Category / Book Reviewing

by Edward Champion

NBCC Ethics Survey

At long last, Carlin Romano has posted the results of the National Book Critics Circle ethics survey. If there’s one thing that most NBCC members can agree upon, it’s that 98.1% of them are indeed members of the organization. Where the six stragglers and the one “other” came from is difficult to say. But I suppose a few rotten apples or contrarians are likely to find their way into the fix.

The other major consensuses are these:

84.2% of the NBCC members who took this survey believe that a book editor should not assign a book to a friend of the author.

83% believe that opinion journals should adhere to the same ethical standards as newspaper book sections.

76.7% say it’s okay for a reviewer to repeatedly review books by the same author over the course of many years.

76.5% believe that it is unethical to review a book without reading it entirely.

76.3% believe that book review sections that are paid by companies for reviews should be identified in the same way that bloggers are.

73.4% aren’t sure if the ethical standards of the United States and England are significantly different.

72.1% see no problem with an editor assigning a book known to hold aesthetic, political, or literary views close to the author.

68.5% believe that anyone mentioned in a book’s acknowledgments page should be barred from reviewing the book.

68.5% believe it isn’t okay for an author to review another book if the author has served as a major source in another book that the book’s author has published.

66.5% believe it’s okay for a newspaper or magazine to review books by current or former staff members.

66% say that it’s okay for a book section to have a podcast with the author, while the book section carries a review.

64.9% believe that someone who has written a blurb should be prohibited from writing a lengthier review of the book.

Many of Romano’s questions seem to address, rather amusingly, some of the current practices of The New York Times Book Review. And judging from the results, it would appear that Sam Tanenhaus is upholding only half of the ethical bargain. I’ll have more to say about this in depth later. But for now, I direct you to Michael Orthofer’s commentary.

by Edward Champion

A Dilettante’s Manifesto?

B.R. Myers reviews Tree of Smoke and cuts straight to the point in his second paragraph: “Having read nothing by Denis Johnson except Tree of Smoke, his latest novel, I see no reason to consider him a great or even a good writer, but he is apparently very well thought of by everyone else.”

Whether you see any reason to consider B.R. Myers a great critic or even a good critic for willfully copping to such ignorance and for blasting a writer’s work over one misfire is, of course, subject to your discretion.

[UPDATE: The Rake offers this hilarious Myers takedown.]

by Edward Champion

Sun-Times Books Section Latest Casualty

As John Freeman observes this morning, the Chicago Sun-Times books section is being cut in half, with the Controversy Section disappearing altogether this month. The five pages currently devoted to books on Sunday at the back of the Controversy section are being whittled down to two pages at the back of the Sunday Show section. And to add insult to injury, the reviews are also being chopped down to 250 to 300 words.

by Edward Champion

Janet Maslin: Abdicating Her Critical Faculties One Review at a Time

Slushpile has dug up further evidence of Janet Maslin’s critical inadequacies, as evidenced by this review of John Leake’s Entering Hades. Apparently, the fact that Michael Connelly did not give the book a blurb is reason enough to quibble with it. In fact, I’m wondering why Maslin didn’t just throw the book in the fireplace and devote her 900 words to qualities that had nothing to do with the book. What of John Leake’s pronounced fro or the fact that he sits with his arms crossed, but doesn’t appear intense enough in his author photo? (For Christ’s sake, he wears sandals! Well, that’s two strikes against the book, I’m afraid.) This is the news that’s fit to print in the dailies these days. Reading the New York Times‘s daily book coverage makes me so disheartened that I’d rather watch Michiko and Maslin in a nude mud wrestling match. That’s hardly my first choice of perverse entertainment, mind you, but I dredge this conceptual horror from my unwholesome imagination in order to make a larger point about journalistic integrity.