The Son of Kingsley doesn’t have a U.S. publisher. To my mind, Martin Amis has made several mistakes. Here’s how he can make a comeback.

1. He needs to lose the 1970s high-collar shirts.
2. He needs to realize that a bad boy image is more applicable to Russell Crowe than a guy who’s starting to look like Keith Richards.
3. He needs to understand that an author’s hubris is deflated when the books turned out are dreadful. Talk the talk when you can walk the walk, Marty.
4. As near as I can figure it, Marty can make a last-ditch effort by playing the sympathy angle along the lines of Time’s Arrow.
5. He needs to buy someone off at the Booker Committee.
6. He needs to know that most people scorn privileged sons of great literary figures, regardless of their talent.

(First scouted at Moorish Girl, who I hope is recovering from her terrible flu.)

Since it appears that Poynter will continue publishing the Book Babes, inspired by Ron, I’ve begun a Book Babes Watch. Hopefully, drawing attention to the aspects that most of us have found infuriating will help Margo and Ellen improve their work, or Poynter to make the right decision.

This week, the big surprise is Ellen’s honesty with regard to criticism: “What’s a reviewer to do? Well, maybe the right answer is: Do NOT defend the status quo. We may be so inside the Book Beltway that we’re part of the problem instead of the solution. We write too much about marginal books that enhance book publishing’s precious image, and too little about the form and substance of fiction that catches the popular imagination. This becomes a problem for publishers of any size.”

Well, hell, Ellen, this is what we’ve been saying all along! I’d like to think that the floodgate of comments which greeted last week’s column may have helped Ellen to start asking some solid questions. But I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and suggest that it was the close proximity of other book critics that initiate this brainstorm. I will note that mentioning Richard Flanagan’s underrated Gould’s Book of Fish is sexy by just about any standard, and a good way to live up to the “book babe” label. And in trying to determine the critic’s role in relation to the reader and the publishing industry (specifically how wide the swath is), Ellen has helped start a potential upturn in future columns.

Unfortunately, after Ellen posed an interesting Charles Taylor quote to Margo, Margo responded with yet another tired popular/literary dichotomy. Worse still, Margo fails completely to address Ellen’s issue. In light of the regime change over at the NYTBR, it’s criminal to ignore the importance of what a critic should cover or to speculate upon recent developments. Do coverage decisions enhance or alter what may influence a reading public (or the uninformed dullards like Stuart Applebaum, who base their tastes on reviews without reading the books)? Margo never addresses this and concludes that the publishing industry is one happy umbrella in which everybody is passionate about books and, presumably, all the wild animals dance together.

Margo also fails to understand the “industry” part of “publishing industry.” As unpredictable as the publishing industry is, some people go into the biz to make a profit. It is extremely naive to believe that a publisher isn’t hoping for that breakout hit like The Time Traveler’s Wife or Cold Mountain, and that they are publishing books merely out of their kindness of their purty li’l hearts.

Ellen responds to this and, rather smartly, returns to the Taylor quote unaddressed by Margo. Plus, she uses “jump the shark” and points out the hypocrisy regarding The Da Vinci Code

CONCLUSION:

Much as Comrades Mark and Ron (among others) have noted, it is the opinion of this Court that the Book Babes are improving, but that ultimately Ellen is the more thoughtful of the two. She also seems to listen. This Court urges the 32-member jury to modify its petition and Dump Only One of the Book Babes. The concept of a dialogue between two bookish ladies is a good one, but a proper dialogue involves two people offering their take on topics, and Margo can’t even understand the concept of call and response.

In 1958, Ray Kroc said the following to the McDonald brothers:

“We have found out, as you have, that we cannot trust some people who are nonconformists. We will make conformists out of them in a hurry. Even personal friends who we know have the best intentions may not conform. They have a difference of opinion as to various processing and certain qualities of product….You cannot give them an inch. The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization [or] he shouldn’t go into this kind of business.”

And that’s just what Kroc that of his franchise operators. His customers (meaning you) are another story.

Found in John Love’s McDonald’s: Behind the Arches, New York: Bantam, 1986.

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas has been called “even better than the best sex that you could possibly have” by Time Out, “a novel that will take over your life and prepare you to stalk Mitchell” by the Times Literary Supplement, and “tastier than all the food I ate during my formative years” by the Spectator. But it won’t be getting coverage from the Telegraph. Harry Mount, a critic who has actually been paid to review every Dick & Jane book ever published and the author of a 800-page piece of literary criticism entitled The Deep, Deep World of Paddington Bear, has declared Cloud Atlas “unreadable.”

Mount’s impatience recalls Jack Green’s polemic, Fire the Bastards!, which took umbrage over similar boasts made by critics who dealt with William Gaddis’s The Recognitions in 1955. Needless to say, if newspapers can find the time to cover Rising Up and Rising Down, then they should provide the same circumspect coverage to “difficult” books. To cop out with the “unreadable” excuse is a bit like damning The Passion of the Christ without having seen it. And besides, some books take a little longer to read. The real question here is whether Mount’s ever heard about this nifty concept called note taking. (via Literary Saloon)