I read Charles Pierce’s rant review last week, raised my eyebrows, read a little more of The Book of Basketball [see my review here] and I now have something to say about Pierce’s take on Simmons’ book.

Here is the crux of Pierce’s problem with the 700-page opus:

2.) I Am The Cosmos: Not my line. The late Molly Ivins used it in her epochal takedown of the egregious Camille Paglia. But it applies just as well here. Skip any passage having to do with Bill’s gambling, Bill’s taste in movies, Bill’s friends, and Bill’s ongoing wonderment that there are bars in this great land in which women take off their clothes for money. Also, lose most of the footnotes. You’re not the cosmos, and you’re not David Foster Wallace, either.

In the interest of full disclosure, I occasionally post about Simmons and it’s not always flattering. Is he self-absorbed? Of course, but that’s the way his readers like it. They want to hear the stories about his friends, and their trips to Vegas, or strip clubs, or strip clubs in Vegas. These anecdotes make up a solid 20% of his columns at the Worldwide Leader. If he wrote a book and didn’t talk about “House” or his theory about how an exotic dancer picks her stage name, then he’d piss off his loyal following and his book wouldn’t be a New York Times bestseller. The bottom line is that just because Pierce doesn’t think that Simmons is the cosmos, it doesn’t mean that no one else does.

Pierce continues…

He is an amusing writer who saw the vast potential of the Internet before just about anyone not named Gates or Gore. He has carved out a remarkable career. However, and I know this may break hearts around this place — Good Lord, earlier this week, the former Landlord hereabouts wrote this, apparently while weeping over a portrait of Simmons in a heart-shaped frame — but that’s the sum total of what he’s done. He is not a transformational figure. He did not reinvent sportswriting, or even the way people write about sports, which is not the same thing. He didn’t even really break down the formidable “kicked in the gonads” barrier as far as the language of journalism goes. (Did anyone arguing that point ever actually read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail? Hunter Thompson wrote some pretty wild stuff before he got to ESPN.com.) He didn’t pioneer the use of pop culture reference in sportswriting; Andre Laguerre’s Sports Illustrated did that and, anyway, Simmons’ vaunted pop-cult knowledge is carved out of a very thin loaf of Wonder Bread. He did very little that was new. But he did it on the Internet. He created a gig for himself and sold it well. That should be good enough.

This sounds personal, and it probably is. Jason Whitlock mentioned this tidbit in a recent column criticizing Pierce’s treatment of Tiger Woods.

Two weeks ago on Deadspin, Pierce trashed Bill Simmons and his New York Times-bestselling book. In that hit piece, Pierce failed to mention that he tried to befriend and mentor Simmons at the beginning of the decade and that in 2002 Simmons told Pierce to go (expletive) himself. That little nugget of information would’ve been very enlightening when reading Pierce’s Deadspin take.

Interesting. While everything that Pierce is saying about Simmons may very well be true, he doesn’t seem all that unbiased.

I always thought that Simmons’ writing was reminiscent of the beat writers of the late ’50s (Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, etc.) in that it was stream of consciousness and filled with tangential anecdotes. Throw in a little sports and pop culture knowledge and you have the makings of a good column.

And that’s what Simmons writes — a good column. Many of his readers probably haven’t heard of Kerouac, Burroughs, Andre Laguerre or (gasp!) Hunter S. Thompson. That is the nature of entertainment. It is consumed and then forgotten.

Fifty years from now, when Simmons has long retired, someone will build a big following by taking what he did and spinning it off into some other direction. That’s just how it works.