NY Times Criticizes Brooklyn Writer Using Metaphors About Pricey Manhattan Restaurants

In one of the weaker take-downs in recent literary history, Dwight Garner of the Times ambivalently reviews "Literary Brooklyn" by Evan Hughes.  While praising its collection of quotations by Brooklyn writers, Garner digs on the use of cliches. 

"In this book roosts are ruled, towns are painted red, people move in droves, ruckuses are raised, stripes are earned. I hate to sound like a stuffed boar, but these things — like missed notes in a piano recital or bones in the monkfish at Le Bernardin — matter. It was the job of Mr. Hughes’s editor, or his friends, to help him weed out these hobbling bits. They’re close to a deal killer."

It's probably the first time someone criticized trite language with trite language and bragged about where they ate dinner.  In Brooklyn it would be like showing up to knife fight with valet ticket from Peter Luger's.