No Surprise: NYTBR Slacks Off on Popular Fiction Too
Written byPosted on December 29, 2006
Filed Under Tanenhaus, Sam
Michael Blowhard observes that the NYTBR is a failure on the popular fiction front as well: “To use an analogy: imagine a movie magazine. It doesn’t announce itself as avant-garde, or as niche in any way. It’s just The New York Review of Movies. It purports, in other words, to be covering movies. You’d expect this magazine to have a point of view — who would even want a publication that’s indiscriminate, after all? But I think it’s fair to say that you’d be surprised if all the movies this magazine gave substantial coverage to were upscale arthouse films.”
And it looks like you can now watch the Book TV segment in its entirety. Levi Asher is correct: the humorless Tanenhaus is about as happy and enthusiastic about books as a chartered accountant is about opening his books to the IRS.
Other highlights (and really this does play like a Christopher Guest mockumentary):
- Dwight Garner is the most personable member of the NYTBR team and knows his stuff (7 minute mark, 14 minute mark & 17 minute mark, et al.)
- Tanenhaus “thinks” that Richard Ford’s Independence Day won the Pulitzer in the 1990s, but isn’t sure (11 minute mark)
- Tanenhaus browbeats poor deputy editor Bob Harris (13 minute mark)
- Tanenhaus actually approximates something close to a smile, clearly an effort that comes as readily as working a twelve-hour shift at a warehouse (16:30)
- Barry Gewen cops to being terrified early in his NYTBR career (17 minute mark)
- Garner wants to find and cover the top literary talents (alas, with his boss not even familiar with basics on Richard Ford, it’s questionable whether Garner’s dream will come true) (17 minute mark)
- Tanenhaus vs. “the stiffs” (”Self-published books we don’t publish. Some day this may change,” “We don’t review a book because it’s already a bestseller,” “We don’t do advice and how-to books, except in the rarest of occasions,” “Sometimes publishers will ask us to reconsider.”) (20 minute mark)
- The discard room (23 minute mark)
- Tanenhaus boasting about having the Saul Bellow Library of America volume early (26 minute mark)
- Tanenhaus: “ambitious” critics read or reread all of an author’s backlist (28 minute mark)
- Gewen notes that not everyone is eager to write for The New York Times (28:30)
- Tanenhaus is a big stickler for polished prose (30 minute mark)
- Tanenhaus: “Among the younger generation of reviewers and critics, [polished prose] is where the tension lies. Because of the blogosphere, because of online publications where there is a tendency to write very quickly and not always thoughtfully and to write sloppily often. Sometimes, it’s hard for those writers to make the transition.” Bullshit, Sam. If you honestly believe that those in the blogosphere cannot slow down or that a writer cannot write polished and fast, particularly when it’s a paid gig, you clearly have no understanding of the blogosphere. (30:30)
- More folderol from Sam: “There are online writers who are brilliant for us. But also we like to offer a range for young and old writers….We also want to be a showcase for distinguished reviewers.” Joe Queenan distinguished? He’s the Bobby Slayton of the book reviewing world: a lowlife thug who let bitterness take over his funny bone years ago. Leon Wieseltier distinguished? Rachel “I Lost My Personality When I Left the Observer” Donadio distinguished? If by distinguished, you mean pretentious bores, then pop open the champagne, Sammy Baby. (31 minute mark)
- Sam goes gaga over Henry Kissinger (31:30)
- “We don’t like ad hominem comments. We don’t like casual assertions. There’s some degree of dignity we try to bring to it.” Yup, now I see why Tanenhaus likes a liar like Kissinger so much. The dirty laundry is now in the spin cycle. (32:30)
- Political books are generally assigned to centrists. (33:30)
- Tanenhaus: “In the world of publishing, more people know Nancy than anyone else in this office.” (34 minute mark)
- Tech templates revealed. (35 minute mark)
- Most art is digital. (37:20)
- The copy editing area. (38 minute mark)
- “We do a great deal of fact checking.” Indeed. I’ll be sure to fact-check you myself once the Tanenhaus Brownie Watch returns. (38:30)
- Debate on the term “shoot the messenger.” What does the reviewer really mean? Maybe relentless questions along these lines are part of the problem. (40 minute mark)
- The Letters page is Tanenhaus’s favorite page. (42 minute mark)
- Alison McCullough editing Dave Itzkoff: “I’m not a sci-fi expert!” (45 minute mark)
- Greg Cowles on blurbs (48 minute mark)
- Tanenhaus likes the hed “Beyond Belief.” (49 minute mark)
- Mick Sussman: online editor and the guy who produces the podcast (”It’s been getting more and more professional, we like to think.”). The online visitors have almost as many visitors as the print edition. (50 minute mark)
- “Mick has been having great luck getting prominent authors.” Amazingly, they have the authors come into the cube-laden NYTBR office or do the interviews by telephone. Well, that explains the lifeless quality of the podcast. And the podcast then gets outsourced to the QXR studio. (In other words, Mick doesn’t even do the cleanup.) By contrast, The Bat Segundo Show is researched, conducted and edited by me, one guy (save, of course, Mr. Segundo), who already has a full-time job and isn’t even in New York. (51:30)
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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.)
A couple weeks ago Tanenhaus had an “ask the editor” bit re the NYTBR. I emailed using my real name, in my professional capacity, which looks far more important on paper that it is in real life. I politely asked why more than one writer reviews one book when that space might devoted to more fiction reviews. Shockingly, my question did not make the cut.