Literary criticism turns violent

Gawker image of Crouch (left) and Peck (right)Gawker reports that Stanley Crouch’s response to one of Dale Peck’s critical hatchet jobs has transformed from homophobic insults into physical violence:

A little after two o’clock today, while novelist and book critic Dale Peck was lunching with the writer Linda Yablonsky at Tartine in the West Village, jazz critic/cultural commentator/novelist Stanley Crouch decided to introduce himself. (Peck had reviewed a novel of Crouch’s a few years back; in response to that review, Crouch told Salon that Peck was “a troubled queen.”)

At Tartine, Crouch shook Peck’s hand, then, as a follow-up, smacked him in the face, saying “if you ever did anything like that [presumably referring to the review] again, it’ll be much worse.”

Given that he told James Atlas last year that Peck is “a little guy” — and that the “review he wrote of my book was really about him…. Bitchiness is his version of macho” — you’ve gotta wonder if Crouch has been sitting at home on Saturday nights fantasizing about dragging that pansy-ass gay boy critic behind his car.

Is this New York City or Jasper, Texas?

Update: another perspective.


Newsletter

You might want to subscribe to my free Substack newsletter, Ancestor Trouble, if the name makes intuitive sense to you.