Wow.
So. Pretend it’s 1915 again, and the Shubert Theater just got pissed when New York Times drama critic Alexander Woollcott calls a production “quite tedious” (oooh. Scathing.) So from there, Woollcott gets the Lindsey Lohan treatment at the door of Shubert productions; Shubert is forbidden to run their ads in the Times. It’s all very intense, and then the whole thing is resolved with a box of cigars. Top notch, right?
Remember how fun petty feuding was? How much easier it was to devote energy to bourgeoisie rivalries that didn’t really mean anything? Okay. Then I have the BEST news.
Amidst the pallid news that more and more publishing houses are either condensing or collapsing their divisions, stories like these almost make me believe in things like hope!
Only time will tell how awesome this gets.
APPARENTLY—and remember, you didn’t hear it from me!—Anya Ulinich (author of the charming Petropolis) has published a new short story, entitled ‘The Nurse and the Novelist.” And it is wicked burn to post-post-postmodern scarf sporting golden boy Jonathan Safran Foer (who you know he’s hip because his name forgot the H). LISTEN TO THIS OPENING PARAGRAPH!
The entire book is set in two columns. The narrower one is in italics. It tells a story of a village woman who falls in love with a boy hiding in her cellar. The wider column is about a depressed young man. In his Manhattan apartment, the depressed young man keeps a jar of toenail clippings […] One day, the young man is summoned to his grandfather’s deathbed. The grandfather hands him a gold charm shaped like a wing of a butterfly. “Find Yevgeniya,” the grandfather whispers.
HAHAHAHAHA! OMFG! This is outstanding. It’s a story about a story about magical Soviet Jews! Why, that is exactly the sort of subject matter that Safran Foer writes about! For once, I support this completely transparent move. To quote NY Mag’s cultural blog Vulture (which has in recent years become the closest thing to Mecca my limping, sacra-licious soul-thing can hope for), it’s been too long since the New York publishing circle enjoyed “…the simple pleasures of a good, British-style literary feud.”
Word. Up. Truer words = never spoken.
Guys, if we hope REALLY HARD, and our hearts are PURE(ish), this could turn out better than the mythical Banville/McEwan smackdown of aught ’05. Or better yet, it might top the eternal bitchfest that surrounds the Amis clan like a thin haze of after dinner cigar smoke (the most recent being Terry Eagleton’s mince-free claims that the elder Kingsley was a bad, BAD news bear).
Quite possibly the greatest, most wordlessly bitchy family portrait of all time:
son Martin, stepmother Elizabeth and father Kingsley. I kind of want them to
adopt me and raise me to be aloof and transparently vicious. They
hate you for your weakness; but they love you for your sin.
But this’ll be served up, American-style. Remember the sprightly, homoerotic Mailer/Vidal tussles of yesterday? If we play the cards right (and by ‘we’ I mean ‘those involved,’ and by ‘play the cards right’ I mean ‘make some bad decisions’), those golden days could be back!
I mean, I don’t know which is more awesome. The fact that Jonathan Safran Foer is at the center of this mockery, being a kind of innocuous, unintentional literary darling, like a smarter, hipper New York-y version of Keanu Reeves. OR the fact that I thought Anya Ulinich was like, nice and stuff. OR (and I think this wins) this is not the first time that the Jealous Writer Brigade step up shop on Safran Foer’s doorstep and settled in for winter. This is like Gossip Girl but better and moreover REAL! Not that I make that reference with any kind of personal familiarity.
I am actually on the edge of my seat. What will JonSafoer do NEXT? Clearly, Thumper the rabbit was a dope: if you don’t have anything nice to say, you should say it LOUDER.
Fully Story @ Vulture: Is Anya Ulinich’s New Short Story an Attack on Jonathan Safran Foer?
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