Month / July 2007

by Edward Champion

Sam Tanenhaus’s Soul-Sucking Tentacles

Litkicks: “Rachel Donadio’s articles have no point of view. I’ve read at least ten of her essays or interviews in this publication in the last two years, and I have never once felt I had the slightest indication what she thought about her subject. She is the only regular NYTBR writer who does not ever deign to share a point of view with the reader. In theory, this type of dispassion could have some value — perhaps some sort of Joan Didion-esque blank journalistic resonance — but it would have to be handled more artistically to achieve this effect. When I read an article like today’s Donadio piece on Salman Rushdie, I simply feel empty and unsatisfied. I expect a New York Times Book Review writer to communicate some type of point of view to me, or else I’m eating a bowl of flavor-free ice cream. Rachel Donadio, what do you think about Salman Rushdie?”

I agree with Levi, with one vital qualifier: Donadio’s work at the Observer did have a point of view to share with the reader. Consider this sardonic 2004 report of BookExpo:

Nearby, Jonathan Karp, the boyish and rising (if not already risen) Random House senior vice president and editor in chief, aggressively introduced passers-by to Robert Kurson, a slightly frightened-looking author whose book, Shadow Divers , is about divers who find a U-boat off the coast of New Jersey. It is expected to do well.

Or this amusing Caitlin Flanagan report:

So she doesn’t wash the sheets, but she does sew buttons. Does she like to sew buttons? “I do like to sew buttons. I think it’s very rewarding that you can take a garment that’s shabby and unwearable and in this quick way you can really transform it,” she said. “It’s an easy little gift for me to give him.” Yet this is from the same woman who in her 2003 essay on Erma Bombeck wrote that “I have been married a total of fourteen years to a total of two men, and never once have I been asked to iron a single item of either man’s clothing or to replace even one popped button, for which I suppose I have the women’s movement to thank. But I realize now, late in the game, that we’d be much better off if I had a few of those skills.”

This is the kind of skepticism and juxtaposition that one expects from a literary reporter along these lines. But this playful tone — which once made Donadio’s pieces so much fun to read — has disappeared in recent years. Did Donadio check in her sense of humor upon signing on with Tanenhaus? What caused her work to become what Levi suggests is “empty and unsatisfied?”

I don’t think it’s an accident that things shifted the minute that Donadio signed on with the NYTBR. Just look at the soulless banter in Donadio’s latest piece and compare it with the Observer work. This wholesale evisceration of this journalist’s strengths into prose that resembles a humorless hack is yet another reason why the NYTBR needs several swift kicks in the ass. Good editors recognize life and do their best to cultivate and nurture a journalist’s voice. While this thankfully seems to be the case with Liesl Schillinger, whose reviews continue to remain engaging and enthusiastic (perhaps because Schillinger keeps herself at arm’s length as a freelancer), I think something terrible may have happened to Donadio when she succumbed to the moth effect.

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • Schedules being strange and wills being obdurate, the roundup comes the night before. In this week’s Los Angeles Times, the lead review is William T. Vollmann on Oliver August’s Inside the Red Mansion, a biography of Lai Chang-Xing, who Vollmann succinctly describes: “Here is someone who worked hard, took risks and knew whom to bribe.” There’s also a review of Tito Perdue’s new novel by Antoine Wilson. And Ed “I’ll Have a Better View of the Chrysler Building Collapsing Than the Other Ed If Matthew Sharpe’s Dire Predictions Come True” Park has a new column.
  • And what do we have on the other coast? Roy Blount, Jr. and Kathryn Harrison. But, alas, it’s all severely undercut by the obnoxious Joe Queenan, a lout who wouldn’t know euphoria even if he were surrounded by a million smart and shapely women.
  • And speaking of journalistic institutions, Scrivener’s Error, his views perhaps colored by an inveterate text message junkie, opines that Roger Ebert has lost it.
  • Never let it be said that Borders didn’t kowtow to the politically correct. The bookstore chain has moved the Tintin books from the children’s section to the adult graphic novels section, because the Tintin books feature racist stereotypes, but they also feature introductions alerting the reader to these stereotypes. But thankfully Borders has assumed that parents are incapable of making their own decisions, ensuring that their consumer base will remain a thoughtless herd and children will remain attracted to books that offend nobody. No word yet on whether Clement Hurd’s books will be placed behind the Borders counter, with a large sticker reading “SALE OF BOOKS CONTAINING AUTHOR PHOTOS WITH CIGARETTES TO PERSONS UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE IS PROHIBITED BY LAW.” (via Quill & Quire)
  • Robert Birnbaum talks with Thomas Mallon.
  • Needless hysteria doesn’t get any sillier than this. The Gowanus Lounge reports that some parents are declaring Carroll Park “unsafe for families” with “an increasingly unruly element” of kids. The police won’t do anything about the problem. What are these kids’ crimes? Three teenage boys were slapping each other around with some wet T-shirts and were getting a little too close to the mothers. The boys “pursued us and started snapping their wet shirts over the fence, spraying our children with the water and threatening me.” You know, this is the kind of stuff I usually experienced growing up. If this is the kind of over-the-top hysteria to be found within the five boroughs, I think I’m going to have to do a little bit of investigation here.
  • Is current wi-fi a problem?
  • Harry Potter hubris? “In the past few weeks, Warner’s London legal office has sent e-mails to booksellers and party organizers around the country, warning them against unauthorized celebrating, under the threat of legal action. ‘[Your event] appears to fall outside our guidelines,’ said one e-mail. ‘Therefore, HARRY POTTER cannot be used as a theme for your event.’ It should also be noted that some of these events actually benefit charities. (via Bibliophile Bullpen)
  • Well, if the folks at Warner Brothers are going to be such assholes about this, I call upon Return of the Reluctant readers for a plan! Why don’t we all set up Harry Potter-themed events around the country for next Saturday and see if Warner sends out emails to us? The Harry Potter-themed events must involve drinks, debauchery, BDSM sex parties (with everybody dressed up in leather or Hogwarts costumes), passing around a bong — pretty much anything guaranteed to be adult and well “outside guidelines.” It doesn’t have to be about Harry Potter, of course. Hell, you can all just get together in some bar and call it a “Harry Potter-themed night” for all I care. But if anyone wants to throw a “Harry Potter-themed” drinking session next week, feel free to email me or leave a comment and I will collect all the “Harry Potter-themed” drinking binges and keg-chugging contests in a future post!
by Edward Champion

Do Today’s Blogs Owe Much to Izzy Stone?

Neiman Watchdog: “Although Stone worked for decades vigorously tweaking authority as a daily journalist, editorial writer and essayist, it was in 1953 that he created the perfect outlet for his extraordinary mind, starting I.F. Stone’s Weekly, easily the scrappiest and most influential four-page newsletter ever sent through the U.S. mail. When Stone shut it down in 1971, the Weekly had 70,000 subscribers. In many ways, the Weekly was a blog before its time. In format, it was a combination of articles, essays and annotated excerpts from original documents and other people’s reporting — just like a blog. In content, it was a far cry from the passionless prose that afflicts so much mainstream political reporting. Like so many of today’s top bloggers, Stone built a community of loyal readers around his voice — an informed voice, full of outrage and born of an unconcealed devotion to decency and fair play, civil liberty, free speech, peace in the world, truth in government, and a humane society.”

by Edward Champion

Daily Kos to Sheehan: How Dare You Talk About Impeachment?

Cindy Sheehan on Daily Kos: “I can’t post here anymore because my potential run for Congress is not on the Democratic ticket.”

How dare Sheehan protest the failures of Democrats! How dare she call upon the Democrats to impeach Bush! Why, that doesn’t fall into the hard line of helping to elect Democrats!

It is this kind of willful censorship — of a blog unwilling to understand that there are people, left and right, who aren’t exactly happy with what the Democrats are doing — that is a huge part of the problem. The more that the Daily Kos turns its head away from those who are vocal about Democratic inadequacies, the more it resembles a self-serving tool rather than a forum for ideas. And how different is this mentality from a right-wing blog?

This hypocrisy is why I find the Daily Kos so unreadable.

The big blogs, in many ways, have become as mainstream as their print and television counterparts. And while I’m not completely opposed to mainstream media — in part because I have the perhaps foolish belief that some things can be changed within it — I worry whether bloggers sometimes advocate the status quo more than they should. A good blogger — never mind whether political or literary — should regularly question her own beliefs and be flexible to the idea that she is sometimes wrong about the people or the issues that she takes to task. It is this quality that promotes good thinking. It is this quality that permits a wider spectrum for debate among bloggers and readers.