The Elegant Variation

A FEW THOUGHTS ON REVIEWS, PROMPTED BY PW & KIRKUS

Lee Goldberg scooped me with my own news yesterday, noting that Publishers Weekly has reviewed Harry, Revised.  You can read the whole thing here, but here's the money quote:

... though there may be legions of writers spurned by his blog just willing for Sarvas to fail, this is a self-assured, comic and satisfying story

There was much celebrating and happy emailing going around yesterday, when Kirkus's considerably less kind review (not available online) came across the transom.  Still, it's not a train wreck, and there's a usable quote there, too:

The book is fast-paced; there are nice comic touches; and Harry is, finally, rather compelling, selfish and damaged but recognizably human.

So I'm batting .500, which any ball player will tell you is an impressive stat.  And what I said the other day holds absolutely true - good review or bad, I know enough to know it's one reader's opinion.  I'm grateful for the good and don't take the bad personally.  And I've been thinking about readers and opinions all day, since I linked to James Wood's review of His Illegal Self yesterday.  (And what follows is a rare bit of thinking out loud, so please read on accordingly.)

When I got the green-light to review this book, I was excited because I love Peter Carey's work and couldn't wait to write about him, but once I got into the book, I was miserable at the prospect that my first bylined review of his work should be a negative one.  I was further hobbled by only having about 450 words to make my case - so I do sympathize with PW and Kirkus reviewers - and I lament not having had more space to discuss specific failings of the book, the two key ones being the improbable flight to Australia, and Dial's implausible behavior.

So, of course, when James Wood's glowing review ran yesterday, it made me regret once again not having had more space to make my case.  And it became another first - the first time I've reviewed the same novel as Wood, and disagreed no less.  Given Wood's stature (and my all too well known fixation), it's enough to make one question one's critical chops.

But here's the thing.  Wood touches on at least one of the aspects (though not the other) that troubled me:

Carey needs this never-apologize-never-explain form, not least because he decides to send his errant couple to Australia, not quite credibly. (Why not Mexico?)

The key difference between us is that Wood is quickly able to forgive this in light of the stunning prose of the novel and Carey's use of Wood's beloved free indirect style (about which he writes beautifully in How Fiction Works); whereas in my case, because the foundation of the book was so sloppily laid (and I think Wood is generous in his assessment), I simply could never give myself over to it the way he did.  Similarly, I think, Carey fails to make Dial's willingness to throw away her promising future over this adventure remotely credible.  These combined failings kept me from falling into the book the way I have with Carey's other novels.

And yet, it's still one person's opinion, isn't it?  I remember when I got my first New York Times Book Review assignment.  Folks, I don't mind telling you it scared me.  Because, although I knew that a good review wouldn't necessarily help the book, a bad one would surely hurt it.  And I remember thinking, "Who am I to have such power over someone else's work?"  We tend to talk about how "The New York Times hated so-and-so," but it's not the institution, it's an individual who has been given the Times's imprimatur for the day.  And so I read all eight or nine of James Wilcox's previous books for an 800-word review because I realized it was something to take very seriously, indeed.  (And I was relieved when my second assignment was a first novel.)  And now, whenever I read a review - any review - I am acutely aware of the individual sitting with highlighter and post-its at the other end, not the 48-point type name on the masthead.

At any rate, I end the day - and this ramble - reasonably happy with the state of things thus far.  Besides, in the end, we all know that what really matters is what Harriet Klausner thinks ...

LOVE OF READING ONLINE BOOK FAIR - ONE YEAR LATER

I'm flattered to have been invited back to participate in this year's Online Book Fair brought to you by Love of Reading.  If you're showing up here for the first time, I encourage you to browse through the archives and recommendations down along the right side of the page.

I thought it might be interesting to look at what, if anything, has changed since my post last year.  At the time, I opined:

Because of the unlimited space on websites, the offerings on most blogs are limited only by the author’s laziness. They can offer detailed interviews, lengthy reviews and analysis of publishing trends. There’s no pressure to review the book of the moment, so bloggers can follow their noses or indulge in their passions, which might include creating a repository of author interview podcasts. But what blogs do best, I think, is create a literary sense of community, something very similar to what the Online Book Fair is attempting. At very little expense and at no real inconvenience to readers, we offer a gathering place where ideas are exchanged. Newspapers and magazines are necessarily static, with dialogue limited to the letters page. But blogs and other online forums can foster a real-time conversation which brings in readers from all over the world weighing in on thoughts that matter to them. Anyone who thinks no one is reading any more hasn’t spent much time online.

What strikes me most a year later is the growing convergence between what, for the sake of this discussion, I'll refer to using the inelegant labels "Old Media" and "New Media."  Sure, there have been a few unimaginative journalists and at least one rabid publicist who seek to position this story as Us versus Them - upstart, resentful outsiders taking on the gatekeepers of the culture.  But a funny thing happened along the way:  The upstarts have become gatekeepers, after a fashion, and the gatekeepers are showing a streak of rebeliousness with the result that the conversation has moved to a new level.  And that, I think, is the real story.

On the one hand, you've seen well established literary bloggers like Maud Newton, Laila Lalami and Edward Champion become familiar bylines adorning book review pages from Newsday to the Philadelphia Inquirer to the Los Angeles Times to the New York Times and beyond.  (My own reviews can be found in a newly added sidebar, This Gun For Hire, located down the right side of this site.)  For all those who would have you believe that literary bloggers are nothing more than embittered wannabees fueled by ressentiment, this growing body of work stands as, one hopes, a final rebuke.

On the other side of the fence, newspapers have launched themselves into the blogging business.  The best of these blogs, Dwight Garner's superb Paper Cuts, displays all the characteristics of the most popular and effective literary blogs - individuality, thoughtfulness, attitude and voice - coupled with the remarkable resource of the New York Times' bottomless archive, delivering a daily bit of book talk that's been an essential stop since the day it launched, as the often lively comments section attests.  The Los Angeles Times' Jacket Copy, though less engaging, is marked by editor David L. Ulin's thoughtful contributions.  Frank Wilson of the Philadelphia Inquirer was the first books editor into the blogosphere, where he provided an important early look at life inside a Book Review.  And then there's Critical Mass, the blog of the National Book Critics Circle (of which I'm a member) which, despite the occasional misstep and inadvertent faning of the Us v. Them flame, also has a formidable resource upon which to draw: its talented membership, which has contributed thoughtful essays, reading lists and invaluable advice for book reviewers.  We've also seen the launch of Steve Wasserman's book section at Truthdig, a weekly feature that proves that worthy criticism needn't necessarily exist in print form.  And Bookforum, one of the best book reviews in the land, now offers its entire contents online.

Still, lest anyone think it's getting too polite and friendly out there, it's worth considering all this in the long shadow of Norman Mailer's death, which has inspired tributes and attacks from new and old media alike.  Consider pugnacity; passion; carelessness; sloppy writing and faulty thinking; earnestness; the occasional gleaming sentence; righteousness; fury; engagement ... it seems to me that the qualities that made Mailer simultaneously maddening and vital, infuriating and essential are precisely what you'll find touring the ever-expanding literary blogosphere.  So welcome to fair.  The fun is about to begin.

DEPT OF PLUS CA CHANGE

Like Maud Newton, we've been dipping into and thoroughly enjoying the Library of America's new collection of Edmund Wilson's brilliant literary criticism, Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s and 40s, and we came across this passage in his 1944 review of Lloyd C. Douglas's The Robe:

"It is so difficult, when one first glances into The Robe, to imagine that any literate person with even the faintest trace of literary taste could ever get through more than two pages of it for pleasure that one is astounded and terrified at the thought that seven million Americans have found something in it to hold their attention.  What is the explanation of this?  Dr. Douglas himself, in an article distinguished by both modesty and good sense (Why I Wrote "The Robe" in the June Cosmopolitan), has indicated a part of the answer,  In the first place, you can always score a success by writing a novel about Jesus, if you take care to avoid the controversies which have split the later Christians into sects."

Change The Robe to The DaVinci Code and change the "avoid" in the last sentence to "stoke", and the landscape hasn't changed all that much has it?  (We experienced an identical sensation to Wilson's when, motivated by curiosity about what all the fuss was about, undertook to read the first chapter of Brown's chef d'oeuvre.)

BOOK PRICING SYMPOSIUM

Over at Litkicks, Levi Asher has begun an ambitious symposium on the question of book pricing - namely, are books too expensive?  In the first round, he speaks to Soft Skull publisher Richard Nash, literary agent Scott Hoffman, and your humble host.  To be truthful, we don't think books are all the expensive (though there is a potentially interesting conversation and Levi's done considerable legwork).  Here's our take:

Q: Where do you stand on the larger debate over whether or not our literary book publishers need to reconsider their packaging/pricing practices?

Mark: I'm not sure, Levi. The honest answer is that I hadn't much considered it before you brought it up. To be honest, I don't feel much outrage when I see twenty-five dollar books -- a night out at the movies with my wife costs me more than that (nearly double if I hit the concessions -- Have you seen the price of popcorn? Now THERE'S an outrage). Given the lasting value the experience of a great novel imparts (and the fact that you get to, you know, keep it on your shelf forever) versus the dismayingly ephemeral effects of most movies today, well, novels look like more and more of a bargain to me.

You can read the rest, including responses from much smarter people, here.

STUPID PUBLICIST TRICKS

We are normally extremely fond of publicists, as previous posts here have shown, but Shannon Byrne's riposte to our NBCC posting is so riddled with inaccuracies (Where did we bust on Publishers Lunch?  We busted on unimaginative newspapers, and used PL as the evidence; Where did we "kick the AJC"?; "pittling" is your unfortunate word, not ours; and please, feel free to verify your analysis of the petition makeup - phone calls? emails?) and demonstrates both a willful misreading of our intentions and such a thorough lack of understanding about blogs that it might almost force us to reconsider.  Certainly, it shows that some people just will not let go of the blogs vs. [fill in the blank] paradigm no matter how hard one tries.  (That said, given how deeply involved with the effort she is, it's understandable she might take things more personally than she should.)

Either way, we recommend that, at a minimum, she put down her newspaper for a moment and spend a little more time reading blogs before posting silliness like "Seriously, though, blogs are kind of like parasitic microorganisms which feed off of a primary host."  We appreciate your passion but you are several news cycles behind, Ms. Byrne.

MORE ON JAMES

I've been thinking a bit this weekend about Steve's recent post at This Space, in which he approvingly notes Gary Indiana's less than favorable view of Clive James in the Village Voice.  (For some strange reason, Liz Lopatto seems to want to make it seem like Steve is poking at me, but I think he's really poking at James.  At any rate, my bow is so riddled, I'd scarcely notice.)

I'm not quite as keen on the Indiana piece as Steve is.  Yes, James is pretty abrupt with Sartre and Celine.  OK.  The man has written millions of words of criticism - if this is the most for which we can call him to account, he's probably in pretty good shape.  (Even Indiana notes that he's quite fun to read.)

But the point that struck me more was the notion that James can't "interrogate his own broad assumptions and prejudices."  That's probably not an entirely unfair appraisal (although "won't" seems more likely than "can't") but I am moved to ask - who really does this?  Don't we all, to a greater or lesser degree, live in thrall to our own assumptions?  Don't get me wrong - I am a genuine, huge fan of Stephen's work, I've been reading him religiously since his Spike days.  But I don't really recall loads of examples of him challenging his own assumptions and prejudices, which become fairly easy to discern over time.  (One might even argue that, in uncritically embracing a piece that essentially supports his views, Steve did a bit of what he chides James for.)

But that's no reason to stop reading him.  Why would we forsake a smart, funny, thoughtful writer because he has his own hobbyhorses?  And, to be clear, he's not the only one.  There aren't many blogs - or writers - out there who really excels at that sort of vigorous self-examination and reappraisal because, frankly, it's not human nature.  We make our beds and generally stay put - or at least within the vicinity.  Otherwise, you'd see Ben Marcus championing realism and me touting the virtues of science fiction.  (This isn't to suggest that I - and others - don't stay open to things that challenge our assumptions.  But this notion of a wholesale renegotation of whatever it is that animates one, well, that's a rarer beast by far.  Hell, one might argue that Hitchens has done so, and look at what a mess that's made.)

So I guess what I'm saying is, though the criticism is true to some degree, this all seems a rather slight peg on which to hang James out to dry.  (I also note that it's generally the British who have less use for James than us Yanks; he's probably not suffering from overexposure on these shores.)  Either way, let he who is without sin, etc.

ALL SANITY ABANDON YE WHO ENTER HERE

We couldn't agree more with Meghan O'Rourke's look at Special Topics in Calamity Physics's jaw-droppingly undeserved berth in the New York Times Top 10 Books of the Year list, except that we liked it even less than she did.

But at the risk of sounding Scrooge-like, I was surprised to discover, on the New York Times' influential "10 Best Books of the Year" (to appear in the paper's print edition this Sunday), a book I had not imagined would make the cut: 27-year-old Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics. I read the book over the summer—before its publication—and admired its vigorous prose, yet finally was exhausted by it. For all its verve, the novel gets tripped up by lack of control, coy posturing, and preciousness. A promising debut? Probably. One of the five best fiction books of the year? Hmm, not so much.

As we look around the mountains of books that arrived here in the course of the last year, we're happy to send a few over to the Times, since they're obviously missing something.

WHEN THE BAR HAS NO LOWER TO GO ... CHOICES*

Adult readers, it appears, crave the comforts of young adult (YA) reading.

Lisa Santamaria is a college student who also enjoys YA fiction, particularly fantasy, which she said is often more imaginative than fantasy books written for older readers. Santamaria runs the children's department of the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Willow Grove, where many adults come in and ask for books for themselves.

"Children's books have a more upbeat ending, and a lot of people are looking for that," Santamaria said.

"They want something a little more entertaining or fluffy, so they come to the kids' section, only to find out that these books are not necessarily fluffy at all. Like Harry Potter - it makes you think."

It does, indeed.  Mostly, it makes us think about how blindingly wealthy J.K. Rowling has become.  Still, on the one hand, we remind ourselves that any number of great, enduring works started out as intended for children.  (The Little Prince leaps to mind, although even that's probably open to argument.)

On the other hand, it does ever so slightly feel like yet another stone of the great edifice of Grownupland has been gleefully kicked out from underneath us.  And there aren't many of those suckers left ...

* In deference to Cecil Castelucci's comments (see comments box), we've changed the title of this post to be a slightly more accurate, less incendiary reflection of our intentions.

HOW DO YOU SAY "IT'S NOT THE CRIME, IT'S THE COVER UP" IN GERMAN?

The NY Times continues its coverage of the Grass scandal, and pretty nails what is the core problem for us.

The reaction in Germany to this admission has been one of disbelief and indignation: not that a teenager should have been recruited into the Waffen SS as Hitler struggled to avoid defeat, but that the country’s most prominent writer should have hidden this while hectoring others for their political and social sins from the comfort of the moral high ground. “I do not understand how someone can elevate himself constantly for 60 years as the nation’s bad conscience, precisely in Nazi questions, and only then admit that he himself was deeply involved,” Joachim Fest, a prominent historian and biographer of Hitler, told the newspaper Bild. “I don’t know how he could play this double role for so long.”

We're not suggesting - as some commentors seem to think - that he should be punished for youthful mistakes or for having been a Nazi (although it's scarcely a fait accompli that he shouldn't).  We are saying that the sheer, naked, breathtaking hypocrisy here is inarguable.  This cuts to the heart of what one requires of one's moral exemplars, self-appointed or otherwise.  A certain amount of consistency seems a minimum; at the other extreme, being outrightly two-faced for a period of 60 years seems ample grounds to merit reassessment of Grass' place.  Talk of "punishment" and the like is silly, but as Bill Clinton knew, it's all about the legacy - and Grass' should be reevaluated and appropriately and permanently diminished over this.

TODAY'S NYTBR DISAPPOINTMENT

This Sunday's New York Times Book Review devotes its cover page to Marisha Pessl's Special Topics In Calamity Physics, which we're taking along for our weekend road trip.  The review isn't available online yet, so we're taking a minute to type out Liesl Schillinger's disappointing lede:

Whoever coined the phrase "everybody loves a winner" probably wasn't one.  When the news came out that a distractingly pretty actress, playwright and Barnard College graduate named Marisha Pessl, only 27, had sold her first book (which she also illustrated) - a "Nabokovian" thriller about an intellectual widower and his precocious daughter - for a substantial sum, the pick-a-little, talk-a-little publishing blog brigade when into conniptions.  "She's the latest in a long, long line to suffer from 'Hot Young Author Chick' Syndrome," one blogger grumbled; another wrote in a headline, "It's Not About Marisha Pessl's Looks and Money - Is It?" and asked if the book would have been snapped up so quickly if pessl hadn't had such a "drool-worthy author photo."  But don't hate her because she's beautiful: her talent and originality would draw wolf whistles if she were an 86-year-old hunchbacked troll.  And in Pessl's case, Nabokovian doesn't need scare quotes.  Her exhilaraing synthesis of the classic and the modern, frivolity and fate - "Pnin" meets "The O.C." - is a poetic act of will.  Never mind jealous detractors: virtuosity is its own reward.  And this skylarking book will leave readers salivating for more.

We've come to expect a certain amount of foolishness from the New York Times and we should probably be inured to this sort of thing by now.  But there's a bitterness in Schillinger's take that's hard to ignore.  (It's also hard to ignore the clumsy, breathless run-ons, but that isn't the focus of this post.)

This is the same sort of thing we've seen from John Freeman, a hostility toward and mistrust of blogs that seems to short-circuit the ability to reason soundly.  We've made no judgement yet on the book or the wisdom of the deal but it seems entirely sound and rational to challenge publishing for its slavish devotion to the young, the new and yes, the beautiful.  It's certainly wrong to assume as a default position that Pessl's book was not purchased on its merits.  But Schillinger displays a real absence of critical thinking here, allowing her obvious distaste for bloggers to obscure a larger and legitimate question. 

This is hardly an unsual position among mainstream reviewers and is likely to become more and more common.  Our own theory is that these reviewers are threatened by the growing profile of bloggers.  Certainly, as story after story suggests that "reviews don't sell books" and that word-of-mouth via blogs is more powerful, it's understandable that reviewers like Schillinger and Freeman would take a hostile and defensive view of blogs.  And as bloggers continue to enter the field as mainstream reviewers, they are sure to be shaken even further.

It's callow of Schillinger to suggest that envy and jealousy are the only possible motives for questioning whether a massive advance doled out to a 27-year-old actress is a sound business call.  Examining the motives of the deal is a fair question that she slights NYT readers by failing to engage.

For our part, we are content to let the book be the final arbiter, and we look forward to seeing for ourselves.  And we look to reviewers who are not working so hard to overcompensate for their own insecurities to provide us with more balanced perspectives.