---
title: 'Peck, Peck, Peck'
date: '2002-07-24T08:08:34-04:00'
permalink: /peck-peck-peck/
tags:
    - novels
---

A quick update to last week’s [comment](/yikes/) on Dale Peck’s cranky outburst occasioned by his review of Rick Moody’s *The Black Veil*. [Bill](http://www.wombatfile.com) has continued the discussion on his site, usefully reminding us of [B.R. Myers’](http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/07/myers.htm) similar Summer 2001 screed published in the *Atlantic,* and directing us to [Jonathan Yardley’s](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57255-2002Jul11.html) rather dull attempt at same.

Today, [Salon](http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2002/07/24/peck/index.html) gets into the action, with a Heather Caldwell article exploring a number of writers’ responses to the Peck piece and considering what makes for good literary criticism.

Sadly, we are nowhere mentioned.

Happily, the article includes the following quote, from a critic who “trounced Moody’s memoir in another publication” but who feels that the wholesale absence of credit given to the merits of such fiction render Peck’s critique meaningless:

> “You have to reserve some language for Sept. 11, Adolf Hitler or, if you’re discussing art, Albert Speer,” says \[Andrew\] Solomon. “There can be a crisis in literature that warrants this urgency, but this isn’t it. Turning such frantic invective on writing that even in Peck’s view is nothing worse than banal and self-important is extremely irresponsible. I think Peck’s review tends to make literary discourse laughable rather than powerful, ridiculous rather than urgent.”

One salient question raised by this article is what Peck *does* like about literature, and why he feels he must so passionately defend it — a seemingly vital issue to which his anger permits him to give no time. The beauty of the screed is its use of the attack in the service of a higher value; here, there is no higher value espoused. Is Peck then guilty of a variant on the vacuity of which he accuses Moody, Eugenides, et al? Does that emptiness, as the *Salon* article hints, reveal the hidden motives of professional jealousy and infighting?