At Bookforum, author Mary Gaitskill has written a takedown of Gillian Flynn’s massively popular Gone Girl that’s set the literary world abuzz. It’s an interesting read, if a bit confused; at times, it’s hard to tell if Gaitskill’s lashing out against the novel, which was last year’s biggest bestseller, or against a tweeting/texting/Facebook culture that she finds shallow:

Gone Girl doesn’t compare to other books so much as it evokes flipping through TV shows (including the news) and glimpsing face after chirping face, all with only slight variations on the same manner of speech and “smart,” high-speed delivery common to Facebook, texting, and tweeting; that is to say, the book evokes (impressively, one might argue) a hyperartificial, hive-minded way of relating, combined with what has become a cultural ideal of relentless feminine charm tied to power and control.

Along the way, Gaitskill has barbs for Flynn herself, and, for some reason, the movie Bridesmaids.

It might be a perceptive read of Gone Girl, except that Gaitskill’s literary elitism and a whiff of sour grapes poison the whole enterprise. It’s hard to give much credit to a review that begins with the line, “This is not a book I would normally read.”