Tanenhaus Watch
Written byPosted on December 5, 2004
Filed Under Uncategorized
We’ll give Tanenhaus half a brownie point this week because it’s close to Xmas. This week’s NYTBR is a big mixed bag. We advise against the continued employment of Joe “I Never Met A Subject I Didn’t Hate” Queenan (along with the end of silly photo captions such as “Johnny Unitas of the Colts” asuming that educated folks aren’t familiar with football legend-team associations). But we dug the Truman Capote profile, which combined biography, light critical consensus and some naughty bits into a hot essay by the always excellent Daniel Mendelsohn.
However, Laura Miller needs to get out of the house more. We take pride in our dirty minds, pointing out that sexual suggestion and naughty jokes come with most of our book recommendations (some over the course of our lives, in flagrante delicto), while recommending that intercourse itself is best performed rather than endlessly talked about.
Tanenhaus Watch
Written byPosted on August 14, 2004
Filed Under Uncategorized
This week’s New York Times Book Review features a review from Margaret Atwood on Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk (along with an interview), a measured essay on John Kerry from Hitch, a poetry roundup, a Breslin profile, and a healthier ratio of fiction-to-nonfiction coverage. With the exception of this digressive review of Robert Olen Butler’s Had a Good Time, this is a very nice rebound from last week’s Wieseltier catastrophe, finding a suitable balance between Tanenhaus’s nonfiction interests and the fiction coverage long promised. However, sustained fiction coverage is the operative name of the game. We’ll be pleased if Tanenhaus delivers, with particular foci upon debut authors and off-the-beaten-track titles. But to ensure that he does, we’ll be initiating a Tanenhaus scorecard every week.
Total Full-Length Reviews: 7
Full-Length Fiction Reviews: 4 (special brownie point awarded)
Full-Length Nonfiction Reviews: 3
Number of Non-U.S. Authors Covered: 1
Articles Written by Women: 2 (You can do better, Sam)
Boring Review? Yes, by Al Gore (minus one brownie point)
Fiction Authors Interviewed: 1 (special brownie point awarded)
Number of Articles Covering Poetry: 1 (special brownie point awarded)
Laura Miller’s Presence? None (special brownie point awarded)
TOTAL NUMBER OF BROWNIE POINTS FOR AUGUST 15, 2004: 3
Does Sam Tanenhaus Get a Brownie This Week? Yes (minimum 3 brownie points needed to score brownie)
Tanenhaus Watch
Written byPosted on June 8, 2004
Filed Under Uncategorized
Under Tanenhaus’s firms hands, it appears that the NYTBR has begun issuing corrections. The corrections, as usual, are laced with the kind of minutiae that will prevent merely a handful of fulminating fanboys from slashing their wrists. However, given the pedantic obsessions, we here at Return of the Reluctant encourage Tanenhaus & Friends to continue. Here are a few that we suggest:
“A review by Michael Kinsley suggested that David Brooks be bitch-slapped three times. Mr. Kinsley actually intended for Brooks to be bitch-slapped four times, not three. In addition, Kinsley would like to kick Brooks’ ass while he is being simultaneously humiliated by a Girl Scouts troop.”
“When pressed by editor Sam Tanenhaus for an ‘innovative’ idea for her column, Laura Miller referred to ‘lingering headaches’ and turned out a silly column about spy stories. She followed this up with an epileptic fit and demanded a Ritalin prescription. The Times regrets any misinterpretations caused by Miller’s histrionics.”
“Lizzie Skurnick intended to use ‘fuck’ in her review, but it was gently suggested to Ms. Skurnick that the Times was a family newspaper. The Gray Lady hopes to let down her guard, however, in the event that Mr. Bush is re-elected in November.”
Comments
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.)
