’s coat by a Russian peasant girl, its final chapters secreted in the double soles of his shoes. This tale is diverting as a straight preface, but finding out it’s bullshit raises it almost to the level of genius.
 
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