LUDIC LOG

"Carrying on the dubious tradition of such literary shaggy-dog artists as Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Laurence Sterne, and the James Joyce of Finnegans Wake, Leonard Pierce's latest project, The Ludic Log, is a meandering, inwardly-facing reference no one will get, a high-concept idea with low- to no-brow execution, and a joke that's only funny to its author (and even that is contestable). Indeed, drawing comparisons to the wicked excess of those authors gives Mr. Pierce more credit than is due; while those men were at least glorious failures, his self-indulgent, pseudo-intellectual half-jokes are, in terms of quality, more on the level of an 8th-grader with a well-thumbed copy of the Harvard Lampoon and a fresh book of Mad Libs. One can take a certain solace from the fact that, some 400 pages into the project, he seems to be running out of ideas: at least he'll be forced at last to abandon the misbegotten project before it becomes too tedious." (Leonard A. Pierce, The Leonard A. Pierce Review of Books and Booklike Media)

"Leonard A. Pierce's newest offering, a watery broth of snippy criticism and self-flattering diarrhea pretentiously (and awkwardly) titled The Leonard A. Pierce Review of Books and Booklike Media Review: The Ludic Log, by Leonard Pierce, begins with a heavy thud. It's not, as one might hope, the sound of his bloated body falling to the floor, thus sparing us the prospect of further pain, but rather the resounding crunch of the weighty names he drops -- names like Celine, Sterne and Joyce -- in hopes of impressing the reader. What reader would be impressed by such ham-handed namechecking? Perhaps the juveniles and perverts who come to his site looking for middlebrow Shakespeare quotes, comic book marginalia or unambitious pornography; certainly not an informed and lively reader. Not that any such reader could be found wasting his or her time on such drivel; his readership, such as it is, probably has trouble grasping even the obvious jokes and dated pop-culture references that make up the majority of his work. As literature, his review is bad criticism; as bad criticsm, it's a hundred monkeys defecating on a typewriter." (Leonard Pierce, The Ludic Log Reader's Companion)

"Things go from bad to worse for the woefully unfocused Leonard Pierce. His main vehicle for what, for lack of a better term, passes for artistic expression in his circle of layabouts, already suffers from an extreme lack of conviction; shunning the word 'blog' as a neologism he apparently thinks is beneath him, he calls it a 'web log', as if parsing the words will increase the quality of the contents. What's more, it eschews traditional blog themes -- confessional writing, political polemic, and off-site linkage -- and while his given reason is a dislike of those forms, one suspects the piquish taint of inability spreading across the badly-designed face of the site. His most recent entry is difficult of this writer to approach, consisting as it does of a nasty personal attack on my recent review of his site; but it seems unlikely that even a disinterested reader would find much here other than vituperative rancor and the sort of bitterness that can only come from a complete failure. It is devoutly to be hoped that rumors of Mr. Pierce's financial insolvency are well-founded and that he will soon be unable to afford the torments he daily inflicts on his readership." (Leonard A. Pierce, LAPRBBM)

"Leonard A. Pierce's febrile critical ripostes recall not so much Gore Vidal the essayist, who he so desperately tries to evoke, but Gore Vidal the overweight, effeminate half-man, soaking in a combination of overpriced bath salts and his own self-satisfaction. Lest this publication be accused of ill will towards its homosexual readership, I hasten to assure you that the other qualities Mr. Pierce shares with Mr. Vidal -- raging egotism, pomposity, bitchiness, and a scarcely justified self-righteousness -- are far more ignominious than his uncontrollable passion for young boys. Indeed, calling him a remorseless and violent pederast is an insult to this country's remorseless, violent pederast community. Where are the blog world's William F. Buckleys and Norman Mailers, to give this snooty gasbag the thrashing he so badly deserves?" (Leonard Pierce, LLRC)

"A publication like The Ludic Log is, by its very nature, a highly personal thing. Sometimes, when the person in question is a man of depths, of talent, of prodigious gifts, it can be like wandering in a museum of the mind, where all the masterpieces came from the same remarkable brush. Other times, when the mind behind it is a subhuman sociopath like Leonard Pierce, it can be like wandering through a poorly maintained mental asylum where unmedicated lunatics throw cups of pee at you. If one operates on the assumption that it is unfair to mock the mentally disabled, a critical response such as this one might seem unwarranted. After all, lashing out at Mr. Pierce and his unfounded, libelous, threatening, homophobic utterances is kin to slapping a dim-witted child who has just learned to curse, and has spent several laborious hours writing misspelled execrations like 'YU EAT MI DOO DOO' on the wall with shoe polish. However, in the most incorrigible of cases, the firm hand of discipline is called for, and if our Omelasian utopia must be predicated on the suffering of the idiot boy who has staked a remarkable claim as the most worthless writer on the internet, then I, for one, will choose not to walk away." (Leonard A. Pierce, LAPRBBM)

"Some people seem to think that because they use big words like 'execration' and show off how they read an Ursula LeGuin novel once before they dropped out of high school, this will save them from having their big stinking fat homo head blown off on the field of honor, or, as I like to call it, the alley behind my apartment building. In closing, dear reader, allow me to assure them that this is not the case." (Leonard Pierce, LLRC: Special Summer Supplement Edition)