The latest Times Book Review is just plain pissy (don't you go calling it the Gawker-ization of the Review; we just won't have you insulting them like that), and it's got Intern Alexis feeling a little down. There's hardly any haterade to spare, what with the heaping piles of nasty being unloaded on the careers of Benjamin Kunkel, Wendy Lesser, and Simon Winchester. Naturally, it's Joan Didion who lifts Intern Alexis above the fray so that she might write this week's recap without short-circuiting her laptop with her own tears. After the jump, her weekly review.

Letters

In the wake of Ben Kunkel mania that seems to have engulfed the Times, we were surprised to see a little bit of Kunkel-directed negativity in the ol' Gray Mare — in the form of letters to the editor, regarding his recent NYTBR essay on "the terrorist novel." Someone's pissed that Kunkel called him an "incompetent literary critic," someone else claims Kunkel "demonstrates a peculiarly American provincialism," yet another was "surprised and deeply disappointed" that Kunkel didn't mention the novel "Harbor," and finally, someone writes that "Contrary to Kunkel, literature and politics have yet to part ways." Uh oh we had to wonder, was this week's letters page the beginning of a Kunkel backlash? Was his terrorist essay the Kunkel equivalent of "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close?" And is this week's letters page, then, his Walter Kirn? And, if so, does that make us Bright Eyes?


Mean!

Speaking of negativity, there were some really mean-o reviews in this week's NYTBR. Lucy Ellman takes on Threepenny Review editor Wendy Lesser's new book "The Pagoda in the Garden" and writes: "This book is like a novel-writing kit Not bothering to read the instructions, Wendy Lesser has excitedly dumped all this stuff straight out on to the page. She'll be painting by numbers next!" kaZAM. She ends the review with this zinger: "All the ingredients have been lined up, but nothing will save this turkey." There's nary a ha'penny for Ms. Threepenny in this article! There's a whole bunch of other nasty things said, but this little (literally) nasty bit puzzled us: "Threads of plot are oddly discontinued, the reader's expectations raised and cruelly dashed. There's a promising disquisition on menstruation and the travails of managing it in a foreign country (Sarah gets Kotex pads sent to her from America) a great subject, but it's never brought up again." Um. Ew! This is not a great subject. We don't know about you, but we're perfectly content keeping our period juice to ourselves.

Then there was Bryan Burrough's huffy review of Simon Winchester's new one, "A Crack in the Edge of the World: American and the Great California Earthquake of 1906." No beating around the bush here; Burrogh writes: "Me, I hated it. I wanted to drop-kick this book across the backyard. If Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough can lay claim to being the Miles Davis of popular history, Winchester is becoming the Kenny G " This little analogy we sort of understand, but the next one —"This is history as it might be written by Austin Powers" well, we were stumped. We read on hoping that he would explain himself. "'Crack,'" Burroughs continues, "is a book that bears the faint whiff of smoking jacket and brandy, as if the author had curled up in some leather-bound study with a few dozen pervious books and his memories and banged out this one between puffs of pipe smoke." What in the world does that have to do with Austin Powers? We guess it's sort of Britishy? But still And abbreviating the book to "Crack" is just plain silly.

The Year of Magical Thinking
 by Joan Didion
Reviewed by Robert Pinsky

We understand that Didion is a genius. And her new book, "The Year of Magical Thinking," (based on the excerpt that we read and the reviews that we've seen) is probably fabulous. But to devote the cover, the "Up Front" column, and a two-page Rachel Donadio-fest to her in the Review ON TOP of the 10 plus pages in the New York Times Magazine two weeks ago plus the glowing review by Michiko Kakutani — that's just a lot! Goodness, for such a small lady, she packs a lot of punch — despite those skinny arms we all saw on the cover of the Magazine.