BLOGS & BOOK REVIEWS IN THE LA TIMES

In tomorrow's Los Angeles Times, Josh Getlin takes the most nuanced look to date at the pseudo-controversy swirling around relations between bloggers and the press:

Indeed, more than at any time in the last 40 years, there is a bounty of news, features, criticism and gossip about books in newspapers, magazines and journals, blogs, radio and TV, podcasts and an ever-growing number of book clubs and festivals. It's by all appearances a flourishing literary moment in a culture that traditionally values other forms of entertainment, and it raises the question: Why should two key elements of that mosaic, litbloggers and book reviewers, be trading shots at all?

Getlin is one of the smartest journalists we've spoken to, and he's written a thoughtful, far-ranging piece that talks to editors, writers, reviewers and bloggers and doesn't opt for the easy "us against them" storyline (with the predictable exception of the unrelentingly self-important Dennis Loy Johnson; although he certainly knows all about blogs' failure to raise "the level of intellectual discussion", given his propensity for passing off shit like this as "literary criticism").  We're pleased to see inclusion of a few others beyond the usual suspects for this kind of story, like Callie Miller, although one can't help but continue to lament the Los Angeles Times's continuing fear of hyperlinks.  And yes, that's our mug shot up there.

Comments

[Francis McDibblesworth]

Regardless of your fake beef with Almond,

"
Because the real charge derived from reading ELIC is the chance to re–experience the melodrama of 9/11, those bracing weeks when we all stood transfixed by the tape loops and slapped brave bumper stickers on our cars and pretended that we had suffered something profound, when all most of us had suffered was the vicarious thrill of a genuine televised catastrophe. Rather than leaving the mourning to the families who lost loved ones, or who were directly affected by the attack, we claimed their tragedy as ours. We weren't interested in examining why our country had become the object of such murderous derision. Instead, we staged a national pity party. I couldn't help but read Oskar as the perfect stand–in for the American mindset: a glib, self–dramatizing child defined by his victimhood and a plucky determination to endure."

is one of the most lucid and well written takedowns of Foer's crap as I've seen. And I think Almond is total crap as a fiction writer. So I'm not sure what you meant to prove by knocking DLJ or that particular essay by Almond.

[TEV]

OK, "Francis," let's talk about this. But first, please explain to me why it is that guys like you invariably hide behind false names and bogus email address? What, exactly, are you so afraid of? Plenty of people have equably dissented here over the years with no such terror of whatever it is you seem to fear, so please help me understand.

As for your actual comment:

1) If you think my beef with Almond is fake, you haven't spent much time around here.

2) If you think the essay I linked to really is "one of the most lucid and well written takedowns of Foer's crap as I've seen," then you need to read a bit more, since you can't seem to see through Almond's pious, overheated, self-righteous rhetoric. Go seek out Daniel Mendelsohn's NYRoB essay on the films of 9/11 for an informed and intelligent look at how societies mourn.

Additionally, this is from the very same essay:

"I had read the excerpt of Safran Foer's first novel in the New Yorker and found it sad, funny, a little on the shticky side, but basically kickass."

OK. We have DLJ lamenting the degradation of literary discourse - and this is his idea of what passes for meaningful literary criticism? But your use of "takedown" betrays your perspective, so perhaps you are DLJ's (and Almond's) ideal reader.

As for Johnson, he's a self-important, humourless prat, as I've shown here in the past.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. And, unlike you, I sign my name to it. Even Almond does that much, to his credit.

[Francis McDibbs]

Hello,

Perhaps I characterized your argument with Almond too carelessly. I guess I meant, I don't understand why you waste your breath with him.

That said, I'm not sure what your complaint regarding my choice of phrase ("takedown") is. Foer is someone who traffics in sentimentality; a Mitch Albom for the hipster class. I don't think he deserves much more than a "takedown." Admittedly, the beginning of that essay is from where I quoted, and the self indulgent stuff doesn't really matter. I guess I looked past that.

And I suppose I haven't read your documentation re: DLJ before, but I do know that what he does with MHP is seemingly a good thing.

Anyway, I didn't mean to insult you. I agree with you 100 percent of the time regarding Almond's fiction. I just thought that that particular essay was right along my thought process regarding Foer (I've done the 99 page test on both his novels prior to hurling them across the room).

[Frankie Dibbs]

That should read, "I think that the real beginning of that essay is where I quoted from, and all of the stuff that comes before it is stupid and self indulgent."

[TEV]

I appreciate your clarifications.

My issue with "takedown" is that it's many things but it neither "raises the level of intellectual discussion" nor does it constitute the serious "literary criticism" that DLJ seems to wish for and claims he stands for. It's mud-slinging, which might be entertaining and resonate with someone who already shares a given opinion, but it scarcely constitutes meaningful criticism.

And you still haven't explained wherefore this cloak of anonymity.

[ed]

Face it, Mark. You're just jealous that you're not daddy blogging right now. :)

[J. D. Daniels]

James Wood on “takedown”: “I detest that verb. For one thing, no review ever does ‘take down’ a writer: the writer has a way of popping up very punctually, three or four years later, with another offering. For another, a serious critique, of the kind I have written of UNDERWORLD or PARADISE or WHITE TEETH, takes nothing down; it takes something seriously […] The issue has never been ‘snark’; it has always been intelligence, and writers rightly prefer intelligent hostility to stupid praise.”— from n+1, Number Three, Fall 2005.

[Jack Pendarvis]

Speaking as a "writer" I just want to say that James Wood is right. We love hostility! Every morning I get up thinking, "Boy oh boy! I hope I get some hostility today!" And usually, my wish is granted. Of course, if the hostility is intelligent, that's just the icing on the cake!

[callie]

Yes, what IS it with the links? It boggles the mind that the LAT holds so firmly to some archaic rule about outbound links taking away from their own site's traffic.

I find this particularly odd because they've been talking up their new online book environment so much...it seems the most obvious, natural extension: links to the books, people, events you're talking about.

[Helen DeWitt]

I've only started reading blogs in the past month or so because a friend had one that I thought was clever; was surprised to find a controversy in which print journalism claimed the high ground. No newspaper could give space day in day out to the kind of detailed linguistic analysis one gets on Language Log -- a blog which in educating the public could free all writers from the copy-editorial silliness which is such a tax on their time. (We may note that few reviews are likely to have space for discussions of punctuation and usage, however much attention the author has paid to such details.) Any blog, even a less specialised one, has the advantage of being able to quote generously in support of its arguments -- in other words, to allow the voice of the author to be heard -- without worrying about the word count.

I was thinking today about writing something about September 11 novels and why it is that none of them bring in Arabic (if Tolkien could haul in the languages of Middle-Earth, presumably we could bring in the languages of the Middle East), and thinking of a rather amazing logo I was once sent by Haaretz for the Read Hebrew America programme (an aleph with the stars and stripes used as a fill) -- well, there MAY be a newspaper that would permit a reviewer to enliven a review with a stars-and-stripes aleph, an Arabic map of Texas and some samples of Arabic script, but if so the word 'permit' is key. On a blog the question of permission does not arise. Time that might otherwise be spent arguing with an editor can be used assembling the material most relevant to the argument. (A similar point could be made, I suspect, if a critic wanted to illustrate an argument using mathematics -- which one might well want to do if one were discussing the nature of realism. My guess is that a newspaper would strenuously resist the inclusion of such material.)

I've heard terrible stories of distinguished authors offering to review a book to give a writer a break, and then having weeks or even months wasted by a gung-ho editor. Presumably a good literary blog offers one way round that problem too.