BiblioAddict

In my mad dash to finish This I Believe before the end of the month (less than 100 pages to go! I think I can, I think I can…), I do believe I’ve found the essay I love the most: Rick Moody’s “The Joy and Enthusiasm of Reading” (you already know where this is going). He says:

I believe in the absolute and unlimted liberty of reading. I believe in wandering through the stacks and picking out the first thing that strikes me. I believe in choosing books based on the dusk jacket. I believe in reading books because others dislike them or find them dangerous. I believe in choosing the hardest book imaginable. I believe in reading up on what others have to say about this difficult book, and then making up my own mind.

Now that’s the kind of belief I can get behind. I’ve never heard of Mr. Moody but the bio tells me that he’s a writer of short stories and novels. It also says that “in his Memoir, The Black Veil, Moody identifies reading as a key to developing an identity.” I would add it to my TBR list if it wasn’t for this little tidbit I read at the ever-informative Wikipedia:

Dale Peck opened a review of Moody’s The Black Veil by saying that “Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation”[1]. He goes on to speculate on various different openings for the review, such as “The Black Veil is the worst of Rick Moody’s very bad books.” and “Rick Moody is a lot of things, but he is not actually dumb.” (Peck refers to this as an “attempt at charity”). The review sparked enough debate about book reviewing that it has been cited as the reason why the literary magazine, The Believer, published by McSweeney’s, was started: to counter the snarky, unfair reviews abounding in the press at the time.

Now I’m not so sure. But I suppose I should follow Moody’s advice and read one of his difficult books, read what others have said about his difficult books, and make up my own mind. Has anyone else ever heard of this author?