Why are insufferable people so predictably unsufferable?

Case in point: Paul Gowder.  He interrupts the title of his complaint about my recent Watchmen post to slam me in a footnote:

Strike one: the middle name.  Only super-pretentious lawyers and people who have the same first and last name as someone famous use their middle name in correspondence/generally.

What an original complaint!*  That I've explained my reasons since Day One of blogging under my own name—check out Rich and I hammering it out the first time I blogged as myself—never satisfies people who uncharitably assume I'm as arrogant as they are.  For the record:

I chose to be known by full name because in Orange County alone I share "Scott Kaufman" with the designer of "Porn Star" clothing, a bankruptcy lawyer, a prominent architect and a stagehand/grip/actor.  So I decided that instead of fielding calls and receiving mail (electronic and otherwise) for three of those four folks, I would use all the names my parents gave me. 

Of course, I only comment under my full name here and The Valve, and only then because I want to own my Google results.  When search committees trawl the web for references to my work I want to control what they see.  I don't normally want them to see the sort of petty-ante fisking of the sort Gowder attempts.  But Gowder's post is odd.  He mocks me for being known as "Scott Eric Kaufman" then writes:

The second post in SEK’s Watchmen series starts with one of the most ludicrous tape measure remarks I’ve ever seen . . . If SEK had said . . . This is totally unbearable. Please, please, someone find a way for me to read Edge of the American West without this guy’s posts.

It's almost as if he knows that I write and comment as "SEK."  Were I so intent on wowing you people with the awesomeness of all my names you'd think I would put a little more effort into wowing you people with the awesomeness of all my names. 

His second complaint is that I'm guilty of

[g]ratuitously name-dropping the top three unbearably hip and unreadable lit scene novels (if we count everything by Gaddis as one) in recent history.

As I noted in my response:

Your designation of novels published in the ’20s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s as “unbearably hip” points to exactly what’s wrong with people who like novels from the ’20s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s: namely, that they weren’t written in the bearably hip ’00s, ’10s, and ’30s through ’60s. From the faint words I hear from high aloft in my ivory bower, those are the most bearably hip novels ever written, and everyone who loves them has been scientifically proven to be better than everyone who loves books from the ’20s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. I apologize for assuming otherwise . . . or for naming the four novels that anyone who’s studied 20th Century literature (a.k.a. my field) would know intimately. I know I’m lording it over the peasants with my appeal to the lowest common professional denominator in my field, but what can I do? I should’ve referenced four authors no one’s ever heard of if I wanted to make a basic point to an intelligent audience. Why speak in the lingua franca when I could’ve impressed everyone by referencing an obscure imagist whose works have been out of print since 1931 or better yet a personal translation of a manuscript by a heretofore unknown literary genius.

You can read the rest of Gowder's magnificent slagging of me and everything published since 1950 by anyone other than Hunter S. Thompson here.  Because his site refused to recognize my HTML tags, I recommend reading my response to it here.  I would say you should check out his response to my comment, but as yet he hasn't made one.

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*For the record: John Bruce and I buried the hatchet long ago.  I'm using him as an example for precisely that reason.  No need to rekindle the dull flames of old enmity. 

Comments

[Sisyphus]

Ooo! Fight fight fight!

We haven't seen a good throw-down here at Acephalous in a while ---- we need some drama.

Though I notice you didn't quote the dick-slapping statement --- come on, where's your flair for escalation?

(PS I have never read Gaddis, and know no one --- other than you --- who has read Gaddis. If he's the big hinkety-hink, and we have so many 20th C specialists at my place, you'd think I'd have heard his name dropped a bit more frequently.)

[CP]

Sisyphus: Regarding Gaddis, I assume it depends on what is meant by "lit scene". I've no idea whether he's given his due by serious students of 20th century literature in good programs, but his name is certainly dropped frequently enough by undergrads and New Yorker subscribers. He was frequently mentioned, at any rate, though less frequently read, in my student days and if memory serves he was mentioned in Vidal's old anti-Academy screed "American Plastic". So he's been part of the "book chat scene" for a long time.

In some ways, I think of him as the ultimate "scene writer" in the sense that, like Pynchon, like David Foster Wallace, like Nabokov, so many people develop strong opinions about his writing and his admirers without having the slightest knowledge of his work.

Gaddis seems to be a writer that soi-disant intellectual iconoclasts assign to the "canon of things pretentious bastards read". They then attack Gaddis, and anyone who reads him, while fancying themselves a cross between Hunter Thompson, James Dean and Ambrose Bierce.

[Robert Zimmerman]

When it comes to drawing fire from blogosphere blowhards, you've really got the magic touch. This won't rise to the level of the epic Cashill/proteinwisdom thing a few months ago, but still. Gowder's third-person bio--"A Byronic fox on politics, law, philosophy, academia, rationality, music, life, etc."--is a gem, and I'm amazed at how much he's (apparently) accomplished without (apparently) losing the callow arrogance of a college freshman--within a few years of that transition it should start to get at least little hard to treat the limitations of your taste in literature (or whatever) as a point of pride (shouldn't it?).

Anyway, party on...

[CP]

Also, for what it's worth, reading smart people (and Gowder) argue about Watchmen made me decide to actually read the damned comic. It's the first time I will have looked at a comicbook of any kind since I found some of my dad's old Lone Ranger comics when I was like 8 or 9.

[Jonathan]

I submit to you that it is inconceivable that a graduate student with an interest in postwar American fiction has not heard of Gaddis.

[Gary]

I particularly like this paragraph from Gowder's bio:

"Because this sort of thing always tends to come up in the discussions raised on this blog: his views on race are roughly those of Kwame Anthony Appiah, with a dose of Malcom X. His views on class are roughly those of Herbert Marcuse, with a dose of John Rawls. His views on gender are roughly those of Susan Okin, with a dose of Simone de Beauvoir."

My reaction to this paragraph is bemusement, with a dose of nausea.

[Vance Maverick]

Gary, that's awesome. No wonder he found it pretentious for Scott to set up an argument by namechecking prominent figures.

[SEK]

Though I notice you didn't quote the dick-slapping statement --- come on, where's your flair for escalation?

Well, I was only paraphrasing his footnote about me. (Plus, such language doesn't belong on this blog.)

(I mean, it's been here before and will be again, but that doesn't mean it's welcome.)

I have never read Gaddis, and know no one --- other than you --- who has read Gaddis.

I'm with Jonathan on this one: Really!?! If nothing else, all those Big Book fetishists (like myself) should have read him. I mean, it's so true it seems self-evident to me. Maybe you live in an odd pocket of the world where certain Big Books don't exist. What was the name of the latest Pynchon novel in the world where you live?

I think of him as the ultimate "scene writer" in the sense that, like Pynchon, like David Foster Wallace, like Nabokov, so many people develop strong opinions about his writing and his admirers without having the slightest knowledge of his work.

What's odd is that those who attack the Joyce/Gaddis/Pynchon/Foster Wallace-lovers have, typically, never read much of any of them. They've read just enough to know that these books are read by a type, then, as you say, they go about castigating the type based on the bit of Joyce or Pynchon (typically) they've read.

Also, for what it's worth, reading smart people (and Gowder) argue about Watchmen made me decide to actually read the damned comic.

Awesomeness. I love it when this happens.

When it comes to drawing fire from blogosphere blowhards, you've really got the magic touch.

I don't know what to make of it either. I mean, with KC Johnson, I was being deliberately provocative. But for my Watchmen review to inspire that sort of response is odd, to say the least. But I'm not sure what to make of internet people these days. I commented on a post the other day and someone responded like this. I'm not sure what to make of that, but hey! At least that person didn't knock me for using all three of my names.

My reaction to this paragraph is bemusement, with a dose of nausea.

I second Vance, Gary. If I were in the mood for escalation, that's where I'd start.

[SEK]

(And I just realized that the person who commented on Savage Minds is a familiar face and likely meant nothing by it. Damn you, Gowder! Your hostility's making me jumpy!)

[Robert Zimmerman]

Yes, I think what energized Gowder was that he read his own pretentiousness into SEK's piece plus the huge chip he has on his shoulder about a certain kind of novelist ("self-abuse-to-self-amuse kind of extreme wankery...").

The scary thing, if he really is a 3rd year grad student (I assume he really is, but you never know on the Internets), is to imagine his interactions with students. I can only hope that the internet personna and the classroom personna are different.

[alkau]

You could always use your Hebrew name!!! We thought we gave you a fine name that was not popular when you were born, but I guess at some point it became popular. Sorry, next time around we will choise a non-name like "Peanutbutter".