The Elegant Variation: TODAY'S NYTBR DISAPPOINTMENT

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August 10, 2006

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.

Posted at 12:14 PM in The Conversation | Permalink

Comments

honestly, if the book can stand on its own merit then so be it. she's not that good looking, sorry to be so negative but it's the truth and anyone so contrived as to focus solely on her looks needs to spend a little bit more time outside of a bookstore..

Posted by: truth | August 10, 2006 at 10:07 PM

Pessl's book is superb, read the last 200 pages in one sitting, and will be recommending it to everyone for the rest of the year.

Posted by: louisbranning | August 10, 2006 at 11:48 PM

The issue in TEV's post isn't the books quality. It's the reviewer's issues. When I was doing my reporting for Wired.com my editor would never in a million years have let me get away with quoting the bloggers without naming them. What kind of journalism is the Times doing? Are reviewers exempt from basic rules?

Posted by: MJ | August 11, 2006 at 05:39 AM

Truth --

It would be interesting to inhabit your world, since you don't find Pessl very attractive. Are you one of those guys who have a fetish for fat chicks or amputees? That's the only way your trollish comment makes any kind of sense.

Posted by: James | August 13, 2006 at 09:51 AM

Doesn't it even cross you rmind that your weird obsessive inistence that mainstream media types are "threatened" -- nay, "shaken" -- by you reeks of desperate self-aggrandizement? Honestly: it's pathetic. I can guarantee you that the woman who wrote the Times review has no idea who you are, and couldn't care less. -- Oh, and MJ? Honey? I don't know what "reporting" you did for "wired.com" -- listings, I'd guess -- but you can quote anyone you want to without naming them, at any publication in America. And you don't even have to wait a million years. Especially if they're people as inconsequential as bloggers.

Posted by: Joe Blow | August 13, 2006 at 11:58 AM

the hostility to bloggers is everywhere in the newspapers these days -- no more so then when blogs correct inaccuracies in news reports, but increasingly just in gratiutious asides that serve more to lay bare the neuroses of freelancers to editors who desparately want to believe their top-down models will survive.

Posted by: Simon | August 13, 2006 at 01:02 PM

i realize the article itself was written about the NYTBR but i was simply making an assessment on this overkill regarding Pessl's picture considering i've seen multiple blogs about her good looks. i bought the book. read the first 30+ pages. some of the writing could be more concise but it is entertaining, no doubt about that. james, you're an idiot. is her picture seriously "drool-worthy"? as has been stated by a few bloggers. not even close. she's DEFINITELY not so gorgeous you'd ask yourself whether she "just got by on her looks" as so many bloggers are seemingly doing. i think she got by because she's written an entertaining book and you need to take your hand out of your pants and spend some time outside of dramatically underlit coffee shop corners..

Posted by: truth | August 13, 2006 at 07:54 PM

Oh come on! She is attractive. She's certainly no fug. Maybe the problem is she's just not your type, truth. ;)

Anyway, i cant help but agree with Mark on this. Liesl Schillinger is being ridiculous. Not only that, but sloppy and insulting.

I guess since reviews of Pessl's book range from good to great she, for some reason, felt the need to drum up a bit of controversy.

Posted by: Jessica | August 13, 2006 at 09:46 PM

Hey, "Joe/Truth", maybe you can tell me why it's the anonymous posters who hide behind false email addresses who always swagger so bravely? And unless you are Liesl Schillinger posing as an illiterate asshole, there's no way you can guarantee anything. But, beyond being a coward, you're also evidently an idiot - the reviewer devoted the front page of the New York Times Book Review to a complaint about bloggers. Whether she's aware of this site (and I never made any claim on that score), she clearly pays attention to blogs. Hence the point of the post. And hence the proof that you are, as advertised, an idiot.

If you post anonymously again, your post will be deleted. If you want to slam people around here, sign your name.

Posted by: TEV | August 13, 2006 at 11:54 PM

While I disagree with its tone, I find there is a kernel of something I agree with in the anonymous poster's comments: I always cringe when reading your blog and others' when it comes to these kinds of defensive posts (mostly because in all other ways I enjoy your site). It seems that every time someone from a newspaper or magazine speaks of bloggers without the proper respect, there's a great hue and cry about it. It's like the blogger police. Why? The ease of blogging means that anyone and everyone can do it, and so the range of intelligence, insight and even motive is really, really wide. Which is great. But it also means that along with some wonderful things you get a big share of idiocy. Just like you would in a big group discussion. That's fine, but it also opens up the "blogosphere" to legitimate criticism. Sometimes the most popular blogs feed off of controversy and gossip, so alot of that is what people are going to see, and to respond to. And I don't think bloggers should expect to be taken seriously simply because they have set up an account and have started rattling off their musings.
Having said all that, you of course have the right to respond to Schillinger's story, and I agree that if her "distaste for bloggers" clouds her critical thinking that this is a problem. I just wonder why you protest so stridently against these poor "threatened," "shaken" overcompenating and insecure mainstream critics.

Posted by: Paul | August 14, 2006 at 01:45 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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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

August 10, 2006

TODAY'S NYTBR DISAPPOINTMENT

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

August 10, 2006

TODAY'S NYTBR DISAPPOINTMENT

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