From John Freeman:

Several years ago, I had an editor at a newspaper who liked to go over copy by the phone. His edits could be brutal, but he always circled around with a palliative comment to remind me it was all in service of a bigger need. “Remember, John,” he would say, “this is for the guy out in the suburbs eating his corn flakes. He has about five minutes before it’s outside for some Sunday yard work. So you want to tell him something important.”

From Anthony Burgess’s You’ve Had Your Time:

John Coleman in the Spectator said: ‘Not the best of Burgess’s books. Mr. Burgess might curb his inventiveness: he’d be a first-rate comic novelist if the camouflage of another little joke were down and he looked his subject squarely in the face.’ R.G.G. Price in Punch wrote: ‘I do not quite understand why everybody refers to Mr. Burgess as a funny man. He is as accurate and depressing as Gissing, though I agree that he is a Gissing with a sense of fun and an eye for any comedy to be found in his ruined world.’ Do reviewers ever consider that novelists are desperate for help, that they are anxious to be told where they go wrong and what they can do to put things right, and that, before they achieve the dignity of solus reviews and academic dissertations, they have to rely on these lordly summations in the weekly press?

Rachel Cooke writes: “It wasn’t the hype that turned me off, nor the stories about how she’d been ignored as a novelist for years (Kevin was published by the small independent publisher, Serpent’s Tail); it was more that whenever she appeared in the newspapers, she seemed to be so… belligerent. Her book reviews were bordering on the vicious and in her byline picture, she wore a sleeveless denim shirt and matching frown that made me think I wouldn’t want to meet her late at night in a dark alley.”

When I talked with Lionel Shriver for an hour last month, I didn’t find her belligerent at all. She just doesn’t suffer fools gladly and is unafraid to speak her mind. I found her to be sharp, acerbic, and among one of the most fascinating people I’ve talked with this year. And I should also note that she answered every provocative question I put to her, even some of the half-baked ones.

Even so, I’m appalled that Shriver’s looks or manner would have any bearing upon whether her novel is any good. I don’t see book critics applying this kind of criteria to men. Why then should they dwell upon what an author photo has to do with an author’s work?

Then again, Rachel Cooke is the same person who was content to sling generalizations about bloggers. That Cooke is more willing to devote two paragraphs to being “Lionel Shriver’s number one fan” instead of offering specific examples on why The Post-Birthday World is an “unreadably plodding and obscure novel” says more about Cooke’s vapid literary standards than any sufficiently critical take on the book. If this is the kind of flimsy flummery that Cooke wishes to spew into the world, then she should be writing for Metro instead of The Observer.

(via Bill Peschel)

Lionel Shriver: “I try neither to be cowed by big names, nor to succumb to the pathetic illusion that by trouncing accomplished writers I make myself superior to them. I always read the entire book. And my naiveté – my refusal to think twice about alienating a colleague who down the line might help or hurt me – may make me a fool, but it also makes me fairer.” (via The Literary Saloon)

Motoko Rich interviewed me on Monday morning for this article. While my larger points about convergence between print and media and my call for unity were both overlooked (and apparently I wasn’t the only one on this score), I can’t complain because it’s good to see many of my fellow litbloggers well represented — even if Richard Ford displays his ignorance by badmouthing a medium he has never deigned to read.

If you’re new here, please feel free to leave a comment and say hello. Check out the podcasts. Check out the other litbloggers under the links section on the right.

As to the issue of numbers, yesterday, there were 43,865 unique requests for this site. That’s easily matches the circulation of a midsize newspaper. And, like my colleague Mark Sarvas suggests, they came here strictly for the books.

Also, I have the greatest respect for people who write in basements in Terre Haute.

Critical Mass has word of the Atlanta Journal Constitution firing Teresa Weaver as book editor. John Freeman urges all concerned parties to write to editor John Wallace (jwallace@ajc.com) and publisher John Mellott (jmellott@ajc.com).