It will take me years to plow through Dale Peck's blithering bitchfest on Sven Birkerts, but can I just say at the outset that Peck has an enormous stick up his ass? I think people have him all wrong; he definitely has himself all wrong. He -- and the people who seem to be so in love with him -- are wedded to the idea that he writes "hatchet jobs." I haven't read one yet that ever drew blood; his criticism doesn't seem to be about writers so much as his own churlish, adolescent disregard for anything smacking of standard opinion.