April 6, 2007

The Lit-Blog Wars

In remarks at last month's National Book Critics Circle Awards — when his family memoir The Lost was honored as best autobiography — Daniel Mendelsohn said that he was especially proud to receive recognition "in an era in which anyone who owns a Dell laptop is a published critic." The NBCC prize, he said, comes from "people who know what they're talking about." Mendelsohn was quickly denounced by one popular blogger (presumably using a Dell laptop) as one of the "elitist