The downside of living in large cultural centre like Accordion City is that there is a distressingly large number of overexposed, under-brained Gen X enfants terribles who get paid terribly large salaries to write terribly bad pronouncements on popular culture. Canada’s National newspaper, the Globe and Mail, is located a short walk south of my house and houses two such twerps. I’ve already introduced you to Leah McLaren, who like outer space is beautiful yet vacous. Her male counterpart is Russell Smith, a well-dressed, well-coiffed, well-read cultural Pharisee who badly needs a good solid punch to the mouth.
His most recent column bears the title Blogs: Hanging Dirty Laundry On-line. Allow me to use one of my stock phrases: I’ve seen better paper after wiping my ass.
Like his co-worker McLaren, he immediately gets up my nose with these lines from the opening paragraph:
The blog phenomenon is perhaps the strangest side of the Internet. It’s stranger even than all the porn. Thousands of unremarkable people are posting their diaries on-line.
“Oh dear,” one can imagine him saying, “the proles are writing about their unremarkable little lives.”
Such acts, it would seem, are best left to professionals. Say, one Russell Smith, whose books about disaffected young twenty-somethings whose stories are derived from his more-remarkable-than-yours-life. Take, for instance, this plot summary of How Insensitive, a book that became a favourite in CanLit circles:
Adrift in Torontos gossipy, grant-driven cultural scene, a coterie of overeducated, underemployed young people stab at vaguely artistic projects and scramble after the opportunities that seem tantalizingly within reach if you know the right people. Searching for work, sex and big-city life is Ted Owen, who quickly finds himself swept into the complicated lives of the young and the jaded, people who thrive in a strange world of hip fashion and surreal night-clubs.
Wow, Russ, that Ted Owen character reminds me of someone. Wish I could put my finger on whom…
Here’s the first bit from a summary of his second novel, Noise:
Noise, much like Smith’s first novel How Insensitive, deals with young, Torontonian ladder-climbers.
This time the story revolves around James, a restaurant critic. We follow James as he tries to understand his relationships with those around him, and watch his struggles as he tries to make a name for himself.
Yo, Russ! Are you familiar with a term that gets bandied about in fandom called a “Mary Sue”?
(At writing schools all over North America, the credo seems to be “Write What You Know.” Surely they should teach a corollary: “Expand your knowledge. Please.“)
The difference between Russell Smith and most bloggers boils down to these things:
- He is paid to go on about his life, which once you remove the College Street West/CanLit crowd trappings, is about as unremarkable as everyone else’s.
- He has been published in dead tree form.
- He has nice suits.
- He must suffer from a little vertigo, what with the universe revolving around him.
Here’s the deal. If you see Russ in some bar, go buy a drink. Then walk up to him and throw it in his face. I’ll reimburse you and take you out for drinks. Sound cool?
