Snark, as a term, feels current, modern: a viral killer for our cacophonous age. Of course, a book titled Cruelty: It’s Ruining Our Conversation hardly jazzes the reader, as it might have been published at any time in the last 400 years. “Snark is hazing on the page.” Basically, Denby argues that snark is humor as a vehicle for cruelty. It’s not irony, at least not irony as exemplified by “the sharpened blade of Swift.” “Snark is like a schoolyard taunt without the schoolyard,” he writes. It’s not Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert or Keith Olbermann. His definition is a tap dance on hot coals, as he mostly tells us what snark is not. This proves consistently tricky, no less so for Denby. The first difficulty of writing about snark is that you have to define snark. It’s also not only useful as a form of public conversation but necessary, for reasons that Denby either ignores or fails to comprehend. Moreover, the book is premised on a popular meme: that so-called snark, what he calls “a nasty, knowing strain of abuse spreading like pinkeye through the national conversation,” is both increasingly unavoidable and intrinsically corrosive. Denby’s book is serious, and wrong, and it deserves an appropriate response. But it’s too easy to stamp this book with some snarky dismissal (EPIC FAIL) and continue on one’s self-satisfied way. Denby’s book invites-even begs masochistically to receive-a snarky response, but he won’t get one here. I’m sorry, did that sound snarky? I apologize. And he has not written the most concise, insightful, artfully balanced, and expertly argued book about snark. Given Denby’s age (65) and position in the firmament (film reviewer for The New Yorker), he could have written the most concise, insightful, artfully balanced, and expertly argued book about snark and still come off like an Internet-age Andy Rooney, wagging his finger from his rocking chair at the boisterous kids on the lawn. You invite the transgression even as you decry it you loose the hounds on yourself. ![]() You have to give David Denby credit for bravery: Writing a book titled Snark: It’s Mean, It’s Personal, and It’s Ruining Our Conversation is like writing a book titled Keying My Car: It’s the Wrong Thing to Do or Why Flaming Bags of Dog Poop on My Doorstep Just Aren’t Funny.
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