Dan Schneider (born 1965) is a United States poet, critic, film critic, essayist, and fiction writer best known for his criticism and literary website Cosmoetica. Schneider discovered poetry as a young adult, and has since published his poetry and essays in a number of magazines and newspapers. Schneider’s outspoken critiques of academic-style writings and political correctness in publishing have caused him to be recognized in a number of media outlets, including Cambridge University Press, The New York Times, and City Pages. His film criticism has been praised by Roger Ebert, who called him a "considerable critic."
Schneider was born in 1965 to an unmarried Minnesota mother. Given up for adoption in New York City, Schneider grew up with a working class family in the Glendale-Ridgewood neighborhoods of Queens. According to his memoir and press accounts, at age six Schneider witnessed a murder, the first of many. During high school, Schneider was a gang member.
As a child and young adult, Schneider worked a number of working-class jobs, including dairy manager at a grocery store. It is around this time he became interested in poetry. According to him, "I was watching the Phil Donahue show one day and they were talking about romancing a woman, and this guy on there said that poetry always worked. I remember that I had to look up the word in the dictionary." Schneider set out to become self-educated about poetry (and literature in general).
When Schneider was in his mid-20s, he moved to Minnesota to learn more about his biological family. While living in the Twin Cities, Schneider became involved in local poetry readings and poetry slams. Schneider became known for his poetry, ability to critique others, and criticism of academic-style poetry, what he called the incestuous nature of poetry, where writers praised each other’s works in a self-promotional cycle.
This latter quality made him controversial. In one reported instance, Schneider attended a poetry reading by Robert Bly. During the question and answer session, Schneider asked why Bly was "such a lousy poet." Schneider followed this by quoting from an essay Bly once wrote on Robert Lowell, in which Bly talked about the younger generation needing to destroy the old, and how trees needed to burn to save the forest. Schneider said that’s what he wanted to do for poetry.
Schneider created and ran the Uptown Poetry Group, which was billed as the longest-running poetry critique group in the Twin Cities. He married poet Jessica Schneider (née Lester) in 2000.
In 1999, the alternative newspaper City Pages (a sister paper of the Village Voice) printed a cover story about Schneider. The article, titled "Dan Schneider vs. the Rest of the World," focused on Schneider’s attempts to change what he saw as the incestuous nature of the Twin Cities' poetry scene. In addition to samples of Schneider’s own poetry, the article featured comments about Schneider from both supporters and detractors. The reaction to the article was massive. According to the writer of the article, more people responded to the article than anything the newspaper had ever published. For a month afterward, City Pages published letters to the editor about the article, with most of the established poets in the Twin Cities condemning Schneider and most general readers praising his honesty. The article later won a third place award for best Arts Feature in the nation from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.
In 2004, Schneider and his critical essays about literature were mentioned in a New York Times article, "The Widening Web of Digital Lit" by David Orr. He has also been quoted in other newspapers such as The Village Voice and on public radio. Finally, Schneider’s work has been condemned and praised by a number of online publications, from Web del Sol to the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore to various blogs.
In 2008, Schneider's review of the novel White Teeth, by British author Zadie Smith was a featured excerpt in Contemporary Fiction: The Novel Since 1990, edited by Pamela Bickley, and published by Cambridge University Press.
In recent years, Schneider has focused his energy on his website, Cosmoetica, founded in 2001. Independent website ranking services rank Cosmoetica as one of the most popular literary websites in the world, while essays published on the site have been reprinted or referenced in a number of books, including The Creative Writing MfA Handbook., Contemporary Fiction: The Novel Since 1990, and other books.
Schneider has used the non-commercial site to promote his view of poetry and literature, routinely condemning the works of those he sees as bad writers (such as Robert Bly) and praising the works of poets and writers he sees as neglected. Included in this last group are such writers as African-American poet James Emanuel and essayist Loren Eiseley. While the website started off focusing on literature, Schneider expanded it to cover topics like the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, UFOs, and the current Iraq War.
In 2003, Schneider and Arthur Durkee co-hosted an Internet radio program called Omniversica, which interviewed such diverse persons as poet James Emanuel, scientist Lynn Margulis, writer Dorion Sagan, actor/poet George Dickerson, director Josh Becker, astrophysicist and musician Fiorella Terenzi, surgeon and writer Leonard Shlain, author Howard Bloom, and filmmaker Godfrey Reggio.
In 2007, Schneider inaugurated The Dan Schneider Interview series on Cosmoetica. Amongst notable writers interviewed are novelist Charles R. Johnson, philosopher Daniel Dennett, journalist Pete Hamill, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, the "first in-depth interview with poet James Emanuel," paleontologist Jack Horner, essayist and film critic Phillip Lopate, zoologist Desmond Morris, journalist Charlie LeDuff, psi writer Brad Steiger, nature essayist Edward Hoagland, novelist Daniel Wallace, and actor/poet George Dickerson.
Schneider has also written a multi-volume memoir titled True Life. Sections of this memoir, along with other of his writings, have been published in a number of print and online magazines, such as The Manifest, 10,000 Monkeys, and the Dublin Quarterly.
In late 2006 Schneider further expanded his website to include an all film subsite called Cinemension. The site contains hundreds of in-depth film and DVD reviews of foreign, classic, and contemporary films from a literary and narrative perspective. Schneider has published his film reviews in a number of online publications, and is a member of the Internet Film Critic Society. His reviews are also aggregated on Rotten Tomatoes. and have been mentioned in other media, such as the Discussion Guide for the PBS television show P.O.V.
Schneider's film criticism has been praised by Roger Ebert, who called him a "considerable critic," adding
Dan Schneider is observant, smart, and makes every effort to be fair. What is remarkable about (Schneider's film reviews) is that Schneider keeps an open mind, approaches each film afresh, and doesn't always repeat the same judgments. An ideal critic tries to start over again with every review.
