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.]
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
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.