BITTEROSITY REVISITED.

BITTEROSITY REVISITED. The NEW YORKER COMMENT blog linked to my post on whether Nixon’s trip to China mattered (I didn’t think it did). Of course, I checked out the blog and I am happy to find it. One of the main subjects of the blog is an interesting response to each issue of the New Yorker. Since I have strong reactions to the New Yorker, I will be checking in to the blog regularly. Looking at the archives, I saw that John Bucher, the proprietor of the blog (I guess the proprietor is what I am on this blog) had researched the reactions (reported here) to James Walcott’s savage attack on Adam Gopnik. I was surprised that he found enough support for Walcott that he likened it to a petition here. I had expressed my view that Gopnik is a wonderful writer here and in that post I hinted at my view that Walcott’s naked envy of Gopnik inspires pity, not admiration. (We subscribe to both the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, where evidently Walcott writes frequently. I seek out Gopnik articles eagerly. I barely notice Walcott.) Tina Brown’s comment (from the NEW YORKER COMMENT here) confirms what I had suspected: “I think he felt jostled at the New Yorker. He felt outclassed by Anthony Lane, Adam Gopnik, and David Remnick. At Vanity Fair, there’s no one else to muscle in on his territory.” Walcott is suffering from bitterosity.