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Snark: A Polemic in Seven Fits
 
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Snark: A Polemic in Seven Fits (Paperback)

by David Denby (Author)
2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 144 pages
  • Publisher: Picador (4 Sep 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0330511378
  • ISBN-13: 978-0330511377
  • Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.4 x 1.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 275,785 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

'A measured, amusing and incisive attack on 'snarking' - the low-grade, insult-based journalism and humour'
--Scott Pack's `Me and my Big Mouth' blog

`Snark is full of glorious, thwacking send-offs. But the real thrill of the book, and what distinguishes it from mere polemic, is its gallop through the history of literature to hunt out and trap the predecessors of snark...
Denby is very good on the kind of journalism that wades through the detritus of culture in search of something to snigger at...' --Observer

`Praises satire and spoof over the low-level sneering that passes for comedy and comment. He makes and intelligent and interesting case' --Big Issue Cymru

`Entertaining'
--The List


Product Description

Snark – noun

Also snarky (adj.) and snarkily (adv.)

But just what is snark?

We all think we recognize snark when we see it – it’s a tone of teasing, snide, undermining abuse, nasty and knowing, that’s spreading through the media. Its practitioners think it’s funny, but it isn’t big and it certainly isn’t clever. So where did it all go wrong? What happened to the black comedy, the clever irony and the pinpoint satire we once admired and how did they turn into a charmless and witless way of speaking?

Inspired by Lewis Carroll, the New Yorker critic and bestselling author David Denby takes on the snarkers. In this sharp and witty polemic, he identifies the nine principles of snark and traces its history from its invention as personal insult in the drinking clubs of ancient Athens, through such diverse proponents as Alexander Pope, Private Eye and Tom Wolfe to its arrival in the age of the Internet, where it has become the sole purpose and style of many media, political and celebrity Web sites.

By highlighting what has gone wrong in America, Denby gives us a manifesto for a snark-free way of communicating in the future.

'Snark is an important, defining work and an extremely satisfying read as well' John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Read more about snark at http://snarkbook.blogspot.com

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Customer Reviews

28 Reviews
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 (1)
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 (4)
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 (13)
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Average Customer Review
2.8 out of 5 stars (28 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A Disappointing Snark Hunt, 22 Sep 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
I was looking forward to this book as I fully agree with the author that too much journalism relies on personal, snide and low "humorous" attacks, and as much as I love the Internet and the benefits and opportunities it brings, I have to admit that the spread of a knowing social group that can make those finger-pointing, bullying remarks about others has propelled with the increasing popularity of the web.

Unfortunately, my reading experience went sour right from the start. I know it is not an easy subject to cover and by writing this book; the author put himself in the firing line of the people he criticised and those who would see him as just another old fogey complaining about the youth of today. However, by spending the first chapters almost making excuses for writing the book, impressing upon us his very varied and highly developed sense of humour and repeating what snark is NOT and only leaving fairly short (repetitive) passages about what it is, he completely lost me. The historical recap on humour was a redeeming feature although I'm not sure it did much for the definition or the purpose of this book - which by the end I really didn't care much about...
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars I don't want to be snarky, but..., 22 Oct 2009
By M. W. Hatfield "mwhatfield" (Gainsborough, Lincolnshire) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
..this book just doesn't do it. it's not funny enough to be enjoyed for its wit, nor serious enough to truly attack the modern cultural phenomenon of trolling or snarking. It's a shame, bacause there's a really good idea here, and a powerful attack on our thirst for negativity is long overdue, but the book is just okay, where it needed to be savage or hilarious. A very good idea, but just misses the mark. A real shame, I think.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars A journalist rants against jokes he disagrees with, 10 Oct 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
If you're going to write a whole book ranting about a cultural phenomenon, you need to define your terms pretty clearly. I got half way through this and I still didn't understand quite what "Snark" means.

Snark, it seems, is sarcastic humour. But it's not all sarcastic humour; it's specifically that with which the author disagrees. Criticising Obama's lack of executive experience, it seems, is "Snark", and indeed racist Snark. The waves of bile directed at Reagan and the Bushes, however, don't seem to be "Snark" and indeed go largely undiscussed. In even a cursory investigation into corrosive name-calling in America, that's an odd omission.

It's not just political either; Private Eye was indulging in Snark when it used to mock The Beatles, apparently. But not, one assumes, the Stones. Never mind their overblown hype and self-mythologising; this goes in the "Snark" bin because the Beatles were good.

What he seems to be getting at is that the tone of discussion suffers now that any old idiot can get their thoughts into print. That's an interesting point, but the implication that life was somehow better when only journalists could rant to an audience is deeply unconvincing.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Read the book, not the cover.
I enjoyed the contents of this book far more once I realised that it would not deliver 'the answer' to the problem so clearly displayed on its title. Read more
Published 1 day ago by DJ Bez

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice idea - but I am not sure there is enough material for a book and the point sometimes feels vague
The central concept of the book is interesting enough (that modern journalism has a tendency to be negative, derivative, lacking in creativity and downright nasty) and the book is... Read more
Published 3 days ago by Peter A. J. Bennett

3.0 out of 5 stars It's not big and it's not clever, but there's a lot about!
David Denby has decided that we should be educated to recognise a strain of alledged humour that has run rampant for well over a century. Read more
Published 5 days ago by Ms. Felicia Davis-burden

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but unconvincing
Maybe my problem with this book is that I am not American, and most of the material refers to what is apparently an American cultural problem. Read more
Published 7 days ago by Chinatown Blue

2.0 out of 5 stars This is not the end of the snark hunt
What is a snark, a neologism formed from the combination of snide and remark apparently, not that you'd have such a clear idea after reading this book. Read more
Published 25 days ago by Mr. Robert Kelly

3.0 out of 5 stars Life in the Age of the Comments Section.
Snark seems such a lightweight subject, a very 'zeitgeist' topic of the interwebs.

Descriptions of snarky ancient Greek drinking parties sound like MTV Roasts. Read more
Published 27 days ago by Useless Article

3.0 out of 5 stars Vague
In this book the author sets out to complain about a phenomenon he calls 'snark' but has more than a little trouble actually defining it. Read more
Published 27 days ago by A. Skudder

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but Should Have Been More in the "Here and Now"
In New Yorker film critic David Denby's 'Snark,' the historical journey of discovery he takes the reader on relating to his main subject (the mean, personal commentary - Snark -... Read more
Published 29 days ago by Thomas Elce

3.0 out of 5 stars Up close and personal
'This is an essay about a strain of nasty, knowing abuse spreading like pinkeye though the national conversation - a tone of snarking insult provoked and encouraged by the new... Read more
Published 29 days ago by J. Minogue

3.0 out of 5 stars A bit disappointing
When I recieved this I was excited to read a fresh collection of thoughts into the world of 'Snark', because I hate it in journalism and it is coming even more apparent these days... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Thoughtless

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