Their nastiest insults, most insightful reviews, and oddest fixations this year.

This year, critics bickered about etiquette, fell out of love with HBO, and tried to explain the appeal of Paris Hilton. This is a look back at the biggest stories, best writing, nastiest insults, most hyperbolic raves, and oddest theories of the year in cultural criticism. Plus, the writer reviewers gleefully eviscerated, the TV show they compared to ancient Sumer, and an answer to the strategic question that has long puzzled first-time novelists: Will dissing Dave Eggers on your publicity tour help sell copies of your book?

Biggest Literary Rumble The Snark Wars kicked off in March with Heidi Julavits' plaintive manifesto against negative reviews in the Believer ("I fear that book reviews are just an opportunity for a critic to strive for humor, and to appear funny and smart and a little bit bitchy, without attempting to espouse any higher ideals"). They continued through the summer, as various critics rushed to snark's defense ("Negative reviews, however painful to the individuals who receive them, benefit the overall ecology of literary journalism by maintaining some balance of good faith"). The New Yorker pointed out that such vitriol is timeless, recounting an 18^th-century spat between a writer and his critic. It's always heartening to witness a good old-fashioned mudslinging literary debate. Too bad this one wasn't about something more consequential than mudslinging.

Best Response to a Bad Review After Roger Ebert called Vincent Gallo's Brown Bunny"the worst film in the history of the festival" at Cannes, the director put a curse on the critic's colon and said he had "the physique of a slave trader." (Even better: Gallo's dismay at good reviews from French critics, which he called "almost like salt in the wound.")

Most Tragic Response to a Bad Review
When chef Bernard Loiseau of French restaurant La Côte d'Or shot himself in the head with a hunting rifle, other chefs blamed the restaurant guideGaultMillau for downgrading him by a couple of points. (The New York Times argued that the more likely culprit was depression.)

Most Bizarre Response to a Bad Review
Liz Phair's letter to the New York Times, after it published a negative piece on her new album by Slate's Meghan O'Rourke: "Once upon a time there was a writer named Chicken Little," Phair wrote. "Chicken Little worked very hard and took her job very seriously. Often, she even wrote. One day, just as Chicken Little was about to have an idea, she heard something falling on her roof. 'The sky is falling! The sky is falling!' she shrieked, spilling green tea and vodka all over her work station."

Most Polarizing Album Of course, critics themselves offered bizarrely heated responses to Liz Phair, the album on which the indie darling debuted a new, more mainstream look and sound. Actors who alternate between big-budget blockbusters and smaller, more experimental roles are usually praised for their savvy. But when musicians try out different identities, it's often considered a betrayal. O'Rourke wrote that Phair had "committed the most embarrassing form of career suicide," and uber-indie Web site Pitchfork rated the album 0.0, calling Phair's "unqualified sperm-praise" "entirely vain and degrading." Gina Arnold tried to turn the fuss into a referendum on feminism, claiming that rock critics' objections to Phair's new direction proved "you still can't be a smart, sexy woman whose main aim in life is to please yourself rather than please men." The Village Voice ran no fewer than three reviews: In one, Robert Christgau, who loved the album, said it challenges "lowest-common-denominator values even as it fellates them." And when some critics put the album at the top of their year-end lists, readers accused said critics of doing so solely in reaction to the critics who didn't like the album.

Least Polarizing Album Madonna's American Life, which was universally derided. The diva, ever the critical punching bag, seemed more pummeled than usual this year. Critics couldn't even muster outrage about her flops, which included the "clunky, ponderous" new album; the "totally limp" Gap ad; the Britney kiss that smacked of "desperation"; and of course, the "narcissistic" children's book.

Newest Critical Punching Bag Don DeLillo. Ever since his 1999 blockbuster Underworld, the buzzards have been circling. This year, they descended on his new novel, Cosmopolis: "A parody of Mr. DeLillo's own writing"; "as lugubrious and heavy-handed as a bad Wim Wenders film"; "ridiculous without ever being funny."

Swiftest Fall From Favor HBO. True, it wasn't possible for the network to rise in critics' estimation. Still, reviews of its big new fall series Carnivale and K Street were almost uniformly negative. The Village Voice called the former "a lot of freaks and carnies signifying nothing," and Salon wondered "just how much slowly unfolding sadness viewers can take." Of the latter's hapless attempt to mix real-life politicians with actors, the New Republic's Lee Siegel said: "Nonsense. If Soderbergh and Clooney knew how much the Beltway connivers were playing them like salmon, they would lie down on bagels and die. Celebrity is no match for real power." Even the raves about Angels in America felt like rote responses to Serious Television (and the lack of argument generated by the adaptation of this supposedly controversial play suggested that HBO was preaching to the converted).

Most Successful Use of Eggers-Bashing To Promote One's First Novel James Frey. What he said about Dave Eggers'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: "A book that I thought was mediocre was being hailed as the best book written by the best writer of my generation," he said. "Fuck that. And fuck him and fuck anybody that says that. I don't give a fuck what they think of me. I'm going to try to write the best book of my generation and I'm going to try to be the best writer." The current Amazon.com sales rank of his book, A Million Little Pieces: 271.