In Defense of Snark

Never before have I so enjoyed a review of a book that I have not read. The book in question is Snark: It’s Mean, It’s Personal, and It’s Ruining Our Conversation by New Yorker film critic David Denby; the review is the work of Adam Sternbergh in the New York Magazine Book Review. As a connoisseur of snark, I appreciated Sterbergh's snarky critique of a book that dismisses snark as sophomoric banter. Here's one of my favorite bits:

I’d argue that slackers adopted irony not as a pose of hipster cynicism but as a defense against inheriting a two-faced world. When no one—from politicians to pundits—says what he actually means, irony becomes a logical self-inoculation. Similarly, snark, irony’s brat, flourishes in an age of doublespeak and idiocy that’s too rarely called out elsewhere. Snark is not a honk of blasé detachment; it’s a clarion call of frustrated outrage.