I have finished the book Snark by David Denby; another freebie from Amazon’s Vine programme.  It is a short book, just over 120 pages, but not a great page-turner for me I’m afraid.  The bits about Archilochus, Hipponax and Juvenal were interesting, but only a small part of the book.  Anyway, here is what I said about it:

In this book the author sets out to complain about a phenomenon he calls ‘snark’ but has more than a little trouble actually defining it.  He describes it as being negative comment, done in a snide, knowing way, but does not really succeed in making clear the difference between snark and satire, with the classification of some examples being very arbitrary or subjective.

I think that what it boils down to is that snark is satire he does not approve of and satire is snark that he does approve of.

Not that the book is useless: far from it. The diversion into historical snark is particularly interesting in its description of the ancient Greeks and Romans and then onto Swift.  I never thought I would enjoy reading about Juvenal so much.

The book is diverting and entertaining enough, but insubstantial and not very rigorous. Really David Denby should read some of the selected columns of Jan Moir, Richard Littlejohn and Jeremy Clarkson and write an expanded version.