GEORGIA (AP): Defying reports that he was the blandest and least exciting man to head the United States in its entire history, President Bush demonstrated a newfound virility during the final moments of his five-day tour through Europe. He hit the town with Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili and, at one point, even called him “Mickey baby.” Mr. Bush’s playfulness continued to surprise experts, while others pointed out that this came hot on the heels of Mr. Bush’s impromptu hopscotch game with Vladimir Putin earlier in the week. A White House spokesman said that these relatively new qualities were unfurled in the interests of international diplomacy, part of a long-term plan to show “a kinder, gentler Bush.” But Mr. Bush still shows no signs of backing away from his unilateral policy even a tad. The playful Bush is “the closest compromise you’ll get.”

“I didn’t know he had it in him,” remarked Mr. Saakashvili, who led Mr. Bush and several dignataries in a “chugging contest.” Reportedly, French President Jacques Chirac, accompanying Mr. Bush on his way back to France, was the loudest to chant, “Chug! Chug! Chug!” Referencing the infamous fried potato fiasco from years back, Chirac added that he hoped Mr. Bush might “chug for freedom.”

The President refrained from chugging beer during the ceremonies, which disappointed the delegates from the Czech and Slovak Federated Republic, who had hoped that Mr. Bush might demonstrate his flair with pilsner. Bush stated that he had given up alcohol several years ago and that “the wife would kill me” if he so much as picked up a bottle. But he gulped down more than a gallon of Gatorade in one go, pointing out that Gatorade was “made in America.” When Mr. Chirac pointed out that Quaker Oats Co. had outsourced the jobs six years ago and that even the trustworthy X-Factor filling the keg was bottled by an emaciated seven year old, Mr. Bush responded with silence.

The high point in Georgia came when Saakashvili attempted to show Bush how to folk dance.

“Where’s Laura?” said Saakashvili.

“Out reading. Dag nab it!” exclaimed Bush.

“Well, why not try dancing with one of these nice people in red hats?”

“That’s adultery!” cried Bush. “The only dancing that God and I recognize is that between husband and wife!”

Saakashvili appeared confused and then began dancing with one of the cute red-hatted girls. Bush sat the round out, but hinted that he “might join in next time.” On his way out, Mr. Bush slipped one of the white-robed boys a business card to a Roman Catholic priest who might “help in times of trouble.”

WEEKLY QUESTION: Will this week’s NYTBR reflect today’s literary and publishing climate? Or will editor Sam Tanenhaus demonstrate yet again that the NYTBR is irrelevant to today’s needs? If the former, a tasty brownie will be sent to Mr. Tanenhaus’ office. If the latter, the brownie will be denied.

And now onto this week:

THE COLUMN-INCH TEST:

Fiction Reviews: 1 two-page review, 1 one-page review, 1 one-page poetry review, 2 half-page poetry reviews, 3 half-page reviews, one half-page crime roundup. (Total books: 12. Total pages: 7.)

Non-Fiction Reviews: 1 two-page review, 7 one-page reviews, 1 half-page review. (Total books: 10. Total pages. 9.5.)

The real question to ask here is whether Tanenhaus and Keller’s efforts to make the NYTBR more “accessible” by concentrating on shorter reviews is really a subconscious campaign to kill off meaningful fiction coverage. After all, when we consider that nonfiction coverage has received roughly a full page review for each title, while fiction and poetry are increasingly capsulized and deemphasized, what we have here isn’t necessarily “accessibility,” but one in which, more often than not, the dumbest books of our time are seriously considered. How else to explain a book as preposterous as Moneymaker: How an Amateur Poker Player Turned $40 Into $2.5 Million at the World Series of Poker getting coverage over literature?

What next, Sam? A retrospective on the complete works of Dale Carnegie? Chuck Klosterman called in to assess L. Ron Hubbard’s literary subtext ? Dave Pelzer reviewing memoirs?

I must point out again that there is a fundmental difference between People Magazine and The New York Times. The former is intended to soothe bubbleheads with tedious gossip while they wait for their nails to dry in a salon. The latter — well, some of us who subscribe on Sunday sort of expect it to stand for something.

Of course, retrospectives on Frank Conroy’s teaching career do go a long way towards establishing credibility. It serves to provide perspective to readers who might not be aware of writing programs or Conroy’s particular character. Likewise, Lee Siegel’s Freud essay, which suggests a number of points that I’ll respond to shortly, indicates an effort to shift things to a conversational level.

But Tanenhaus needs to understand that he cannot have things both ways. He must decide whether the NYTBR is a serious weekly book review or something to be placed near the john next to a stack of Maxims. One of the reasons the Brownie Watch exists is to express our hopes that it does indeed represent the former.

But this week, yet again, Tanenhaus has decided otherwise.

Brownie Point: DENIED!

THE HARD-ON TEST:

This test concerns the ratio of male to female writers writing for the NYTBR.

It’s a little better than last week. But ten male writers to seven females still troubles us, particularly when the nonfiction section again demonstrates that cold warriors are ready to hammer out their arguments at the old boy’s club while the ladies stay in the kitchen covering fiction and memoirs. While I must confess that it’s good to see the nonfiction crop this week isn’t so astringently policy-based, we still believe that some balance is in order.

Brownie Point: DENIED!

THE QUIRKY PAIR-UP TEST:

Nell Fruedenberger is an inspired choice to cover Stewart O’Nan’s latest. Like last week’s Lethem essay, Freudenberger is personal, candid about how O’Nan breaks the rules, and comes across as a passionate reader. Again, it’s the kind of book reveiw that is critical without coming across as a humorless blowhard. It represents a kind of invitational feel that offers a balance between literacy and democracy.

For Freudenberger alone, Sam gets the brownie point.

Brownie Point: EARNED!

CONTENT CONCERNS:

I like Elmore Leonard as much as the next guy, but do we really need to be reminded about how entertaining he is or how jazzy his dialogue he is every time a new book comes out? The first half of Chip McGrath’s review reads almost as a hodgepodge of all other Leonard reviews. Will this now be de rigueur for all new Leonard releases? Tanenhaus gets off lightly this week, but the Tanenhaus Brownie Watch pledges a bitchslap, should Tanenhaus again offer profuse yet recycled accolades for Leonard. And why, only a few sentences after McGrath finally gets to The Hot Kid, does he stop abruptly to quote Leonard in an interview? If this is a Leonard profile (and that’s indeed what McGrath seems to want to write), great. Make it a profile. But if it’s a review, one would hope to get to the book without all the paragraphs of prefatory biography.

And speaking of McGrath and “authorial fingerprints,” we’re wondering if McGrath is afraid of the word “auctorial,” a jazzy word for a review of a jazzy writer.

This week’s letters section is close to the John Leonard days. Cynthia Ozick responds to Salman Rushdie. But perhaps more interestingly, drummer Butch Trucks clarifies the precise details behind Grover Lewis’ stint with the Allmann Brothers, providing a good deal of background on Lewis and his Rolling Stone takedown, published weeks after Duane Allman’s death. Trucks also points out that while he is from the South, he isn’t the hick that Lewis presented him as. He’s a guy who likes to read books and talk about them. Filling in information like this is what a letters section is supposed to be about, and we applaud Tanenhaus’ willingness to use his space like this.

Kate Zernike’s review of a collection of noted physicist Richard Fenyman’s letters does provide some interesting biographical context. However, Zernike doesn’t quite address the central premise over why such a collection would be necessary.

Yo, check this out! I was trying to scramble for a lead-in, and figured that the stuff I was seeing on the teevee maybe fit the bill for the Vowell book I was reviewing. Dig? And Tanenhaus bought it! Ho ho ho! Schiavo and the Pope! Funny shit, that. They have everything to do with presidential assassins, right?

Good to see Charles Portis name checked, but the correllation between Portis and Rick Bass seems specious and half-hearted at best.

Muddled phrases used to describe poet A.R. Ammons: “an offbeat, sideways, unpredictable radiance,” “a homespun glory,” “what Emerson called ‘fluxions and mobility’,” “an adept of process,” “a proponent of motion,” “a kind of scientific pragamatism,” “a philosophy of transit and change,” “a deterination to ‘study the motions’,” and “filled with geometric shapes.”

And that’s just in the first paragraph. I’m pretty darn confused. Are you? Here’s a hint, Sam: Edward Hirsch might be a stellar poet, but he doesn’t seem to understand that reviews require coherence. Particularly ones that hope to get other people excited about poetry.

Scott and Maud have weighed in on Lee Siegel’s article, which boldy suggested that Freud’s influence has resulted in less memorable characters in contemporary fiction, perhaps resisting exploring psychological depth in fictional characters. This is an interesting notion, but I think that Siegel’s article falls in too easily with yet another comfortable dichotomy: namely, between those who have religious faith or those who see faith as an illusion and might prefer a Freud-like fixation on a universal code of human behavior.

Siegel claims “the most intractable division in the world now is between those who believe that the subconscious plays a fundamental role in human life, and those who don’t. That’s the real culture war, and maybe even the real clash of civilizations.” Siegel suggests that this perceived cultural disparity is what accounts for the “absence of character.” But while he may claim postmodernism, “self-annulling irony” and “deliberate cartoonishness” as detracting (or possibly debilitating) factors, I see these stylistic devices as potential liberators that reframe consciousness so that readers can perceive characters through another prism and better understand their own view of humanity. That might be troubling if you’re a critic trying to ride out a thesis to the end. Because it certainly doesn’t fit within faith or the belief in a subconscious.

If you look at an experimental novel like David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress, what are these snappy statements but a reflection of the narrator’s consciousness? The reader (and, in particular, the rereader) might be able to draw certain clues or impressions about the character, even if the subconsciousness might not be spelled out in the precise Freudian terms that Siegel alluded to. But if it helps to allow varying impressions about characters and events to flourish. Surely, this is a good thing for perpetuating characters in literature. Because as anyone who ambles upon this planet knows, one person’s behavior will be perceived differently by different people. Who needs unilateralism?

CONCLUSIONS:

No brownie this week, but some progress and discussion.

Brownie Points Denied: 2
Brownie Points Earned: 1
TOTAL BROWNIE POINTS REQUIRED FOR BROWNIE DELIVERY: 2
TOTAL BROWNIE POINTS EARNED: 1 points

WEEKLY QUESTION: Will this week’s NYTBR reflect today’s literary and publishing climate? Or will editor Sam Tanenhaus demonstrate yet again that the NYTBR is irrelevant to today’s needs? If the former, a tasty brownie will be sent to Mr. Tanenhaus’ office. If the latter, the brownie will be denied.

This is the first of two concurrent Brownie Watches. Coachella pretty much precluded me from weighing in last week’s issue (May 1, 2005). It relaxed me to the point where I would have likely awarded Tanenhaus a brownie for simply existing. While I’m happy to give brownies to just about anyone, I think the readers here would be hard-pressed to argue that such generosity is fair or critical for the Brownie Watch. Since there are now reports circulating that Tanenhaus enjoyed his package of brownies, it is my seminal duty here to get Tanenhaus to salivate for more. And I should remind those paying attention to the Brownie Watch’s official policy that there are armies of brownie bakers who would happily provide Sam his sweet-toothed sustenance. They often weep profusely when Tanenhaus lets them down.

However, just as there is no such thing as a free lunch, here at Return of the Reluctant, we’re all too aware that there is no such thing as a free brownie.

So for completists, here’s the score:

THE COLUMN-INCH TEST:

Fiction Reviews: 1 one-page poetry review, 3 one-page fiction review, 2 half-page reviews. (Total books: 6. Total pages: 5.)

Non-Fiction Reviews: One two-page review, 3 page and a half reviews, 4 one-page reviews, 2 half page reviews. (Total books: 12. Total pages. 11.5.)

Pathetic! This is among the worst of Tanenhaus’s figures. Nonfiction coverage outweights fiction by more than 2 to 1! The telling disgrace here is that a miserly 30% of the May 1 issue is actually devoted to fiction.

Bad enough that Tanenhaus consistently scores under the 48% fiction minimum threshold. But scoring under 35% is a disgrace to the remarkable output of today’s contemporary novelists and poets. And it calls for some pugilistic intervention:

BROWNIE BITCHSLAP FACTOR: 30% devoted to fiction, Sam? Do you even care anymore? SLAP! (Minus .5 points.)

Brownie Point: DENIED!

THE HARD-ON TEST:

This test concerns the ratio of male to female writers writing for the NYTBR.

Continuing the sad trend of ladies left in the dustheap, there were eleven male writers to five female writers covering books in last week’s issue. Again, we have a situation that is completely fails to grasp the world population’s real demographics. And at a ratio of more than 2 to 1, the gloves once must again be unslipped from the hands.

BROWNIE BITCHSLAP FACTOR: Women are sexy and smart, Sam! Let them run like gazelles through your pages. SLAP! (Minus .3 points.)

Brownie Point: DENIED!

THE QUIRKY PAIR-UP TEST:

Fortunately, Tanenhaus recovers from the last two tests with a few inspired choices. He’s enlisted Jonathan Lethem to write a sizable review of Roberto Calasso’s K, a book of essays about Kafka that hasn’t received a lot of attention outside of The Weekly Standard. The fact that Calasso’s book is a translation and that Lethem himself gets some time to offer his own personal experience with Kafka and gets some time to champion the erstwhile Franz transforms what could have been a throwaway review into something that is both impassioned and informed. What’s particularly refreshing about Lethem’s essay is its earnestness. Lethem writes, “It’s a measure of Calasso’s accomplishment that his readings feel familiar, as though his erudition were inside us, a pre-existing condition only waiting for diagnosis.” This is the kind of sensory take on a semi-scholarly book that one doesn’t find very often in the NYTBR, let alone any newspaper review. What’s interesting is that Lethem doesn’t sacrifice too much in the way of addressing Calasso’s ideas. Given this careful balance, I certainly hope Tanenhaus enlists Lethem to write more essays.

It counts as a quirky pairup, even though it’s a mystifying one. John Grisham isn’t exactly known for his critical acumen, but Tanenhaus seems to believe that he can write about baseball. But the reality is that, outside of penning legal briefs, it’s doubtful that Grisham can write anything. Consider the lede’s passive voice: “The languid pace of baseball allows it to be enjoyed by those with even the most rudimentary knowledge of the game.” It only gets worse, as Grisham addresses the reader in second person as “you, the manager” and proceeds to turn a pretty damn rollicking sport into something that sounds as clinically preordained as root canal surgery initiated by Dr. Mengle. I could spend the next hour editing the clunky prose, the lack of focus, or the unfortunate second grade book report feel. But I have two issues to cover today and editing is Tanenhaus’ job, not mine.

Did Tanenhaus even edit Grisham? If Grisham had final edit, then I can only imagine the Hades that Times copy editors were put through as they tried desperately to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.

BROWNIE BITCHSLAP FACTOR: This isn’t so much a slap, as it is a call for self-respect. Don’t let the likes of Grisham appear again. SLAP! (Minus .2 points.)

Nevertheless, despite all this, we award Tanenhaus a brownie point for mixing it up better, although he should know better than to hire Grisham.

Brownie Point: EARNED!

CONTENT CONCERNS:

Deciding upon Kevin Young’s noir-influenced poetry for a page-length review shows a growing awareness of off-the-beaten-track content. But I’m wondering if Joel Brouwer is the right guy to cover it. Brouwer writes, “Why bother reading ‘Black Maria’ at all, when you could go to the movies instead?” Correct me if I’m wrong, but was this not the very question that Brouwer was hired to answer? Brouwer spends far too much time in his review trying to figure out his own perception of poetry, sticking with rudimentary statements like “Poetry celebrates the musicality of language” that he fails to really articulate what he thought of the book beyond a piecemeal assessment.

“You don’t need to read a book with a title like ‘Lost in the Forest’ to guess that Sue Miller will be using it to acquaint you with a wolf and a version of Red Riding Hood,” writes Kathryn Harrison. You also don’t need a one-page book review to suggest that Sue Miller is anything more than a straightforward novelist, let alone capable of compelling insight.

It went largely unremarked by my fellow colleagues, but I noticed that Laura Miller had taken some time off from the NYTBR‘s pages. It turned out to be a good idea. Her review of History of Love is actually imbued with a less hysterical (indeed, one might dare say, critical!) voice this time around. If Tanenhaus had any input here (“Laura, why don’t you be more constructive? Why not leave the bitterness to a minimum?”), we applaud it. Her review recalls the Laura Miller of old. Which is to say, someone who actually enjoys the reading experience. We hope to see more of this Laura Miller, as we haven’t seen her on a regular basis since about 1999. If she keeps this up, I’m almost tempted to send Miller a care package. Perhaps some jellybeans to encourage a sense of humor.

Idiot Photo Caption of the Week: “Orson Welles as he appeared (with Dorothy Comingore) in ‘Citizen Kane.’ Beneath the makeup, Welles was 25 years old.” No shit? Are there actually people around (perhaps readers who haven’t seen a single movie in their lives) who didn’t know this?

Boy, the ledes are extremely silly this week.

Benjamin Kunkel: “Fiction seeks to deliver life from mere literalism, to release people and things into a significance beyond themselves.” Yeah, that and a bunch of shrooms ingested just before a trip to Burning Man.

Walter Reich: “Were American troops killed in the Holocaust?” Well, as we all know, the Nazis served their POWs tea and crumpets.

Alissa Quart: “The alarmist nonfiction book is a staple in publishing.” And the generalization embedded within a lead sentence is a staple in book reviewing.

CONCLUSIONS:

It’s good to see that Tanenhaus rebounded from the previous week’s negative score. But a zero is still a zero. And we certainly hope that the skewered ratios seen in the May 1 issue won’t be a long-term fait accompli.

Brownie Points Denied: 2
Brownie Points Earned: 1
Brownie Bitchslap Factor: -1 point
TOTAL BROWNIE POINTS REQUIRED FOR BROWNIE DELIVERY: 2
TOTAL BROWNIE POINTS EARNED: 0 points