As a teenager, I used to enjoy reading collections of articles and reviews. (Looking back, my social awkwardness makes a lot more sense than it did then.) Christopher Hitchens, Clive James, Martin Amis et cetera. They were reliable stalwarts of the shelves of second-hand bookshops.
Getting into the spirit of this...... Caitlin Moran's 'What About Men" was a gift to the hatchet jobber. Here's a classic (from the pen of Kathleen Stock) that I quoted from at some length in a recent post on my own Substack ('Shall We Dance') https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/shall-we-dance Here's a snippet:
" .....And it would also be good if we could talk more about what is wonderful about masculinity, and toxic about femininity, without caveats or excuses. When, in the final chapter, Moran eventually gets round to the former......most of the things she thinks we value in men are also things we value in dogs. In fact, I would go further — they are things we value in elderly Labradors. The characteristics she celebrates — being loyal, hard-working, protective, and so on — are all very pro-social and unthreatening to women and children, and unlikely to set the imagination alight of any young man looking for his own hero’s journey........Perhaps tellingly, though, there’s little suggestion in the book that women could learn from men about being more loyal or crying less...... To treat ‘feminine traits’ as a study programme that any man could get up to speed on if he tried seems to be setting men up for failure — and they don’t need more of that..... In any case, perhaps I am female-atypical, but — inviting as it sounds — I couldn’t live in Moran’s smoke-filled, gin-soaked world of warm hugs, tear-stained confidences and frank conversations about bodily fluids for more than 10 minutes at a time. Sometimes, talking about your feelings makes them worse and sometimes responding empathically to other people’s feelings only makes them more histrionic and attention-seeking. It can be very good to talk, but it can also be very good to shut the hell up and stamp off to dig the garden."
Mark Twain did a couple of great send-ups - one an article: "Fenimore Cooper's Indians", about "The Last Mohican", and one a book: "Christian Science" about, well, Christian Science or at least Mary Baker Eddy's take on it. Both well worth reading - as is nearly everything by Twain.
There was this New York actress who crossed paths with Dorothy Parker, who affected a fake British accent, pronouncing the word "schedule" as "shedule" - in American English, it's pronounced "skedule". When Parker was asked her opinion of the actress, she said "I think she's full of skit" - that's the shortest hatchet job in history, I think.
I publish my rambling assortment of half-assed reflections at https://streamfortyseven.substack.com/ - for free, for the record - unless you actually want to pay...
Not a review but a satire-- one of the best-ever literary hatchet jobs remains "Boon" by H.G. Wells (originally published under a pseudonym), where he takes apart the work of Henry James.
Dominic Sandbrook’s debunking of ‘Otto English’ is a recent favourite of mine (although it’s so forensically argued it might not count as a true hatchet job, although it was cutting enough for English to have a tantrum on Twitter abt it, if I recall correctly):
Fantastic, thank you. My favourite is Philip Hensher's - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/sep/10/fiction.reviews2. They're a guilty pleasure thought, particularly when, as with that one, it's a first novel. Like admiring the artistry with which someone is firebombing a restaurant into which its owners have sunk all their savings, years of hard work, and their dreams of being respected, loved and valued. Too easy to imagine a bent figure reading the review, alone in a darkened room, hopelessly crying.
Getting into the spirit of this...... Caitlin Moran's 'What About Men" was a gift to the hatchet jobber. Here's a classic (from the pen of Kathleen Stock) that I quoted from at some length in a recent post on my own Substack ('Shall We Dance') https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/shall-we-dance Here's a snippet:
" .....And it would also be good if we could talk more about what is wonderful about masculinity, and toxic about femininity, without caveats or excuses. When, in the final chapter, Moran eventually gets round to the former......most of the things she thinks we value in men are also things we value in dogs. In fact, I would go further — they are things we value in elderly Labradors. The characteristics she celebrates — being loyal, hard-working, protective, and so on — are all very pro-social and unthreatening to women and children, and unlikely to set the imagination alight of any young man looking for his own hero’s journey........Perhaps tellingly, though, there’s little suggestion in the book that women could learn from men about being more loyal or crying less...... To treat ‘feminine traits’ as a study programme that any man could get up to speed on if he tried seems to be setting men up for failure — and they don’t need more of that..... In any case, perhaps I am female-atypical, but — inviting as it sounds — I couldn’t live in Moran’s smoke-filled, gin-soaked world of warm hugs, tear-stained confidences and frank conversations about bodily fluids for more than 10 minutes at a time. Sometimes, talking about your feelings makes them worse and sometimes responding empathically to other people’s feelings only makes them more histrionic and attention-seeking. It can be very good to talk, but it can also be very good to shut the hell up and stamp off to dig the garden."
Mark Twain did a couple of great send-ups - one an article: "Fenimore Cooper's Indians", about "The Last Mohican", and one a book: "Christian Science" about, well, Christian Science or at least Mary Baker Eddy's take on it. Both well worth reading - as is nearly everything by Twain.
There was this New York actress who crossed paths with Dorothy Parker, who affected a fake British accent, pronouncing the word "schedule" as "shedule" - in American English, it's pronounced "skedule". When Parker was asked her opinion of the actress, she said "I think she's full of skit" - that's the shortest hatchet job in history, I think.
I publish my rambling assortment of half-assed reflections at https://streamfortyseven.substack.com/ - for free, for the record - unless you actually want to pay...
Not a review but a satire-- one of the best-ever literary hatchet jobs remains "Boon" by H.G. Wells (originally published under a pseudonym), where he takes apart the work of Henry James.
Yuan Yi Zhu’s review of Jolyon Maugham’s book!
Dominic Sandbrook’s debunking of ‘Otto English’ is a recent favourite of mine (although it’s so forensically argued it might not count as a true hatchet job, although it was cutting enough for English to have a tantrum on Twitter abt it, if I recall correctly):
https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-the-culture-wars-came-for-history/
Fantastic, thank you. My favourite is Philip Hensher's - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/sep/10/fiction.reviews2. They're a guilty pleasure thought, particularly when, as with that one, it's a first novel. Like admiring the artistry with which someone is firebombing a restaurant into which its owners have sunk all their savings, years of hard work, and their dreams of being respected, loved and valued. Too easy to imagine a bent figure reading the review, alone in a darkened room, hopelessly crying.