Alice Hoffman Trashes Literary Critic on Twitter

Cajun Boy / GAWKER

Alice Hoffman has a new novel out. Roberta Silman gave Hoffman's book a lukewarm review in the Boston Globe. Alice Hoffman then went insane on Twitter, even publishing Silman's phone number and encouraging her fans to call and attack her.

The most vexing thing about of all of this is that Silman's review wasn't a trashing by any standard, other than inside of Hoffman's obviously delusional mind of course, but it certainly wasn't positive either. Here's a sampling of the most critical statements by Silman we found in her review:

"...this new novel lacks the spark of the earlier work. Its vision, characters, and even the prose seem tired."

"This heavily plotted part of the book becomes more predictable, yet also more unconvincing."

"...the author doesn't deliver."

"There may be lots of readers who crave books that have their feet planted both in reality and fairy tale, complete with mysterious passages like those introducing each chapter of this puzzling, and, in the end, unsettling book."

It should be noted that Silman also said some nice things about Hoffman:

"...one of my favorite books is her "Illumination Night,'' which amply displays her gifts of precise prose and the ability to create sympathetic characters. I especially remember its evocation of the awful condition we call agoraphobia, as it was suffered and mostly conquered by Vonny."

"This section is described with real skill and precision, and my heart lifted as I began to feel some empathy for this eldest child who has caused such pain, and then goes missing."

"...there are some wonderful passages as the book winds to a close."

But Silman's sprinkling of praise didn't stop Hoffman from acting like a petulant child on Twitter.

This was the first of 27 tweets that Hoffman fired off in response to Silman's review, where she immediately took the high road and called Silman a "moron" for having the audacity to criticize her writing.

Then the blissfully ignorant Hoffman displayed a staggering level of intellectual laziness by obviously not even bothering to Google Silman's name, where she would have learned that her reviewer is not only not an "idiot," but someone with a rather long and esteemed literary career.

Hoffman then went one step further and trashed the paper itself.

Hoffman published Silman's phone number and and email address and encouraged her fans to contact her to give her a piece of their minds.

Hoffman trashed Boston, her hometown, which is actually kind of funny.

Hoffman then brought out the smoke and mirrors in a pathetic attempt to disguise her behavior as feminism in action.

Then Susan Orlean, always willing to enter the writerly fray on Twitter, provoked Hoffman to betray Boston in the worst way possible.

For all the criticisms that exist about writing on the internet, this situation is a bright, shining example of one of the best things about writing on the internet—After a while it thickens your skin to the point where you're easily able to easily differentiate between valid criticism and hateful venom-spewing. At some point, the hateful venom-spewing fails to even faze you any longer, while the valid criticisms are accepted and processed rationally and learned from. Too bad Alice Hoffman never had a blog to help her overcome her hypersensitive ego. She'd be a better writer because of it.

In fact, she should come intern for Gawker for one day like James Frey did! We'll let her write a couple of posts and let the commenters have some fun with her. On second thought, scratch that—She'd probably go on a killing spree the first time someone called her out for using an improper pronoun or misspelling a word.

Regardless, we hope that Hoffman comes to her senses after a good night of rest, realizes that she acted like a douchebag and apologizes to Silman. Anything less would be downright shameful.

Via the Head Butler and Alice Hoffman's Twitter

Do Publishing Salaries Affect Literature?

Jason Boog / Galleycat

Pondering the merger of the William Morris and Endeavor agencies, New Yorker writer Willing Davidson wonders how the merger will affect the salaries of assistants at the literary and talent agencies.

The post examines the connection between internships and literary production. It's a good question for GalleyCat readers. Do the famously low starting salaries for writers, assistants, and aspiring literary types affect literature?

Here's the key passage: "Tiny salaries in the low ranks of publishing are miserable for the young workers, but they're probably worse for literature ... It's a truism of the industry that most of these jobs are held by people who can afford them--people with some parental support and no student loans. Often they've had unpaid internships, that most pernicious example of class privilege. Their superiors are the same people, ten years later. They--we!--are smart, cultured people with good intentions, but it's easy to see how this narrow range could lead to a blinkered view of literature."

Art Books of the Season

Sign of the times: The three headlining art books of the season are as much about commerce as they are about art.

Cynthia Saltzman’s Old Masters, New World examines the acquisition of art by western oligarchs;

Jonathan Lopez’s The Man Who Made Vermeers looks at a master-forger seduced by the Nazis and by the opportunity to fake-for-a-buck;

Edward Dolnick takes on the same topic in The Forger’s Spell, which Peter Schjeldahl says in the New Yorker is just a lesser version of the Lopez book. (Incidentally: Gawker noticed that the NYTimes seems to be, er, incestuously boosting Dolnick.)

The Saltzman book is pretty directly about the market and the other two less so. But I think there’s a pretty common theme running through a lot of art-related journalism and publishing: The zeitgeist is about the market first, and art last. If the art world decides that’s an unfortunate focus, it’s going to have to do something to change it.

University press to the rescue: The University of California press is releasing an updated version of Lawrence Weschler’s classic book on Robert Irwin, complete with a new cover picture that seems to be from Irwin’s recent MCASD exhibition. [via] The hardcover will retail for $50 (!), but you can pre-order the paperback for under $17. (Also from UC Press: A quarter-century of Weschler’s conversations with David Hockney.)

From Tyler Green’s Modern Art Notes

Anthology of McSweeney's Funny Women

For your weekend reading pleasure, here’s a gender-specific, curated Rumpus essay by Elissa Bassist about the long list of women who have written for the funny pages of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

The list includes the hilarious essay “Commentary by David Simon, Creator of The Wire, for the He’s Just Not That Into You DVD” by Maureen Miller and the instructive how-to, “Borges Teaches Self-Defense” by Susan Schorn.

Here’s more from the essay, a somewhat bitter response to an infamous essay: “‘Why are men, taken on average and as a whole, funnier than women?’ inquired Christopher Hitchens in ‘Why Women Aren’t Funny,’ Vanity Fair, January 2007. That’s a good question. And by that I mean, f*** you.”

From Jason Boog at Galleycat