The Worst Book of the Year
jr., r. emmett tyrrell
Toobin Wins Coogler Again! The Worst Book of the Year R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. The season of cultural awards is upon us. The Grammys! The Pulitzers! All are decided by smooth orthodox minds...
...Of course this year's award makes Toobin a rare two-time winner...
...David Boies...
...In his next book he is promising to give the definitive account of the famous Florida recount...
...Toobin's past books have been so slipshod, his present utterances on his idol, Bill Clinton, so stupid (Quoth Toobin on the Clinton impeachment: "Clinton was, by comparison, the good guy in this struggle...
...They mostly applaud...
...Any recognition a Washington flak can attract is always good for advancement...
...The spectacle of Toobin writing on Boies is another example of the Kultursmog...
...96 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ¦ April 2001...
...Last year Jeffrey Toobin signed a contract with Random House to write a book on the "inside story" of the recent presidential election with special attention to the Florida infamies...
...This year the Coogler Committee is charting new artistic waters...
...One of the distinguishing features of Toobin's work is the slipperiness of his partisanship...
...Books such as Toobin's will pump out more poisonous particulates presenting it as such...
...Now he will spread the falsehood that the entire nation was the victim of conspiracy...
...But we owe this bold achievement to Toobin...
...Following George Gilder's belief that all paradigms are there to be broken, this year the J. Gordon Coogler Award is being given to a writer prematurely, we know what the sap thinks, we know the book will be bad, why wait...
...Such is the power of the smog to confuse, to generate moral phantoms and historical hallucinations, that in Florida it has raised to the level of injustice what in prior years was merely an incompetently cast ballot...
...The "undercounted ballot," the "overcounted ballot," all were once dismissed as incompetently cast...
...All are decided by smooth orthodox minds pledging in unison their devotion to unorthodoxy...
...He has inspired, and this first for us is really just another first for our honoree...
...Unfortunately Lewis was drinking with his alcoholic wife and too stewed to accept Mencken's call...
...Now they are seen as the cruel consequence of a conspiracy of Republicans...
...The story is told about Mencken and Nathan getting wind of their friend Sinclair Lewis's nomination by the Pulitzer Prize committee for Arrowsmith and prevailing upon him to reject the indignity...
...Years later, when he was menaced with the Nobel Prize for literature, Mencken made heroic efforts to reach Lewis and preserve his honor...
...Usually a literary award is given for a recent work, occasionally posthumously for a life's work...
...Neither the Pulitzer nor the Nobel judges have ever acted so boldly...
...Such is the power of the smog that the Democrats' electoral defeat will for years be passed on as a victory...
...Today writers accept Pulitzers and Nobels even while sober, a state that afflicts them all too often...
...And who was one of the main figures in that recount...
...And yet, today's critics throw few eggs...
...Random House is justly proud of its unbiased chronicler...
...For twenty-seven years The American Spectator has attempted to deflate the award mania by conferring the J. Gordon Coogler Award for the Worst Book of the Year...
...Last spring at the White House Correspondents Dinner I congratulated him on winning our 1999 Coogler for his admirably devious, slavishly pro-Clinton A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President...
...All hold to a dozen or so myths about Art...
...He seemed delighted...
...that no reasonable person can fairly doubt his ability—if only he will put in the work!—to snag the coveted Coogler...
...And who served as Toobin's lawyer in that repellent row with his former employer, Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh...
...Genuine talents suspect the humbuggery of awards...
...He deserves another Coogler...
...Whether operating out of New York or Council Bluffs, they generally serve as public relations agents for the touring Artistes and poetasters...
...The most fashionable critics are those who shout hip-hip-hurrah at whatever is pumped out by the Kultursmog, and it apparently never occurs to them that they might be adding to the fame of dolts while genius is ignored...
...Toobin has been a perfect patsy for the Clintons while deftly posing as scrupulously objective and authoritative...
...He became the Nobel laureate and never wrote another word worth reading...
...Toobin in his last book spread the falsehood that the Clintons were the victims of conspiracy...
...Pulitzer Prize committees are lobbied by public relations firms, media organizations, and the candidates' neurotic relatives.Yet committee members remain convinced that they can find the non-conformist genius, the pariah Artiste...
...And who slaughters the modern novelists or the boring journalists...
...David Boies...
...for instance, the myth that Art is always obnoxious, blasphemous, and occasionally smelly...
...We are not perfect, but we repose in the confidence that the Coogler Committee regularly comes much closer to finding the year's worst book than the Pulitzer Committee comes to finding a distinguished book...
Vol. 34 • April 2001 • No. 3
