True Conniptions

Well, well, this is really interesting and curious. David Denby, film critic for the New Yorker, has written a book on snark. (Definition below.) Publication is set for January.

Not to toot my own horn here, (for who am I compared to David Denby) but I'd been contemplating a humble blog posting on this very topic.

I have been a HUGE devotee of snark for years. Not sure where I first bumped into it, but I think it was in the pages of the Washington Post Style section, which has had a long, proud tradition of boiling the English language in a large, black, cauldron, pouring it into beakers and pouring it back onto the pages of the Post as a tasty, nasty, elixir. I confess to falling head over heel. This was language that took risks, lived on the edge, played with fire. That found novel ways to create metaphors, that connected seemingly random bits and bytes to surprise, delight and outrage. Wicked fun!

But I've grown tired. It's everywhere now and frankly, as my wife says, a little goes a long way. Plus there is the issue of competence. It's not everyone that has the chops to pull it off well. James Wolcott of Vanity Fair is an Olympic caliber snarkster but there are few that can match him. And of course he is featured in the Denby book.

Here's a sampling of the Wolcott style. Delivered in response to the Denby project.

"Because no way would Denby register his bearded disapproval of snark without naming me as one of the Woody Woodpecker instigators. It is has been one of his articles of faith since the late Renaissance that I lack the seriousness (intellectual, moral, epiglottal) that he has in such abundance that he reach it with a backscratcher without throwing out his elbow. In fact, I blush to admit that such is my yearning pride that I wondered if Denby might devote an entire chapter to me and my unworthy antics entitled Snarky's Machine or C.P.O. Snarky* or something equally punny."

I'm not sure when I got tired of this, but recently while watching the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC, I thought to myself, I'm tired of this snark-style delivery. I like Rachel Maddow a lot. But that delivery...slightly knowing, slightly condescending, wears thin. It calls attention to the messenger more than it does the message...

More thoughts later.
Definition from the publisher of Snark: What is snark? You recognize it when you see it -- a tone of teasing, snide, undermining abuse, nasty and knowing, that is spreading like pinkeye through the media and threatening to take over how Americans converse with each other and what they can count on as true.