Facts Continue to Change Their Shape

By Ron Hogan on January 3, 2006 9:01 AM

Back at my first blog, Beatrice, I used to have a recurring feature called “Maslin Watch,” in which I tracked the critical hills and valleys of NYT book reviewer Janet Maslin. Although I eventually abandoned the project (along with other “book review reviewing” efforts), when Sarah shot me an email late last night, I quickly agreed with her that Maslin’s review of Dog Days demands some sort of response.

Perhaps the problem is that Maslin doesn’t really seem to know that much about Ana Marie Cox, except that the press kit says she’s the author of Wonkette, “the foxy blog that has made her well known in Washington circles.” It doesn’t look like Maslin has ever actually spent more than thirty seconds at the site, though, which leads to the lazy assertion that Dog Days “is predicated on the thought that it is a short leap from a blog to a blovel.” Say what you will about the novel’s strengths and shortcomings, it’s not a “blovel,” which would be a novel cobbled together out of blog entries, just a novel that has characters who are thinly disguised versions of real-life figures, at least two of whom happen to be bloggers. But that’s a story Maslin doesn’t appear to know about, referring to “Capitolette, the fictitious blogger who is invented by the inventor of Ms. Wonkette,” whom she describes as “a Washington hybrid of Jessica Rabbit and Jessica Simpson.”

Well, okay, the fact that she uses two Jessicas as examples might be evidence that Maslin knows about the woman whose life Cox appropriated, but it’s still very curious that a reviewer would simultaneously suggest that Dog Days is a roman à clef and fail to mention the actual history on which it’s so clearly based. You don’t see Carol Memmott shying away from the subject in her USA Today review, which essentially devotes itself to the inevitable comparison to Jessica Cutler’s The Washingtonienne, barely remembering to discuss the quality of Cox’s prose at the end.

It didn’t take too long for Cutler to express her opinion of Maslin’s review: “Jessica Rabbit + Jessica Simpson = Jessica Cutler? Maybe if you divide by Jessica Lovejoy.” Maybe this Thursday, when Cox holds her New York City reading at a Barnes & Noble not too far from Cutler’s East Village digs, she’ll be able to tell Wonkette just what she thinks of the novel itself…

Comments