Hatchet Jobs: Writings on Contemporary Fiction

by Dale Peck

Book Overview

Since the initial publication of Hatchet Jobs, the groves of literary criticism have echoed with the clatter of steel on wood. From heated panels at Book Expo in Chicago to contretemps at writers' watering holes in New York, voices--even fists--have been raised.

Peck's bracing philippic proposes that contemporary literature is at a dead end. Novelists have forfeited a wider audience, succumbing to identity politicking and self-reflexive...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1595580271
• ISBN13: 9781595580276
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 228 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.9" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Better than I expected

It's interesting to me that most of the reader reviews on this book dismiss Peck for tearing apart the writers that they like -- although that is Peck's point. Peck is a gifted writer, no doubt. However, I find it ironic that Peck considers himself first and foremost a Novelist with a Capital N. This "review" stuff is just a sideline. It's ironic because Peck's novels, for the most part, suck. (To use one of Peck's favorite words.) Has anybody ever actually gotten through one of Peck's doorstops and felt fulfilled at the end? Given that reality, who is Peck to skewer the likes of James Joyce? And to let us know that his "hands [were] literally shaking" while he tore Joyce apart? On the other hand, Peck's reviews, to my surprise, are on the whole incisive, thoughtful, and yes, iconoclastic (despite being suffused with a maddening self-importance). I expected (given the overwhelmingly negative press this book got when it came out, and the general media perception that Peck is much too full of himself) to dislike these reviews, and there were points in some of them that left me scratching my head and wondering what Peck was thinking when he wrote them. Peck selects some easy targets (Sven Birkerts? Ethan Mordden?). His characteristically melodramatic announcement at the beginning of the book that he "will no longer write negative book reviews" sounds disingenuous. His claim that he is "by no means convinced of the hallowedness of my own ideas" is belied by the evidence in his own reviews. But some writers, especially middlebrow tasteful ones, richly deserve being taken down a few pegs, and that's exactly what Peck does, devastatingly, with the likes of Philip Roth ("'American Pastoral' is like watery oatmeal"), Julian Barnes ("seems motivated by nothing more than boredom, decadence, or hubris"), David Foster Wallace ("I resent the five weeks of my life I gave over to reading the thing," i.e., "Infinite Jest"), and, of course, Rick Moody ("a writer of one terrible book after another, but a writer nonetheless").

Put on your seatbelt and get ready for some fun!

I must say I am taken aback by some of the negative reviews for this book, but I guess that any time someone is bold enough to be honest about the emperor's new clothes, that is to be expected. Hatchet Jobs is witty, erudite, and extremely well-argued. I found myself laughing out loud, and yet never did I feel as though the humor came at the expense of the analyses themselves. What's more, you do not need to be familiar with every title he reviews. While I was familiar with most of them, even when I did not know the work, I found Peck's arguments interesting and persuasive. Ultimately, I think that what makes this book superb is not that you will agree with every critique the author makes (you probably shouldn't); what makes it worthwhile is that you witness an expert writer, with an extremely critical eye, constructing very formidable arguments. This is a book that can help you to become a better, closer reader! And have you in hysterics while doing it. As for some of the more negative comments posted, I think they have a lot to do with reader expectations. My own thought is that 1) good intentions (morals) do not necessarily make for good art; 2) this is not literary theory (Peck is not proffering a way of reading); it is criticism. Peck discusses characterization, plot, and other formal aspects of the novels themselves. Pretty standard stuff, but very insightful. 3) His short, polemical book isn't a study of the Western Canon, and doesn't pretend to be. No, you won't find Kafka, Grass, etc. mentioned. In sum, I found this book exciting, thought-provoking, and liberating. Not since reading B.R. Myers' "A Reader's Manifesto" -another great book, incidentally- have I found myself cheering the author on and grinning so widely. Don't expect moderation. Peck pulls no punches, and that is probably why it is such a fun, passionate, and intelligent book.

"Hatchet Jobs" is a Good Job (as in "job well done")

Dale Peck finally did what we were all afraid to do: cut through conteporary literature! I was going to do it earlier this year, but, I admit, I chickened out and Dale beat me to it. And beat me to it he does! Check out how he gets busy on F. Wallace ("The Wallizah"), Twain, and Franzen! Even Pynchon! And, of course, the terrible Rick Moody, the authoor of, pardon my French, horrible books like "Ice Storm" and other horrible books. "The worst novelist of his generation" Dale sez. Pssh. Even worse, dude! I'd say the worst novelist of his generation and the one that was 5 generations ago. Something about that generation was awesome, so Moody would definitely be the worst there too! I mean enough, and I repeat: E.N.U.F.F.with the books full of kind of different styles and interesting tones and stuff! Dale's right! All novels gots to be devoid of author's skills to amuse and convey magic or elaborate things that aren't strictly plot driven. A novel is a novel and these dudes got to stop playin' with the form! Yes, people like those books, but they're wrong and Dale knows it! Man up, people! And the mediocre Joyce started all this: messin' around with the language. We made this English language for you to use, quit, pardon my French, pièceing around with it! "Underworld," "The Corrections," "Now It's Time to Say Goodbye" all these have all got to go...and they've got to go with other books that have got to go too. You go, Dale!

Loving the Hatchet

Dale Peck's "Hatchet Jobs" is the best brain massage I've had in years. Previously, I'd just known him as the bad-boy Emperor's New Clothes reviewer. Of course, he's disingenuous all over the place here, but I had so much fun with this collection of his critical essays. What I expected when I opened this book was the acerbic one-liners that have now become infamous; of course, I found those, but I also found someone who loves the world of writing so much that he hates it when writers with genuine talent squander their gifts. There is both bombast here and humility. I think one of the reasons Mr. Peck bothers the critical and literary establishment is not so much that he can be mean, which he can - I mean, who else says in the middle of a review, having summarized the plot and theme that took the author maybe years to produce, "well, duh" - but because there's that niggling suspicion that maybe he's right about a few things and that maybe it's a few more than a few things and that if the emperor isn't quite buck naked, his taste in clothing is both questionable and minimal. I only hope that someday my own novels are important enough that they show up on Mr. Peck's radar and he decides to take a hatchet to the things I'm doing wrong.

Peck Is His Own Bad Boy

In each generation an iconoclastic reviewer comes along to topple our mythical notions of what good literature is, and indeed, what good literature should be. This generation, perhaps the last truly literary generation, at least has Dale Peck, who continues the line that stretches from Hazlitt through James, Mencken, Connoly, Prichett, Vidal and Simon. Whether one agrees with him or disagrees with his views is not the point; the value of Peck is to be exposed to his viewpoint, for it is not one we often see. It is certainly not the view of what Vidal calls "bookchat," practiced by the New York Times. No, it comes from a passionate love of literature, a love that is often beaten out of us by the time we graduate college, if not sooner. And it is refreshing to see someone with such a passion; someone willing to call a rotten egg a rotten egg, regardless of how long it's been regarded by society as golden. If literature is to survive at all, we need such as Dale Peck. I remember Vidal creating quite a stir when he challenged the long-held notion of academia that the novel began with Richardson's "Pamela." Even though this notion became academic tradition, almost written in stone, Vidal nevertheless traced the novel back to "The Golden Ass" and "the Satyricon." In other words, the Greeks and Romans long had what we thought was a modern discovery. If Peck can cause half the stir Vidal did, then he has indeed performed a great service not only to literature, but to culture and our battle with the postmodern surrender. Besides, the book is a joy to read and downright entertaining, sure to make one smile and wonder about the moxie Peck certainly has in abundance. More power to him.