All that apparent vetting and editing at the NYTBR wasn’t enough to stop L’Affaire Schott from sullying Tanenhaus’s pristine gates with redolent taints. The story is this: Ben Schott wrote an essay called “Confessions of a Book Abuser.” Readers, alarmed by the essay’s resemblance to a similar essay called “Never Do That to a Book” […]
Results for: nytbr
Bookforum: All Male, All the Time
The latest issue of Bookforum has hit the stands and the Artsforum gang has made most of it available online. Of particular note: Christopher Sorrentino on the new Flanagan book, this interview with A.M. Homes, and Ben Marcus on Lydia Davis. What is not particularly good is that out of 35 reviews, only fourteen are […]
Roundup
Neal Stephenson’s “It’s All Geek to Me” (via Books, Inq.) Widely linked (and, as observed by Scott, apparently outside the NYTBR‘s purview) is this previously unpublished Susan Sontag essay. I missed this profile last week, but the Guardian also has a profile of agent Ed Victor. Literary pilfering has a long and rich history. Charlie […]
Tanenhaus Won’t Have You at Hello
The underrated filmmaker Samuel Fuller said that a good story has to grab the audience by the balls from the get-go. Combing through the ledes in this Sunday’s NYTBR, it would appear that Sam Tanenhaus wouldn’t know crotch-grabbing even if Michael Jackson gave him personal lessons. I’ve culled several ledes from this Sunday’s NYTBR because […]
Roundup
I was extremely bothered by this piece of wankery from the NBCC. And it wasn’t because my “nemesis” Lev Grossman was involved. The NBCC, you see, is hosting a panel on just how gosh darn hard it is to look at them crazy genre spooks that threaten to drive down the neighborhood property values, when […]
Roundup
Heidi Benson has a definitive report on the LATBR‘s current state: The Book Review will lose four pages and merge with an eight-page opinion section. It could launch as soon as this month. These are unsettling developments to say the least. Much to my regret, I was too fried this weekend to attend Wondercon. (I […]
More on the LATBR
I’m not in New York. So I haven’t been able to confirm or deny earlier reports directly with top brass. Thankfully, Publishers Weekly reporter Jim Milliot has some concrete information, now that some of the Los Angeles Times staff is in New York promoting their yearly book awards: Both LAT editor James O’Shea and book […]
Roundup
Inside the NYTBR: “Before McGrath, there was Rebecca Sinclair—she didn’t even last seven years, and told Gewen at the end of her term: ‘I took this job because of my love of books, but all I’m doing everyday is dealing with crap.’ Tanenhaus, apparently, is now going through the same thing. ‘He has a pretty […]
The NYTBR Jumps the Shark
Review Lede: “Ron Jeremy has a big penis.”
Sam Tanenhaus is the Misinformed One
“I find they write about us, but I don’t find they write about authors and have that many interesting things to say about literature. Maybe I’m missing them? It seems to be more of a kind of a scorecard they keep about us and I think, well, let’s say they don’t like us and we’re […]
Roundup
One week, she’s giving marital advice to the Beckhams; the next week, she’s polluting the television medium with her drivel. I remain convinced that there is no way to get the media to stop paying attention to Jackie Collins (including me, apparently). Someone must also ask this: when was the last time David Denby was […]
The New York Masturbatory Sock Puppet Review of Books
Once again, Sam Tanenhaus demonstrates how little he cares about journalistic integrity by throwing a bone to Lee Siegel this week. You might remember Siegel as “sprezzatura,” a sock puppet alter ego he created to leave comments on his very own posts to defend against criticism of his New Republic blog. Why Siegel is so […]
Reason #142 Why Dave Itzkoff is a No-Nothing Assclown
New York Times: “All science fiction has some element of titillation — a strategy of taking known facts and stretching them to the limits of credulity, for the purposes of both entertaining and enlightening.” Gee, I thought the purpose of speculative fiction was, much like many other novels, to provide a narrative that reflected the […]
Finally, Tanenhaus Does Something Right
Richard Powers is in this week’s NYTBR.
No Surprise: NYTBR Slacks Off on Popular Fiction Too
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 […]
The Slate Audio Book Club Strikes Again!
2006 wouldn’t be complete without another inept appearance from those dimwitted trendsetters at the Slate Audio Book Club! When last we checked in with the gang, they had moved on from racist generalizations and had declared Michael Pollan’s investigations into how food is prepared and distributed as “yuppie fussiness.” Not to be outdone, these infamous […]
BSS #87: Simon Winchester
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Ready to drink geologists under the table. Author: Simon Winchester Subjects Discussed: San Francisco’s edgy impermanence, San Francisco vs. Venice and the North Sea cities, humankind’s geological privilege, New Orleans & Katrina, the hubris of California residents, anonymous threatening letters, denial vs. geology, Japan and disaster preparation, West Coast subliminal fear, […]
¡Roundup Dos!
Finally, a “Home & Garden” article I can concur with: “An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat […]
Christmas Dinner Alternatives
Ron Hogan roasts Dave Itzkoff over an open fire. Too tough on Itzokoff? Not really. After you’ve read Itzkoff’s moronic and uninformed review, which is far worse than the “impulsive, first-draft ethos of the blogosphere” in its almost total ignorance of science fiction (citing only Heinlein as a comparative influence), you can read my informed […]
Sam Tanenhaus: Finding Chicks Who Write Nonfiction is Just SO GOSH DARN HARD!
Lee Kottner writes a letter to Tanenhaus about the NYTBR‘s well-documented lack of women nonfiction coverage and receives a response. Tanenhaus claims, “The truth, at least as far as we can tell, is that there remain areas in which women authors tend to be less well (that is, less numerously) represented than men: science, philosophy, […]
Rachel the Hack: Miscellany
It’s time for a new installment of Rachel the Hack, an essential guide to understanding Ms. Donadio’s warblings. There were two items we missed last week, articles composed for the annual “Ideas” issue of the New York Times Magazine: “Straw That Saves Lives” and “Walk-In Health Care”. The question, however, is whether these are genuine […]
More Tidbits
That gossipy minx Kitty Kelley is at it again: this time, locking Oprah Winfrey into her crosshairs. If you despise those living-room size theatres in the multiplex, there’s some new signs that the trend may be reversing. (via Kevin Smokler) Apparently, the men who robbed novelist Ngugi wa Thoing’o have been sentenced to hang. John […]
Roundup
David Lynch is launching his own coffee. (via Matthew Tiffany) Mr. Asher also doesn’t think too highly of Donadio’s most recent article, suggesting that Donadio “is just writing like Snoopy in his ‘dark and stormy night’ mode.” I agree with him that Ozick’s article is well worth your time. Jack Butler, whose Jujitsu for Christ […]
Rachel the Hack: The Closest Reader
It’s time for a new installment of Rachel the Hack, an essential guide to understanding Ms. Donadio’s warblings. This week’s NYTBR sees Ms. Donadio writing about poetry critic Helen Vendler, a subject who might just be as humorless as Donadio. Donadio sets the article’s tone with a few clipped sentences (“Sunlight plays on ivy-covered brick,” […]
Sylvester Stallone KOs Sam Tanenhaus
Sure, you could ask Sam Tanenhaus your questions and watch him ignore any query even remotely critical of the NYTBR. (Tanenhaus, incidentally, has refused mutlple interview requests to appear on The Bat Segundo Show to clarify some of the charges that have appeared on these pages.) But why do that when a former box office […]
Roundup
It’s common knowledge that John Sutherland is an uninformed assclown. But his latest column (which is even more preposterous if you listen to the computer-speech program parsing his drivel) once again begs the question of why an august publication like The New Statesman would hire a no-nothing dullard to cover books. Why my ad hominem […]
I Confess. I Heart Dwight Garner.
Dwight Garner’s Inside the List column has, at long last, found a pleasantly cranky voice. Consider Garner’s most recent column, particularly the item on Washington Post reviewer Patrick Anderson. Garner’s column is the only regular part of the NYTBR in which one can discern a beating pulse from the writer (which is more than one […]
Roundup
Mr. Sarvas talks with Jonathan Lethem on all matters Daniel Fuch. Ian McEwan is now fighting another plagiarism rap. RIP William Diehl. I’m sorry, but 1,500 words is not a novel. And what kind of life experience does a six year old have? Until this kid coughs up a gripping 75,000 word mystery about an […]
Rachel the Hack
Long-time readers of this site know that we’ve often held Sam Tanenhaus’s feet to the fire. But with Rachel Donadio’s latest essay, it’s occurred to us that Donadio, perhaps working independently of Tanenhaus, may be one of the major problems with the NYTBR. While we applaud Dwight Garner’s “Inside the List” columns, welcome David Orr’s […]
Summarizing Rachel Donadio
Hi, I’m Rachel Donadio and I’m working off of the literary feud article boilerplate. Let’s see. Mailer. Mailer. Rushdie-Updike. Tom Wolfe. You know the drill. Don’t mention Queenan-Jacobs because Sam LOVES Queenan! He is a friend! A friend of the NYTBR! Also, the blogosphere is evil but I have no examples to prove my point. […]