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Legion. An amalgamated journal.

Ben Shapiro’s twenty-five years old: Do we still have to clean up his Cheetos?

I don’t know quite where to start with this exquisite faceplant by Ben Shapiro on John Updike, who, we learn, was a writer unfit to work even on dime novels or shampoo advertisement copy. The argument seems to follow somewhat like this:

1. John Updike is stylistically miserable.
2. But the elitist/MSM/Leninist Godhead from Planet Klobulax Worshipped By All Liberals ignored Updike’s stylistic contusions because his politics were so dreamy.
3. I hate John Updike’s politics.
4. This is why John Updike is stylistically miserable.
Bonus 4a! Pacifist, religious-skeptic, anti-imperialist, labor-revolutionary Mark Twain said something about a completely different author, once!

Top it off with Shapiro’s own tortured style, and you get the lit-crit equivalent of the Wiggins sisters singing about how Neil Young has a bad voice because he doesn’t support the boys over in ‘Nam.

Garrett Dash Nelson

January 29th, 2009 at 10:10 pm