To paraphrase Sam Tanenhaus, who profits if Bill Watterson doesn’t write it? Clearly, not the NYTBR. The WSJ has coaxed the reclusive Bill Watterson out of retirement for a review of the new David Michaelis’s Charles Schulz biography. Meanwhile, the Schulz family has cried foul. Although now that I’m almost finished with the book, I […]
Results for: nytbr
Questions for Sam Tanenhaus
Since Faust was a tragic play, an opera, and a film, how can Schlesinger “paint” his defection as Faustian? Sure, Goethe was an occasional painter, but even he had his doubts. Also, as neologisms go, “irono-babe” is about as inviting as Infobahn. (And why the hyphen? The first step in coining any noun is to […]
A Kinder, Gentler NYTBR Podcast
It appears that the NYTBR podcast has shifted to a kinder, gentler opening tune — which is to say opening music that as safe as elevator music (but certainly not houses). And Tanenhaus is now trying harder to sound warmer than he has in the past. One can only imagine the memos that were disseminated. […]
Roundup (With Frequent Lyrical Interludes)
This year’s MacArthur fellowships include Stuart Dybek. Oh, Norman Mailer, just go away. The Internet is set to overtake television as the largest medium by 2010. Which makes me wonder why the NBCC doesn’t form a strategic alliance, Survivor-style, with the television medium to take out all these online upstarts who are apparently responsible for […]
Roundup
The Match Game death watch? And what of the 1970s incarnation of The Hollywood Squares? It appears that now would be the time to be paid in Canadian dollars. JoAnn Karkos has decided to hold two sex books hostage because she found their content objectionable. She checked them out at the library and refuses to […]
Roundup
Robert Jordan has passed on. In this week’s LATBR, Douglas Hofstadter offers a fairly solid summation of Steven Pinker’s latest book, The Stuff of Thought. Because this engaging volume is indeed very airtight in its logic (it includes a pretty devastating takedown of Jerry Fodor’s “modularity of the mind” theory), I’m a bit curious about […]
Roundup
And it appears that the Tron followup is not dead. Joseph Kosinski is in “final negotiations” to develop and direct “the next chapter,” which will involve Flynn asking a group of nihilist hackers not to pee on his rug and a manual typewriter that reveals Flynn’s complicity in a Chuck E. Cheese venture called “Star […]
NYTBR for Dummies: No Revision Required
To read Jim Lewis’s review of Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke is to enter an overvalued campanile of stupidity, amateurish insight, half-baked conclusions, and insufferable smugness that one expects from a Forbes 500 member who has the apparent misfortune of running into a groundling. The groundling, of course, is you, me, any curious insect climbing […]
Roundup
It’s now an ungodly hour in the early morning and I’m currently more inclined to Lindy hop than sleep. Guess it’s time for a roundup! Not a single word? Uh, not quite. These folks appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #46! Two paragraphs of a review devoted to acknowledgments? Sorry, Mr. Ames, this is not […]
Roundup
I profoundly disagree with Levi’s condemnation of Luc Sante’s excellent overview of the many versions of On the Road that are now available. Levi does have a point about the NYTBR‘s regular employment of reductive-minded bozos who wouldn’t know a literary visceral charge even if they were hooked in series with a tome and a […]
The “Formatting the Partition” Roundup
The first of three podcasts pertaining to this summer’s LBC picks has been released by the stellar Pinky. The podcast features Nicola Griffith and Gwenda Bond. Mark Sarvas, Ron Hogan, and some guy who makes phone calls are interviewed in the latest article describing how litblogs might make a difference. Laura Bush and Jenna Bush […]
Sam Tanenhaus: The Architect of Decay
This week’s New York Times Book Review includes a potentially promising meditation on ideology by Stephen Metcalf, who writes about a recent essay anthology, Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journey. Ensconced within this essay is Metcalf attempting to come to terms with his personal ideology, with a surprisingly uncharacteristic […]
Sven Birkerts and “Literary Life”
The reputedly intelligent Sven Birkerts has entered into the print vs. online fray in today’s Boston Globe. He very kindly cites me, as well as Mark Sarvas, as a litblog that he has investigated. I can’t speak for Mark, but in the interests of conveying to Mr. Birkerts that litbloggers and print journalists are not […]
Dave Itzkoff on How to Write for the NYTBR
The first dirty little secret of writing a review for Sam Tanenhaus is to come across like an ill-informed wanker who knows nothing of the genre he is writing about. The second is that everyone who reads the NYTBR are — dare I say it? — intended to be treated as idiots. It’s important to […]
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 […]
“Visions and Violence” — Vollmann and Drew at the Whitney
There are indeed people in New York who are interested in William T. Vollmann. On Thursday night, accompanied by Marydell, Levi, and Jason, I attended the Whitney Museum “Summer of Love” lecture featuring photographer Richard Drew — the man behind the Falling Man photos — and, of course, Vollmann. There, I also met a smart […]
Roundup
Ms. Skurnick had the BOOG. Mr. Sarvas has Mrs. TEV. And now Ms. Stockton, flush from her recent honeymoon (and again congrats!), has the ALP. Acronyms, of course, are how we litbloggers celebrate our loved ones. So I henceforth refer to my own as ILWYDFM (quack quack quack quack), leaving the explanation a strange mystery. […]
Gunter’s Such a Great Guy!
I’m with Orthofer. How precisely does John Irving’s “Give my buddy Gunter a chance” piece tell us anything about Peeling the Onion? By this sleazy standard, one would expect Tanenhaus to sully the NYTBR further by publishing a 4,000 word essay authored by one of George Bush’s remaining friends, telling us to look the other […]
Hell Has Officially Frozen Over
Ladies and gentlemen, the NYTBR has a longass review this Sunday of David Markson’s The Last Novel. I’m stunned. Stunned, I say! Tanenhaus actually devoting pages to fiction off the beaten track? (To give you a sense of how earth-shattering this is, the last reference in the NYTBR to Markson involved an episode from a […]
NBCC Panel Report: “Save Our Book Reviews!”
Moderator: John Freeman Panelists: Dan Simon (Publisher, Seven Stories Press), Sarah McNally (owner, McNally Robinson Bookstore), Hannah Tinti (editor, One Story), Michael Orthofer (Complete Review), and Tim Brown (freelance reviewer). On Wednesday night, a crowd of thirty — mostly over the age of 40 — gathered at the New York Center for Independent Publishing for […]
Dwight Garner Ripping Off Blogosphere
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 […]
The NYTBR Goes “Sub-Literary”
Dwight Garner has joined the blogosphere, which means, of course, that Sam Tanenhaus can start ignoring its own pages and calling its own material “sub-literary.”
BEA Panel Report: Ethics in Book Reviewing, Part Three
With Tanenhaus’s disappearance before the Q&A session, the conversation became smarter and more relaxed, with John Leonard offering fascinating tales of his NYTBR tenure. As I entered the room, just after setting up a conversation with Nigel Beale that regrettably never happened, Levi Asher was in full force, asking the question I had intended (and […]
BEA Panel Report: Ethics in Book Reviewing, Part Two
Panel: Ethics in Book Reviewing: The More Things Change…? (June 1, 2007) “Introducer”: John Freeman Moderator: Carlin Romano Panelists: Christopher Hitchens, Francine Prose, John Leonard, Sam Tanenhaus and David Ulin. Hitch looked bored and a bit pissed. He shuffled onto the dais like a big and buoyant oil tanker making a slow turn into a […]
BEA Panel Report: The Blogging Panel
Panel: Blogs: Is Their Growing Influence a Tastemakers Dilemma? The Crossover Hurdle (June 1, 2007) Moderator: Bud Parr Participants: James Marcus, Lizzie Skurnick, Dwight Garner, Anne Fernald “I’m one of the blog people,” said Bud Parr, the moderator of the BEA blogging panel. But he wasn’t the only one. They were other blog people, among […]
Panel Report Forthcoming
Pictured from Left to Right: Francine Prose, John Leonard, David Ulin, Sam Tanenhaus and Carlin Romano. Incidentally, Tanenhaus, whether because of an impacted schedule or fearing any questions pertaining to the NYTBR‘s regrettable declivity, ran away from the panel right before the Q&A part. I had fully intended to ask him how an editor who […]
Roundup (Been Caught Stealing Edition)
Scott smells a rat with Susannah Meadows’ review of Jamestown. I have to agree. Why bother to bring up the dog and penis imagery and not venture a stab as to what it might symbolize? Richard has more and has urged everyone to stop caring about the NYTBR. Another offering in last weekend’s NYTBR was […]
LOLNYTBR
(with thanks to Annalee)
Roundup
I intended to link to it yesterday, but this week at the Litblog Co-Op, folks are discussing Marshall Klimasewiski’s The Cottagers. There’s talk of horrible vacations and, on Friday, a podcast interview will follow. Charles Shields reveals how he used the Internet to conduct research for his Harper Lee biography. George Eliot’s letters to Henry […]
NYTBR
While I still harbor considerable doubts about Sam Tanenhaus’s abilities to cover literary fiction with any degree of range or (here’s the key quality) humor, it is nevertheless good to see the services of one Mark Sarvas employed, deflecting attention from other decidedly less robust contributors.