At long last, Carlin Romano has posted the results of the National Book Critics Circle ethics survey. If there’s one thing that most NBCC members can agree upon, it’s that 98.1% of them are indeed members of the organization. Where the six stragglers and the one “other” came from is difficult to say. But I suppose a few rotten apples or contrarians are likely to find their way into the fix.
The other major consensuses are these:
84.2% of the NBCC members who took this survey believe that a book editor should not assign a book to a friend of the author.
83% believe that opinion journals should adhere to the same ethical standards as newspaper book sections.
76.7% say it’s okay for a reviewer to repeatedly review books by the same author over the course of many years.
76.5% believe that it is unethical to review a book without reading it entirely.
76.3% believe that book review sections that are paid by companies for reviews should be identified in the same way that bloggers are.
73.4% aren’t sure if the ethical standards of the United States and England are significantly different.
72.1% see no problem with an editor assigning a book known to hold aesthetic, political, or literary views close to the author.
68.5% believe that anyone mentioned in a book’s acknowledgments page should be barred from reviewing the book.
68.5% believe it isn’t okay for an author to review another book if the author has served as a major source in another book that the book’s author has published.
66.5% believe it’s okay for a newspaper or magazine to review books by current or former staff members.
66% say that it’s okay for a book section to have a podcast with the author, while the book section carries a review.
64.9% believe that someone who has written a blurb should be prohibited from writing a lengthier review of the book.
Many of Romano’s questions seem to address, rather amusingly, some of the current practices of The New York Times Book Review. And judging from the results, it would appear that Sam Tanenhaus is upholding only half of the ethical bargain. I’ll have more to say about this in depth later. But for now, I direct you to Michael Orthofer’s commentary.
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. (