The Elegant Variation: BREAKING RADIO SILENCE

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October 01, 2004

BREAKING RADIO SILENCE

We're lifting our head for a moment from our recovery to take note of the redesigned NYTBR, about which we'll write at greater length on Monday. Naturally, however, the item that's drawn our notice is the listing of "Web sites for people who read."

Once we got over our initial disappointment at not being mentioned (if it had been a list of weblogs only, we'd have been downright ornery but with as wide a net as "literary websites" casts, we can't complain too loudly - there are a whole lot of 'em out there), we thought the list was an adequate if quirky introduction to lit on the web. There are a few questionable choices - MobyLives hasn't been updated this year, for example; and the last Literary Dick update was August 11 - as well as a few outre ones - did we need two sites touching on that ludicrous sub-genre of fan fiction?

Still, it was nice to see friends like Ron and Birnbaum noted for their efforts; and it's de rigeur to take note of Maud and The Complete Review, cornerstones of the litblog world. (It also appears to be de rigeur to pick on Maud - c'mon, people, can't you read? It's a "personal website" - she says so herself.) The appeal of Bookslut is an enduring mystery to us, but if there's a list of sites, you'll find her there. And it was nice to see Sean Walsh's Books Diary earn the title of "funniest of the lit blogs." But the best thing of all may have been Gerard Jones finally getting the attention he deserves.

More on the resdesign in the days ahead.

Posted at 10:05 AM | Permalink

Comments

The redesign has now given additional purpose for the Tanenhaus Brownie Watch. I'll try and get a report (with a firm reset of the ongoing stats) up Sunday night. Gerard Jones' mention certainly helps things for Tanenhaus this week.

Posted by: Ed | October 01, 2004 at 11:00 AM

Putting aside any issues with the blog component, which has actually picked up a bit recently with the sub taking over, Bookslut as a whole is a pretty good online magazine, I find. Out of that list, I was second-most pleased to see Words Without Borders, though I hope that mention isn't used to fill any quotas for coverage of works-in-tranlsation.

Posted by: Ron | October 01, 2004 at 12:48 PM

Man, my sister's still fiddling with my little website 'cause I don't know diddly about how to make pages and buttons and navigation stuff, but in November or so I'm coming out with a fully revised Fourth Edition that's gonna be twice as big and is now gonna be called Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing and Tinseltown, Too, i.e., I'm going Hollywood...and if you think NY book guys are all smarmy and gobbed-up and incestuous and whacked in general, whoa, you should see what the boys and girls at CAA have to say. Oh, and speaking of these NYTBR people and this Tanenhaus guy and that chicken Michiko in particular, none of them has had the good sense to review GINNY GOOD, the best book published thus far this century. What are they waiting for? That's what I wanna know. G.

Posted by: Gerard Jones | October 02, 2004 at 06:03 AM

Well, I'm sulking (for us both). Maybe if I took a rest and didn't post for a few months I'd get a mention.

I'd also point out that there are very few genuine literary weblogs: that is, ones that review and speculate about literature in a literary manner. Dan Green's TRE for example, also not mentioned.

Posted by: Steve | October 02, 2004 at 10:24 AM

If it was a best of list, Mark and Dan Green should definitely have been included. Nor was it a list of web logs—it was an authorially arbitrary sampling of literary web sites.

WEBSITES, ya dig?

Anyway, I am aware that everytime an old media, especially the NYT, mentions the (literary )web world there is a cacaphonous
chorus of self righteous and indignant ululation. I have some (probably) inept and jejune psyche theories about the mixed and, dare I say, childish reactions but my main point is— it's just words. Take a breath or a walk. Pet your dog. Get a dog. Go easy on the coffee. Eat all the carbs you want...read stories...

Anyway, after having read The Divine Husband and Birds without Wings I would couple them with The Known World as the three great novels of the new, uh millenium.

Posted by: birnbaum | October 03, 2004 at 02:15 AM

Must be a crap millennium then. And that's two Ns if we're being picky.

Posted by: steve | October 03, 2004 at 08:22 AM

Okay, now that I have the article in my hands, there are some things that should be mentioned:

"The worst lit bloggers sound like what you'd get if you seated the title characters from 'Heathers' around the Algonquin Round Table and gave them a photo of Zadie Smith on a bad hair day."

"the chronic vice of the blogs -- has she mentioned her fellow bloggers? And how clever they are? And how much she really, really likes them?"

Beyond failing to understand the purpose of litblogs (much like last week's silly article on political blogs in the Times magazine, which painted political bloggers as techhead slackers only in this for the money), this is an interesting attack tactic, given that the NYTBR is (as Dennis Loy Johnson has noted and the great Gerard Jones has pointed out above) particularly incestuous. If reference is a weakness of litblogs, then at least we can say that we're far more honest about it than the Times. Besides, doesn't Joe Queenan's hit piece on A.J. Jacobs fall under the same snarky rubric? Also, note the bulleted list approach of Neil Genzlinger, a common stylistic device that's been in use by lit bloggers for far longer (Old Hag, Gawker and TMFTML come to mind).

It seems to me that Tanenhaus's tactic is to vilify litblogs while appropriating the stuff that he likes. And if the gloves are off, then this suggests to me that Tanenhaus is more intimidated by litblogs than even I ever suspected. Good. Maybe this will get him to cover more fiction, first novels, literary titles, and cut down on the regurgitated political crap.

I'll have more to say later.

Posted by: Ed | October 03, 2004 at 09:16 AM

Week after week the NYT inflames otherwise sensible people—people who have a hand in shaping if not remaking the public literary conversation. How many bad movies does a director have to make before one stops paying attention? How many unsatisfying articles and essays must one read before one decides that a publication is not relevant to one's world or point of view? How about agreeing that given the nexus of a corporate agenda and ambitious careerist writers, the NYT's values are hugely in conflict with the web journal nation? And then get on to what we really should be touching on— stories, books, writers, yes?

Steve, what a clever fellow you are —and you can spell and nit pick . Way cool.

Have you read any of the books that I have proclaimed the greatest of the New , uh, Age?

Posted by: birnbaum | October 03, 2004 at 01:13 PM

Greatest of the New Age? George Winston has books out there??? Hey, I thought you were proclaiming Prisoners of War as the best book of the new millennium.

Enjoy,

Posted by: Dan Wickett | October 03, 2004 at 05:37 PM

Is that the one that goes "Prisoners of war / blue skies in store..."?

Posted by: Ron | October 03, 2004 at 10:36 PM

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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*Now in Paperback*

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Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger

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SECOND LOOK

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

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The Rider by Tim Krabbe

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

October 01, 2004

BREAKING RADIO SILENCE

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

October 01, 2004

BREAKING RADIO SILENCE

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism