Dwight Garner Ripping Off Blogosphere
Written byPosted on June 13, 2007
Filed Under Tanenhaus, Sam
Dwight Garner, newly minted blogger of The New York Times Book Review, apparently has few new ideas on how to blog and is now content to rip off ideas from the blogosphere.
Case in point: “Living With Music”, an egregious ripoff of Largehearted Boy’s Book Notes. This is particularly shameful, because I can tell you that David Gutowski is one of the most generous bloggers around, more than living up to his moniker.
At this rate, I fully expect Garner to unleash The Cat Primero Show, a bold new podcast that offers a counterpart to Sam Tanenhaus’s social ineptitude as “podcast host.”
[UPDATE: Sarah has more observations.]
[UPDATE 2: I have left a comment pointing out the similarities to Book Notes on Garner's blog. I suspect that the comment will not be approved, but we shall see.]
[UPDATE 3: Yup, Garner has censored my perfectly reasonable comment. Jeff has also been running a few amusing experiments, demonstrating that Garner isn't interested in any dialogue other than conversational fellatio. That's too bad. There are far more interesting things that a head can do aside from bobbing up and down on Garner's cock. Garner also claims that he's "never seen Largehearted Boy before," but has promised many future lists. But if that's the case, why does his post look so similar to a Book Notes entry? Perhaps Mr. Gutowski might want to check his IP address log to see if anyone at the Times has been visiting his site to set the matter straight.]
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
- The Possibilities of Small
- Ben Macintyre: The Latest Sourpuss to Run Away From Possibilities
- Untapped Currency
- Reminder: Live Conversation with Sarah Hall on Tuesday!
- Five Three Oh
- The Bat Segundo Show: Marjorie Rosen
- When Parody Replaces Opportunity
- The Benefits of Notebooks
- Hate Mail Dramatic Reading Project #8
- Slowdown
Not to mention his “A Blog About Books” subtitle, which until very recently belonged to The Millions (though it has now been set aside). Still, there’s always room for another blog, and I’m pleased to see the NYT joining the crowd.
I don’t know, Max. This signals to me that the NYTBR considers blogs a competitive threat, and is now stealing the blogosphere’s ideas in a desperate attempt to leverage and “control” the media landscape, using their advantage as a brand name to recruit people like George Saunders, rather than working with us or recruiting us for opportunities in convergence.
Eh, I don’t find it to be that threatening. After all, Saunders made on appearance at The Millions back in Februrary 2006 (scroll down) and again briefly as part of our year end festivities. As Bat Segundo can attest, we can pull literary luminaries with the best of them. Plus, this seems like yet another example of the fallacies of the us vs. them mentality expressed in certain quarters. If we really believe that we are all participating in the same literary discourse, then, though he is late in arriving, we should welcome Mr. Garner to the party.
Didn’t I read somewhere some print person saying something about blogs having some merit and that the newspapers should “borrow” from them for their own online endeavors? (Sorry for the lack of details, but I’m a blogger and not inclined to thoroughly researching topics like the professionals do.)
You’re right, marydell. That was none other than John Freeman during his appearance on The Leonard Lopate Show:
http://www.edrants.com/?p=6025
Thanks for the support, Ed, but I would have been happy if the NYT blog had just mentioned LHB as an influence on the series. To read the introduction to the post, you would think this was the first time an author ever had a music playlist posted online.
My next goal is to influence Fox News, Ann Coulter, and the Bush administration on foreign affairs.
I think Ed has already influenced Ann Coulter. She’s so mellow now.
Large-hearted boy for president!
They are definitely screening posts. I just tried a lil experiment. Let you figure out which one is mine.
Er, I mean comments.
I’m not generally inclined to defend the Times, but this is pretty silly. What exactly is so original about this idea that Garner necessarily MUST have ripped it off of Largehearted Boy? Seriously. For one thing, have you never seen the fairly regular NYT features in which musicians are asked to discuss playlists of what they’ve been listening to? The idea, such as it is, could easily have come from there. Why is it so hard to believe that he hadn’t seen Largehearted Boy before?
I don’t understand the need to go instantly on the attack like this. I suspect that has more to do with your “censored” comment than anything else, especially since another comment pointing out the similarity was not “censored”.
The most striking thing to me about the NYTBR’s new blog was the complete absence of any indication that Dwight Garner reads books. He probably does, but perhaps the better header would be “A Blog About Other People Talking About Books.”
In Garner’s defense he did call Largehearted Boy ‘righteous’.
But… how does someone in the book-blogosphere not know who Largehearted Boy is? That’s like asking “Who the fuck is Jessa Crispin?”
Who are you? Got here from googling Garner. Not sure what you mean by “ripping off the blogosphere”. I thought that thing called “linking” was what it’s all about. I think this is another sad case of the dichotomously obsessed unknowns online blasting the “oldtimer printheads” whom they perceive to be toedipping naively into waters holding the voracious YOU, ready to eat them alive. My own dichotomous opinion? You exemplify the blogs that give blogs a bad name. Garner is in a position to bring readers to books and to great blogs. Doubt yours will be one of those.
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