Back from a court-ordered break from media, Intern Alexis returns to her old stomping grounds at the Times Book Review. In this week's edition, Alexis finds that Christopher Buckley enjoys life between Wonkette's bookish thighs, Billy Collins is best trashed in his own medium, and Liesl Schillinger likes to show off her high-school French skills. After the jump, your weekly guide to sounding well-read.

Dog Days
 By Ana Cox
Reviewed by Christopher Buckley

Christopher Buckley comes out very much in favor of Mme. Wonkette, aka Ana Marie Cox, and her new tome "Dog Days," which was uplifting after last week, when we saw Janet Maslin's lukewarm-at-best review of our second cousin once removed's novel. Buckley pays Cox the highest compliment, writing: "At times, Melanie [the novel's protagonist] sounds like a funnier, more self-knowing Maureen Dowd. And I like Maureen Dowd." Wheee!

But, as usual, some things:

1. We've become a little self-righteous in our old-age and sometimes think there is such a thing as too-much-too-soon, as in, "She uses four-letter words as commas and lives in an apartment more bacterial and messy than post-Katrina New Orleans." Save it for three months from now, Sarah Silverman!

2. As Team Gawker pointed out a few hours ago, Buckley's claim that, "I don't spend much time in the old blogosphere myself, and to be honest hadn't clicked onto Wonkette until now," is puzzling and ridiculous. But perhaps equally absurd is the last sentence: "But if this sparkly, witty - occasionally vicious - little novel is any indication of Wonkette's talent, then Cox ought to log out of cyberspace and start calling herself Novelette."

First off, "little novel"??? Condescending much? And then "Novelette"??? CLUNK-athon 2006! Hey, Buckley, what about Bookette? Or Wonkbook? Wonkvel? How about Quit Making Up Dum-Dum Compounds and Start Spending Some Time in the Old Blogosphere?

3. Did Buckley serve Cox some fries with her cunnilingus?

John Simon's Criticism
Reviewed by Liesl Schillinger

This week, Schillinger takes on "the 2,000-odd pages of the collected waspish writings of John Simon," the former New York Magazine arts critic who was given the boot last May. Among other things, Schillinger finds:

Like the man in the monocle in the Roz Chast cartoon who was 'liked for his lack of lack-of-pretense,' Simon can easily be imagined saying, 'Let's only speak French for a while.' Or German. In his film criticism, which often shows less personal animus than his theater writing, perhaps because the actors were not in tomato-throwing range, Simon maintains his high expectations. In his review of the Tom Hanks vehicle 'Big,' he declares that the movie's theme - the little boy inside every man - evokes 'what Nietzsche hailed as das Kind im Manne.' In a pan of 'Groundhog Day,' he mocks the film for its overambitious allusions to his peeps - Baudelaire, Kafka, Rachmaninoff - and, in short, finds Hollywood N.Q.O.C.

Speaking of people who lack a lack-of-pretense Simon may drop the German, but Schillinger drops the French, not une, but deux fois. Zut alors!. She writes: "It's an irony Simon should appreciate: not to have been hoist by his own cafard - as anyone might have expected of a man widely resented for his verbal pistol-whippings of actors, playwrights, directors, plays and even theater audiences - but by a sudden access of Pollyannish sunniness." And then, "While Simon's theater and film criticism can serve as a chronological aide-m moire for what was onstage and on screen at any particular period, his music criticism is less snarky, less time-pegged, less inventive and, arguably, more useful." L'ack!

Oh well, we can't be mad at Liesl for long because we love her use of "N.Q.O.C." (not quite our class). We say that all the time, along with "H.K.L.P" (holds knife like pen). Cheers to that.


The Trouble With Poetry
 by Billy Collins
Reviewed in verse by David Orr

David Orr, who makes us weak in the knees with his witty banterings On Poetry, writes his review of Billy Collins's new poetry collection as a poem. It's funny because the review is pretty negative, but in poem-form, seems not so much negative as it does funny (helloooo chiasmus)! See:

by observing, for instance,
that Billy Collins too often relies
on the same blandly ironic tone

and the same conversational free verse,
loosely organized in tercets
or the occasional quatrain
when an extra line jogs onto the page,

or that his poems often begin well
and then spiral down
into unsurprising images

like exhausted birds
unable to stand for anything
beyond the simple fact of exhaustion,

or that, most important,
he is often humorous
without actually being funny

That was pretty mean. But you're chuckling, are you not? Good tactic, Orr. This reminds us of our Special Time last year when we wrote "Reading about Reading" in haiku form and shat out this here little gem:

David Orr, we think,
Is smart, funny, and dead on.
Yeah, sometimes we're nice.

Don't worry we're totally okay now, haiku-free and living sober. Ish.