Category / Book Reviewing

by Edward Champion

Many Not So Happy Returns?

In a column for the Chicago Sun-Times, book editor Henry Kisor announces his retirement and has some choice words for the publishing industry:

In 1973, we still lived in a world of text on paper. Book publishing was a gentleman’s occupation that held intellectual integrity to be as important as the balance sheet; publishers sought to bring readers literary excellence while turning a reasonable profit. Now most publishers have become subsidiaries of soulless corporations that wallow in downmarket pop culture for the sake of maximizing stockholder returns.

(via Pete Lit)

by Edward Champion

There’s Always Room for Gumbo

[EDITOR’S NOTE: USA Today reporter Bob Minzesheimer was assigned to review David Brinkley’s The Great Deluge. The published draft has an extremely strange and disconcerting paragraph pertaining to gumbo. Return of the Reluctant has obtained Minzesheimer’s original draft of the review, demonstrating just what kind of job the USA Today editors had on their hands.]

My name is Bob Minzesheimer and I am here to tell you that I like gumbo. Real gumbo. Not the pantywaist gumbo that they try to pass off in yuppie restaurants, but the real shit in New Orleans. Pre-Katrina.

If you ask me, the tsunami’s biggest tragedy was the sudden surcease in gumbo making. I’ve always thought New Orleans was a city that never slept. Forget the fact that the streets were flooded and that people were angry. No disaster should prevent a good batch of gumbo from being made, distributed and consumed. Why, for example, has Mayor Ray Nagin remained so silent on the gumbo question? Surely, Brinkley could have devoted a chapter to this seminal issue.

As we all know, real men eat real gumbo. Real men also read real books and review real books while they’re eating real gumbo or thinking about eating real gumbo. Gumbo is of paramount importance when assessing a book’s worth or determining the level of scholarship. David Brinkley, I suspect, is a gumbo fan. But he is not a real gumbo fan. And by real, I think you know what I mean.

This gumbo stance is problematic on several levels. His book cannot succeed until he slaps down the American Express on the table and pays at least $60 for a good bowl of gumbo. But I suspect he fears gumbo. No journalist should fear gumbo. Brinkley’s fear is evident on page 126 of his new book, The Great Deluge, where he writes:

Gumbo was the last thing on Nagin’s mind. As the bodies piled up, the gumbo stopped.

This, of course, is a preposterous assertion. For even in the face of government neglect, there is always room for gumbo. Real gumbo. Gumbo makes things better. If FEMA had fed the dehydrated Katrina survivors some gumbo, then nobody would be pointing fingers at Michael Brown.

I am a real man. I am also a real journalist. And I am momentarily a real book reviewer. But more importantly, I am the world’s foremost authority on gumbo. You may not know this, but I took a correspondence course and became a gumbo authority. Not even my wife knows this. I keep my gumbo expertise a secret from my friends and peers. I’ve kept quiet for too long. You, the devoted readers of USA Today, are the first to know.

I have been assigned to read this damn Brinkley book and I can’t stop thinking of gumbo. Many people have died and have had their lives uprooted. Such pedantic issues as government incompetence and unnecessary deaths mean nothing in the great scheme of things, particularly when gumbo is involved.

There is something about Brinkley’s face that makes me pine for gumbo. Surely I am not the only one who feels this way after staring at the author photograph. The cruel people at USA Today don’t pay me enough to buy real gumbo and chances are that you, the mere USA Today reader, haven’t experienced real gumbo.

So let’s stop all this discussion of who was right and who was wrong. Who needs more politics when there’s real gumbo to masticate upon? Let’s prevent Brinkley from writing more books. Come to my two-bedroom house anytime and let me show you that real gumbo makes the world go round.

by Edward Champion

Contrarian for Contrarian’s Sake

Paul Constant, writing in The Stranger, serves up a contrarian review of Black Swan Green: “Black Swan Green could prove to be Mitchell’s most acclaimed novel yet, although it’s clearly his worst. There is almost nothing exceptional left to be written about children. It’s all been said before….”

Really? So I guess anyone writing about kids should just throw in the towel then. Because children, just like adults, have no complexity whatsoever. Children are mere amoebas, easily programmable and readable by the adult units, often skirting the edge of the ocean floor.

Constant complains that one of Jason’s sentiments about the Falkland Islands “rings false,” but never explains exactly why. He complains that cultural references get “name-checked,” as if Mitchell has written an encyclopedia book instead of a novel. But if one is writing about an adolescent in the early 1980s, does not a reference to one of the hottest video games of that era (Space Invaders) make sense?

I’m all for contrarian criticism. Even though I’m a Mitchell fan, I actually think Black Swan Green has been just a tad overpraised myself. But if unsubstantiated bile like this is the order of the day, how then can an array of variegated opinions be established?

by Edward Champion

Leon Wieseltier Reviews His Kitchen

The question of the place of the refrigerator is not a scientific question. It is an issue of taste and instinct. Refrigerators, being elephantine appliances that I despise with every fiber in my being, can’t account for why people purchase so much food. And yet these mammoth boxes grow bigger and bigger, and it is not an insult to one’s aesthetic sense to say so. If the refrigerator can be said to be the cornerstone of any kitchen, then it would be difficult indeed to top the disgust I feel every time I enter my own kitchen and make a roast beef sandwich.

There is a certain orthodoxy to these midnight pilgrimages, the tedious rumbling of the stomach that promises indigestion after a meal, these strenuous efforts to keep me alive through ignoble viands while applying my poison pen for a Tanenhaus assignment or declaring my appreciation for any and all assfucking memoirs. Again, I refer not to the refrigerator alone, but the general notion that one must keep up a kitchen. Why am I compelled to keep the kitchen stocked rather than order takeout? There is a malicious havoc when contemplating these trusted routines and realizing that my expansive home possesses a room for the preparation of food, with its cabinets which must be filled with cans that I may never use and its drawers filled with limitless kitchen gadgets and Emeril-manufactured pans. My kitchen then is a document which reveals my own bitter impulses. I cannot find a way to transmute this room into a source of joy. I stopped feeling euphoria when I turned thirty.

The kitchen flatters itself that it is some kind of second-string dining room. And for those ignoble apartment dwellers in the Bronx, I suppose it is. The kitchen theatens to subsume my attention and does not absolve itself. Its cabinets demand that I stock it with limitless cans and its drawers expect me to fill them with flatware. I believe it was Aristotle who once said, “If things do not turn out as we wish, we should wish for them as they turn out.” I have been wishing my kitchen into some kind of resolution for many years and it still does not prove pliant or complaisant.

If my kitchen could be styled a corporeal entity, I would want to sodomize it. I would want to snap its head back and pull its hanks of hair hard with my hands. I’d want the kitchen to be my bitch. I would want to apply painful clamps to its nipples and hear my kitchen scream, “Leon, my master! Please! Please! Please don’t stop!” My kitchen is such a disreputable millieu that I wouldn’t even give it a safe word.

What this shallow and self-congratulatory room establishes most conclusively is that there are many architetural hymens to be borken.

by Edward Champion

Caitlain Flanagan Declares War on Cocksucking

Caitlin Flanagan jumps the shark. No really. This book review has to be read to be believed. Everything from teenage oral sex to Ms. Flangan herself tittering at the prospect of mass fellatio (which, interestingly enough, Flanagan equates to “the province of prostitutes,” leaving us to wonder if Flanagan has somehow existed this long without experiencing the joys of oral sex) to an amateurish investigative effort by Flangan to confirm the mass fellatio. (Yes, really.)

I haven’t read an essay this unintentionally hilarious in a long time. That sentences such as “Somehow these girls have developed the indifferent attitude toward performing oral sex that one would associate with bitter, long-married women or streetwalkers” would be seriously considered in a 21st century magazine of ideas (the essay originally appeared The Atlantic) is astonishing to me. Maybe I just ain’t vanilla, but oral sex is hardly BDSM or felching or bukkake, nor does engaging in it immediately turn you into a jezebel or a gigolo. And by what standard do jejune yentas such as Flanagan determine what’s normal and what’s incorrigible? The magical gremlin permanently affixed to Flanagan’s skull who decides what’s right and what’s wrong after a drunken round of darts?

The kind of willing denial that Flanagan expresses here in lieu of trying to understand the issue (teenagers are becoming more promiscuous, like it or not) and in trying to parse whether the novel in question (Paul Ruditis’ Rainbow Party) answers this societal development is beyond preposterous. It’s dangerous. It promulgates a kind of fashionable bllindness in which it’s perfectly acceptable to remain horrified without trying to understand why one is having an emotional reaction. It imputes a mentality whereby one can never step outside of one’s hermetic paradigm and the results or effects of an sociological development are not just unexamined, but are immediately demonized as “evil.” Never mind that there’s likely some constructive value in trying to figure out why these “forbidden” impulses appeal to certain people, particularly when one is in charge of setting the boundaries. But in taking the myopic road out, Flanagan is no different from a paranoid Caucasian who immediately assumes that an African-American saying hello is out to carjack her.

That Flanagan’s essays have been embraced by the New Yorker and the Atlantic, while fostering such an anti-thinking approach, is a telling indicator that the world of letters isn’t ready for a serious discussion of these issues. It isn’t ready to accept the fact that, yes, teenagers have oral sex. More all the time. It isn’t ready to start answering questions. What does this mean? Is this necessarily bad? How did this develop and will we see teenagers start to embrace more violent and hardcore fantasies? And are these in turn bad? Is any of this a reaction to the way in which sex is so undiscussed in American society, particularly in the classroom? Was Jocelyn Elders ahead of her time?

The continued publication of Caitlin Flanagan’s essays is a disgrace to any magazine interested in raising these questions (or less provocative ones). Thank goodness that at least one of the Holy Trinity (Harper’s) has had the good sense not to publish such a flagrantly anti-intellectual writer.

For a more thoughtful take on a similar subject, see Naomi Wolf’s essay on how porn affects sexual conduct.

(via Jenny D)

by Edward Champion

Write Ghettoized Fiction or Die Tryin’

In the latest edition of Emerald City, Matthew Cheney offers us “Literary Fiction for People Who Hate Literary Fiction.” Cheney writes, “A reader only interested in a narrow type of writing (hard SF, for instance) is not going to find much pleasure from any literary fiction, but a reader who is interested in experiencing new realities, strange visions, visceral horror, and supernatural events has plenty to choose from,” and proceeds to offer a helpful list of authors for those who’d like to experience some of these alternative visions.

I think, however, it goes without saying that there’s a similar stigma working in reverse. I’m talking about a certain type of literary person who simply will not pick up a book penned by Arturo Perez-Reverte, Octavia Butler, China Mieville, Rupert Thompson, Gene Wolfe or Donald Westlake, precisely because the book is categorized in the mystery or science fiction sections of the bookstore. Sure, the literary person will pick up Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and go nuts over it because it is categorized in the fiction section or in some sense crowned by the tastemakers as “literary,” little realizing that Philip K. Dick explored similar ethical questions about cloning in his 1968 novella, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” (later turned into Blade Runner), as did Kate Wilhelm in Where Late the Sweet Birds Sing and David Brin in Glory Season. The list goes on.

In fact, when we examine the rave reviews given to Ishiguro, we find a profound misunderstanding, if not an outright belittling, of science fiction:

Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times: “So subtle is Mr. Ishiguro’s depiction of this alternate world that it never feels like a cheesy set from ”The Twilight Zone,” but rather a warped but recognizable version of our own.”

Louis Menand, The New Yorker, on the book’s ending: “It’s a little Hollywood, and the elucidation is purchased at too high a price. The scene pushes the novel over into science fiction, and this is not, at heart, where it seems to want to be.”

Siddhartha Deb, The New Statesman: “This unusual premise, emerging through Kathy’s memories, does not lead us into the realm of speculative science fiction. Unlike Margaret Atwood in Oryx and Crake (2003), Ishiguro is not interested in using the idea of cloning to conjure up a panoramic dystopia.”

These all come from non-academic publications which might be considered “of value” to the literary enthusiast. And yet note the way that Kakutani is relieved that Ishiguro’s book doesn’t inhabit the realm of science fiction (indeed, failing to cite a specific science fiction book in her comparison). Or the way that Menand suggests that the novel’s ending is “pushed over into science fiction.” (Never mind that, by way of its story, Never Let You Go, with its premise of engineered clones, its near-future setting, and its shadowy governments, is indisputably a science fiction novel. So the idea that it would be pushed into a genre it already inhabits is absurd and contradictory.) Meanwhile Deb praises the novel’s “unusual premise” but, despite Ishiguro’s science fiction elements, it somehow does not fall into the redundant term of “speculative science fiction.”

What we have here is a strange reviewing climate transmitting a clear and resounding message to the literary enthusiasts who read the reviews. If a novel manages to convince a sophisticate or a literary enthusiast that it does not inhabit a genre, then it is, in fact, literature. If, however, there is a single experiential passage reminiscent of or explicitly describing bug-eyed monsters or aliens or clones, then sorry, but you’re taking a gritty stroll in the ghetto and you should be ashamed of yourself for taking off your evening gown and putting on some old sweats. Is this really so different from the backlash Dan Green recently identified against experimental fiction?

Of course, M. John Harrison, himself a fantastic science fiction writer, was one of the few to observe, “[Y]ou’re thrown back on the obvious explanation: the novel is about its own moral position on cloning. But that position has been visited before (one thinks immediately of Michael Marshall Smith’s savage 1996 offering, Spares). There’s nothing new here; there’s nothing all that startling; and there certainly isn’t anything to argue with.”

The fact that the literary climate refuses to examine, much less acknowledge, Ishiguro’s antecedents suggests not only that the genre stigma holds true, but that today’s reviewers operate with a deliberate myopia towards those authors who would innovate along similar lines in other genres. For the genre-snubbing literary enthusiast, there is something new in Ishiguro. The new realities, the visceral horror — all presented in a seemingly fresh way. But the very lack of inclusiveness in this approach is not only unfair, but critically unsound.

by Edward Champion

Ethical Nightmares from Tanenhaus’s Dream Factory

Sam Tanenhaus apparently has no problem violating the New York Times’ Ethical Journalism Guidebook. So opines Ariana Huffington, who notes that assigning Kathryn Harrison, who had been slammed in two previous Dowd columns, to review Maureen Dowd’s Are Men Necessary? is a violation of the Times‘ credo to avoid “the slightest whiff of favoritism” (Rule 134 in the EJG). Huffington suggests that hiring Harrison swings the favoritism in the opposite direction.

To play the devil’s advocate here, if we momentarily consider the Times to hold any stock outside of the laughing variety, Huffington may not be going far enough. Rule 141 in the EJG states:

Staff members who have a publisher or a movie contract, for example, must be exceedingly sensitive to any appearance of bias in covering other publishers or studios. Those with any doubts about a proposed arrangement should consult the standards editor or the deputy editorial page editor.

Granted, both Tanenhaus and Harrison can get out of this through a loophole. Tanenhaus himself does not have a publisher or a movie contract. But assigning Harrison to review Dowd was a clear case of fanning the flames of bias. This paragraph from Harrison’s review, for example, has very little to do with the book:

LIKE most people who work hard at seeming to be naturally funny, Maureen Dowd comes across as someone who very much wants to be liked, even though she has problematically joined forces with those women who are “sabotaging their chances in the bedroom” by having high-powered careers. “A friend of mine called nearly in tears the day she won a Pulitzer,” Dowd reports in a passage about men threatened by successful women. ” ‘Now,’ she moaned, ‘I’ll never get a date!’ ” Reading this, I can’t help wondering if Dowd is that self-same “friend.” After all, it’s rare that she resists naming her friends, most of whom have names worth dropping: “my witty friend Frank Bruni, the New York Times restaurant critic”; “my friend Leon Wieseltier”; “the current Cosmo editor, my friend Kate White”; “my late friend Art Cooper, the editor of GQ for 20 years”; “my pal Craig Bierko”; et al.

If the intention here is to settle a personal score or to ape a Dale Peck-style attack mode, why is this review even being published in the Times? If Dowd’s book is, in Harrison’s view, quite awful, then surely the text itself would provide enough examples. And surely there were any number of outlets who would have pushed Harrison further over the edge and provided a more legitimate medium for this competitive ruckus.

Without providing a source, Huffington claims that Dowd complained to Tanenhaus about the review-author matchup. Tanenhaus apparently suggested that if Dowd couldn’t handle criticism, then she shouldn’t write books.

Perhaps Tanenhaus’s intention in hiring Harrison was to demonstrate to NYTBR naysayers that the Times does indeed review books impartially while still abiding by the Gray Lady’s ethical mythos. Well, if this were the case, why hire someone quite prepared to sabotage Dowd, thus spawning a grand mess of journalistic ethics?

Unless of course the NYTBR is no longer about ethics, much less thoughtful reviewing. In which case, why indeed should fiction publishers hold credence in a weekly media outlet that prefers to blow its column inches on redundant sentences like “No mere page turner, this is a page devourer, generating the kind of suspense that is usually the province of the playwright or novelist.”

by Edward Champion

Some Preposterous Things Written by Lev Grossman

It’s official. Lev Grossman is the Uwe Boll of the book reviewing world.

ARTICLE IN QUESTION: “The American Tolkien” (via Locus)

1. “George R.R. Martin is fond of sudden reversals.”

Isn’t every author? It’s called irony.

2. “[T]his is as good a time as any to proclaim him the American Tolkien.”

Why? Because there are no more Lord of the Rings films to look forward to?

3. “an unstable amalgamation of nations caught in the act of vigorously ripping itself to shreds”

Someone needs a copy editor.

4. “Martin shoots the action from many angles.”

Yo, Lev, this ain’t a movie. It’s a book.

5. “Martin may write fantasy, but his politik is all real.”

Since “politik” itself doesn’t exist as a word of its own (perhaps he intended “politick”), the gag’s a bust.

6. “In the wrong hands, a big ensemble like this can be deadly.”

In the wrong hands, a review like this can be unintentionally hilarious.

7. “Martin has an astonishing ability to focus on epic sweep and tiny, touching human drama simultaneously.”

I suppose what Lev meant here is that Martin can on one hand tango on an epic scale, while concentrating on small moments a little later. This is not “simultaneous” by any measure, but might have something to do with these interesting units called paragraphs which must be carefully ordered to balance narrative. But since any good epic novelist is doing this, how does this make Martin “astonishing?” It seems to me that the man’s only doing his job as a storyteller. This is hardly miraculous at all. It comes with the territory. You don’t see professors handing out blue ribbons to MFAs every time they get subect-verb agreement right.

8. “Martin’s wars are multifaceted and ambiguous, as are the men and women who wage them and the gods who watch them and chortle, and somehow that makes them mean more.”

Lev Grossman has one, and only one, novelistic viewpoint that he can recognize. And that’s the whole idea of dualities being perceived in one “simultaneous” blur, without any attempt on Grossman’s part to parse things in even a vaguely structuralist way. Further, it should be clear even to a blindfolded and trigger-happy gunsmith that “multifaceted and ambiguous” characters probably mean a lot more than one-dimensional and unambiguous.

9. “What really distinguishes Martin, and what marks him as a major force for evolution in fantasy, is his refusal to embrace a vision of the world as a Manichaean struggle between Good and Evil.”

This shows outright ignorance of the fantasy genre and religion, and is a preposterous sentence to boot. And again there’s Lev’s obsession with dualities. (Um, isn’t Manichaeism a dualist religion in which a all-powerful force of good does not exist. As a result, would this not discount the many mages, elves, wizards and other assorted characters known to shift continents and overturn campaniles?) As the works of M. John Harrison, China Mieville, Michael Moorcock and Kelly Link will attest, fantasy moved beyond these one-dimensional, black-and-white and often uninteresting milieus quite some time ago.

by Edward Champion

Why Fear Michiko?

Hot on the heels of Michiko slamming Banville into the ground (with an unusual silence from certain quarters), Notes on Non-Camp points to this profile, which claims Michiko to be “the most feared book critic in the world.” More feared than Dale Peck? Or James Wood covering a “hysterical realism” novel? I think the real question here is whether Michiko Kaukutani, who has veered too frequently into distressing fictional affectations of late (is Michiko’s fury the mark of an aspiring novelist?), is a critic worth her salt anymore. Is it really valid criticism for a writer to cling to safe dichotomies (“style over story,” “linguistic pyrotechnics over felt emotion”) while spending most of a review summarizing a book rather than discussing its literary worth? If Michiko found Banville irritating, that’s fine. If she feels that she was alienated from Banville’s story, that’s fine. But it’s simply not enough to offer these sentiments without supportive examples, much less refusing to make an effort to discern the meaning within the text. That’s the least any reviewer can do when approaching a work of art. And given that the New York Times offers a book reviewing clime in which fiction has devolved from an enduring presence to some charming summer-stock production that you attend simply because a relative is in the show, it seems extremely strange to me that Michiko’s generalizations are continually accepted and indeed “feared” by authors and the publishing industry alike.

by Edward Champion

The New Yorker: Is Criticism Being Deliberately Abbreviated?

A good critic would tell you why a film is boring. A good critic would keep the plot summary as brief as possible and cite specific examples for why he felt the way he did. A good critic would, even if the filmmaker failed, try to suggest what the filmmaker was attempting and pinpoint common motifs that have either evolved or have been abandoned.

David Denby is sometimes a good critic, but his review of Elizabethtown is boring, without supporting example and laced with putdowns far beneath Anthony Lane’s lofty heights. To describe a film as “boring” is not enough. To describe “meaningless images” without indicating why they are meaningless is not enough. To insinuate at a lack of screen chemistry between the two leads is acceptable, but to leave the criticism ambiguous and without scope is not enough.

In other words, this review suggests that, at least in this case, David Denby is not a good critic. Perhaps he is better intended for lengthier reviews.

Then again, I’m wondering if this is all an effort by the New Yorker to gravitate towards snarky blurbs in lieu of actual criticism. The “Briefly Noted” section, for example, involves anonymous staffers writing quick blurbs, but it’s curious to me that one rarely sees any raves, let alone qualifying examples, within this section.

Take the latest quartet: Melania G. Mazzucco’s Vita is “intermittently commanding” and the book is praised for “pungent fictional details.” Not “penetrating” but “pungent,” as if to suggest that the book’s chief advantage is that you can whiff a somewhat distressing yet redolent aroma instead of submerging yourself into the text.

Mary Gaitskill’s Veronica fares slightly better, but the critic dismisses this too, suggesting, “An analogous allure pervades this book.” So Gaitskill’s not clear-cut enough for the hoary-heared man in the closet, but if there’s any hope of stepping into the verdure, then you might just be tempted to be transfixed by the green.

The blurb for James Shapiro’s A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare is less a review, but more of a fussy neologist quibbling over of tone for the accepted thesis (how public events influenced Shakespare’s plays) rather than the supportive argument.

And J.R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar, we have scenes that often feel “contrived and mawkish.” But since there’ s not enough space here for the unnamed critic to provide examples, and since s/he cannot be bothered to identify him/herself, these two modifiers essentially translate into nothing. They are, in fact, no more penetrating from an adjective-laden “literature” blurb in Maxim dumbed down for public consumption, with the magazine’s presumed sophistication there in the tone and the language.

I’ve always thought that sophistication involved having a solid argument with supportive examples. And while the New Yorker may be “sophisticated” in language, its criticism of late has shown, time and time again, that there is very little that these critics are permitted to think about. Such an editorial approach does a disservice to the talented people who write the reviews and the magazine in question.

by Edward Champion

Caitlin “I Checked My Nuance At The Door” Flanagan Strikes Again

From the What the Fuck Department comes this Caitlin Flanagan review (no surprise) of Peggy Drexler‘s book Raising Boys Without Men (as discovered by Scott). Flangan’s essay originally appeared in The Atlantic and has, much to a thinker’s regret, invaded Powell’s fortifications. Drexler has apparently posited a fascinating thesis: boys raised by women without men (read: lesbians and single mothers, referred to here as “maverick moms”) turn out better than boys raised by mothers and fathers. Instead of examining this interesting premise with some nuance, Flanagan takes umbrage against it, failing to realize that a son “better” raised by a maverick mom doesn’t necessarily translate into a “flawless” adolescence or, obversely, a mom and dad there to “fuck you up” — to use Flanagan’s hyperbole.

Scott argues that the problem with Drexler’s book is that there’s no middle ground. But I would argue that it is Flanagan herself who is incapable of walking the middle ground. This means we have a great problem with how the book is being presented. Because when it comes to something as complex as parental roles and child development, a critic cannot cling to cheap dichotomies like a life preserver if she expects to think her way up the river.

Even if we accept Flanagan’s notion that Drexler presents “the low-down rottenness of men” (nowhere in her review does she present a quote from Drexler’s book supporting this idea, other than the “wounded rhinos” thing, which strikes me as more metaphor than calumny), I’m wondering if Flanagan is threatened by the idea of someone not only pointing out “competition, dominance and control” as male issues, but also Drexler’s suggestion that women can instill some variant of these issues. (By way of contrast, both this review from the San Francisco Bay Guardian and this Library Journal review seem to suggest that Drexler is only stating that “maverick mom” relationships exist as a viable alternative and that might, in fact, be better for the developing child.)

A real critic, even a cogent conservative (cogency seems to have escaped Ms. Flanagan from Day One), might have challenged Drexler on whether or not paternally imbued masculinity is essential to child development. Instead, Flanagan puts crass metaphors into Drexler’s mouth (“In her opinion, maleness is a bit like Jiffy Pop”) and then proceeds to categorize Drexler’s book as “the latest entry” in “‘You go, girl!’ studies,” ending with an antifeminist tirade that has little to do with the book, much less Drexler’s argument.

This is reviewing? I certainly hope that this sort of black-and-white depiction of gender roles isn’t what the Atlantic considers to be the apotheosis of criticism.

by Edward Champion

Giving Head to a Hot Young Writer: A Special Column by Jay McInerney

We were drinking Stoli and snorting lines off an expensive hooker’s back, discussing a certain young stallion who’d the paper of record had puffed up before and who we had hoped to blow ourselves right when this Bolivian marching powder went straight to our heads. “Who cares, Jayster,” said my friend, who may or may not have been married. “Writers in their 20’s are good for one thing and one thing only: dependable fellatio.” I don’t know — I guess that’s possible, as many hipsters and not a few seedy men with glittering threads have claimed, that I’m a sad case for an author gone horribly awry after a stunning debut, but I remain, long after passing any literary relevance, strangely interested in wine and any book review opportunity where I can make a desperate stab at reclaiming any credibility I once had. I devour first novels, weeping profusely at the world that I shall never know again. I’ve tried to use second voice in some of my later fiction work, hoping for a comeback, but people have thought my efforts a pathetic gimmick. They’re right, of course. I have very little much to say any more. It doesn’t help that the weasley Michael J. Fox starred in the film adaptation of my book and that I have to explain constantly to people that I am not, in fact, married to Tracy Pollan.

But that’s where Benjamin Kunkel’s “Indecision” comes in. Ben (and I assure you that I have good reason to use his first name here) has penned a novel that I would gladly bob my head for. I would unzip Ben’s pants without a second thought. So should we all. When I read Ben’s book, I felt a certain inexplicable faith that I couldn’t put into words. The kind of ineffable sensation that one experiences when one undergoes an erection while flipping through a family album and fingering a hot cousin (not the cousin, silly, but the photo, of course!). It’s a bit taboo to think about this, but now that we’re all out here in the open, I’d like to see a show of hands. How many of you drop your pants when you get sexually excited by a novel? Furthermore, how many of you are compelled to call up the author, see if the author’s available for a hot weekend, and then perform as much fellatio (or cunnilingus; let’s consider both genders here) as this author demands over a 48 hour period?

Anyone who’s followed my work knows that I don’t hold back. I tell it like it is. And when I say to you that Benjamin Kunkel is an author who deserves as much fellatio as America can give him, well then you know that’s no bullshit coming from Uncle Jay! Ben is cute and cuddly and his book is the cat’s pajamas. And while I can’t quite figure out what it is that makes Ben’s book work, let me just say that I think he’s “deeply aware” of what a novel is all about — meaning that he has probably read at least fifty books in his lifetime and has picked up the basics.

Ben is ready to be fawned and groomed over like a hot coal in a blacksmith’s callused hands. Let him have groupies, masseuses, admirers, sycophants and, of course, we trusty fellators. You see, Ben Kunkel has exploded onto the literary scene like a ripe pinata. He’s the kind of man who I’d happily mix my metaphors for, if not Ben’s drinks.

Of course, once the ballyhoo dies down, you may just find Ben here on these review pages writing about some other hot young stallion ready to be spanked. Let us all hope that Mr. Kunkel’s grace and gratitude is as great as his talent. For so many others, like me, have been rash and wrong before.

by Edward Champion

The Long Colloquy

We’ve ribbed James Howard Kunstler before for his extraordinary cynicism. Nevertheless, having read The Long Emergency and remaining quite concerned about the issues expressed therein, we’d be remiss if we didn’t point you over to Birnbaum’s latest interview with Mr. Kunstler himself. Rather interestingly, The Long Emergency did not receive a single review in any major newspaper. Bobby B made efforts to contact several book review editors and none chose to respond.

by Edward Champion

So the Rereleased M. John Harrison’s a Must Read Then?

SF Site: “Read from cover-to-cover in a short amount of time, Anima feels less like a book than an assault, a wound, an onslaught of dream-killing mirrors, a battalion of bloodthirsty words, an epidemic of images that burrow into the readerly brain and claw their way through the murk of accumulated wistfulness and self-delusion until all that’s left is the petrified carcass of desire.”

by Edward Champion

Who is Brian Leiter (And Who Really Cares) and Why Did He Invite Himself to Write a Bitter Blog Post?

Brian Leiter quibbles over the New York Times‘ decision to run a lengthy review by William T. Vollmann on the new Curtis Cate biography of Frederich Nietzsche. Mr. Leiter, who apparently is a professor of philosophy, suggests that Vollmann has no expertise in the subject and displays none in his review.

I think Leiter is confusing the act of reviewing a biography (which does, after all, concern itself with a subject and his personal details first) with the act of summing up a man’s philosophy. Aside from Leiter subscribing to the traditional “credentialed” nonsense that often comes from bitter academics (perhaps because, while Leiter remains institutionalized and apparently quite miserable — in Texas, no less — Vollmann is busy turning out endless volumes of books, including a seven-volume treatise on violence), he concerns himself with Vollmann’s alleged failure to discuss Nietzsche’s philosophical ideas.

Leiter suggests that Vollmann “bizarrely ascribes” a “realism” to Nietzsche and suggests that Nietzsche does not hold the view that “cruelty is innate,” complaining that Vollmann fails to cite a specific passage. I’m fairly certain that Vollmann was suggesting one of Nietzsche’s most infamous statements from Thus Spake Zarathrusta, something that a certain Austrian perhaps took too much to heart: “Man is the cruelest animal. Whatever is most evil in his best power and the hardest stone for the highest creator.” Far from a “People magazine speculation,” Vollmann is willing to give the NYTBR readership the benefit of the doubt, presuming that they are familiar with Nietzsche’s basics. Further, Vollmann framed the “realism” within quotes, leaving little question to the reader that this was a speculation on Nietzsche’s capacity to tell the truth about the human race. This commonality, of course, what separates Vollmann’s work from many of his contemporaries on both the fiction and the nonfiction fronts.

Leiter suggests that Aristotle’s influence was “notable for his almost total absence from the corpus” and then deflates his argument by pointing to a few examples. I would argue that to dwell into the exact nature and percentage of Aristotle’s influence upon Nietzsche is to not only quibble over pedantics (something that more properly serves the purpose of academic journals, with their reams of paper quibbling over singular passages), but to ignore the realities of editing and publishing a major newspaper that is designed, after all, for mass consumption.

Leiter then offers a cheap shot, suggesting that Vollmann’s stroke has impaired his abilities to think. He then continues on this Aristotle tangent. However, I will agree with Leiter about his nitpicking concerning “individual Jews,” even though his own observation is largely a red herring.

Mr. Leiter’s post is more blustery than helpful and is about as uninviting as it gets. Personally I’m just a guy who knows a little more than the basics about Frederich N. and I’m sure Leiter certainly knows much more than I do about philosophy. But if Leiter seriously believes that the New York Times Book Review is intended to be serious and intellectual, then he clearly hasn’t followed its decline since the Bill Keller pledge to go more commercial from early 2004 and is similarly “uncredentialed” to weigh in. I also sincerely doubt nepotism factored into Sam Tanenhaus’s decision to hire Vollmann. Vollmann has always existed on an uncompromising edge, daring to write about issues that most novelists and journalists keep their heads in the sand about, and has faced a certain stigma enforced by folks too flustered to hear the truth.

While I agree to some extent with Leiter’s cri de coeur for intellectualism, his arrows here are misplaced. A biography is not a philosophical text, nor necessarily a response to philosophy. It tells us about a man and his details, yes. But it is not necessarily concerned with philosphy — although, it is helpful to the scholar wanting to find additional (if tertiary) context.

by Edward Champion

Morning Roundup

  • Does the apple fall far from the tree? Owen King would prefer that nobody knew about the apple at all. Owen is Stephen King’s son and has a new book out called We’re All In This Together. Whatever We’re All‘s literary merits, we’re absolutely confident that nepotism and King’s connections had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the book getting published. Perhaps like other sons of famous authors, Mr. King’s talent will be separate from his father’s and we’ll see him pen a small chapbook called Invasion from the World of Warcraft.
  • As widely reported in the blogosphere this morning, the Washington Post has issued a retraction for Marianne Wiggins’ review of John Irving’s Until I Find You. It seems that Wiggins was married to Salman Rushdie, who in turn is a longtime friend of Irving’s. Ron, David Montgomery and Sarah have posted their thoughts on this issue. The question here is where the line is drawn. If a reviewer has exchanged emails with an author (which appears to be the Post policy), it seems preposterous to me that this will sully one’s critical perspective. (And in fact, I’ve struck up a few unexpected and amicable email volleys with authors whose books I’ve ruthlessly panned.) If the publishing industry can swing between art and commerce swifter than a disco king, than surely the reviewer can negotiate the much simpler divide between the parquet floor of the books and the authors who dance on it. We’re adults here, not junior high school students. Apparently, the Post doesn’t seem to believe that an adult is capable of disagreeing with someone while remaining cordial in person.
  • Poet Laureate Ted Kooser gets up at 4:30 AM each morning to write his poetry and wants to bring poetry to the people.
  • Benjamin Kunkel plunges into Balzac’s Lost Illusions.
  • The Gentleman of San Francisco, one of the first works of Russian poet Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin has been translated and published. It only took ninety years to get around to it.
  • Richard Herring and Stewart Lee have returned to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival after 18 years. They are determined not to turn into Ben Elton.
  • And while there may be more memoirs right now than ever, Andrew O’Hagan says there’s reason to celebrate over this.
by DrMabuse

My Head Hurts! Therefore, Comic Books Are Bad!

Proving once again how culturally irrelevant they are, the Book Babes have declared graphic novels as the harbinger of evil. So suggesth one Ellen Hetzel:

I am patiently working my way through two graphic novels, David B?s Epileptic and Marjane Satrapi’s Embroideries, just one more indication in our world that Western culture increasingly depends on visual messages to perceive and understand what’s going on. Do I think this is a good thing? No. It seems like the mind has to be able to wrap itself around abstract ideas in order to reason, and visuals?at least as we know them through TV, movies and advertising?cause us to respond instinctively and emotionally.

Let’s discuss just how profoundly stupid this paragraph is. Consider the following:

First off, if the objection here is over any book medium contains “abstract ideas,” then I suppose we should discount the whole of literature outside of rigid genre-based narratives that offer nothing in the way of ambiguity. Ulysses? Sorry, Mr. Joyce, you’re too “abstract.” Tristram Shandy? Borges? Faulkner? Gaddis? Lessing? Flann O’Brien? Sorry, folks, the mind must “wrap itself around abstract ideas” in order to understand you. We’ll have to throw you into the dust heap. But Dan Brown and John Grisham? Well, you’re part of the literal-minded club. So come on by for some barbeque and MGD.

Second, what specifically is wrong with “visual messages?” Is Hetzel really advocating a culture based entirely (if not exclusively) on words? That’s sure fantastic for the 42 million Americans who can’t read or for quick international symbols that convey a point faster than words. I guess those Egyptians were fundamental dumbasses “wrapping themselves around abstract ideas” when they dared to communicate through hieroglyphics. I suppose Hetzel will be demanding next that we replace erect penises and floppy breasts with great Puritanical raiments of language.

Third, “visual messages” — or, more specifically, mediums that involve visual messages — are not exclusive to Western culture, nor are they as recent as Hetzel suggests. (Get schooled in ukiyo-e, Babe.)

Thus, if I am to understand Hetzel’s argument, it is this:

1. I can’t understand this graphic novel thingy. My head hurts.
2. Well, if I can’t understand it, then it must be fundamentally wrong for everybody! It must be abstract!
3. The cute little comic book thingy is composed of “visual messages.”
4. Since I can’t understand the cute little comic book thingy, therefore anything involving “visual messages” is fundamentally wrong!
5. My head hurts. I’m out of aspirin. This is NOT A GOOD THING!
6. There are other “visual messages” on teevee and advertising.
7. Teevee and advertising are lesser mediums than the book.
8. Therefore, the cute little comic book thingy is a lesser medium.

It’s good to have such circular bullshit come so easily, isn’t it?

I’ve had my problems with the Book Babes before, but I never suspected that they’d serve up such idiotic logic. I’m quite stunned that the Book Standard would allow something so fundamentally moronic to infiltrate its pages.

(via Bookslut)

by DrMabuse

The Harriet Klausner Mythos

Booksquare suggests that Amazon reviewer Harriet Klausner (profiled in today’s Wall Street Journal by Joanne Kaufman) isn’t exactly a discovery of such stunning new finds as Tess Gerritsen, pointing out that Gerritsen’s career kick-started several years before.

However, I’m curious why the Wall Street Journal didn’t make an effort to verify Klausner’s extraordinary claims. Kaufman only describes Klausner’s voice as “more than a few dips of helium,” but makes no reference to the geography of her home or Ms. Klausner’s appearance. I’m wondering if Kaufman even spoke with Ms. Klausner in person. After all, if Klausner has read over 8,000 books and reviewed them in a mere five years, wouldn’t it be worth a trip to Atlanta to observe just how she does it?

by DrMabuse

The Book Review Reviewers

Holy frijole! Return of the Reluctant got a whole paragraph from the Gray Lady and was named with several other fantastic and swell folks. That conventional media has responded so quickly to the book review reviewers demonstrates that we are having an more of an influence than we thought. At the very least, they’re paying attention. I certainly hope that other litblogs (and blogs in general) pick up the slack and give their local newspaper coverage a hard look. Together, we might be able to remind today’s newspapers that book coverage is a seminal part of the Sunday newspaper experience.

Rest assured, this won’t affect our hard tests here in the slightest. And I should again point out that I would be beyond delighted to send Mr. Tanenhaus a tasty brownie. It’s really up to him.

by DrMabuse

More Weekly Takes

If you’re interested in other weekly reports on literary coverage, the litblog community has transformed, seemingly overnight, into online ombudsmen:

Mark continues his assaults upon the Los Angeles Times.

Scott has taken on the San Francisco Chronicle.

Sam Jones has taken on the Chicago Tribune.

And Bookdwarf promises to take on the Boston Globe.

This is one of the most exciting developments I’ve seen from the litblogs. There are no doubts in my mind that at least one editor is developing an ulcer.

by DrMabuse

Woe is the Know-It-All

A.J. Jacobs responds to Joe Queenan’s infamous review of The Know-It-All. While Jacobs’ essay is the kind of cathartic confessional that sometimes cuts too close to Believer-style “I’m okay, you’re okay” histrionics, it’s still a moderately interesting glimpse at how an author takes a review. But I still think Jacobs is coming across as petty as Rob Schneider. He sold books, didn’t he?

by DrMabuse

The Girl Who Cried Julavits

OGIC has weighed in on the Caryn James piece, as has Galleycat. OGIC suggests that the James piece is honest criticism. Meanwhile, Galleycat (inter blogia) has stated her reasons why James has attacked. Rather than ape Galleycat’s able analysis, I thought I’d respond to OGIC’s notion that we all leaped into some touchy-feely Julavits antiseptic tank.

If James had stated specific examples in her profile, then her huffing and puffing would have had more validity. But I perceived this piece as an “assault,” not because of the piece’s intensity, but because it was the worst of assaults (the spineless passive-aggressive tone) available in the human repertoire. But more than that. James was fundamentally dishonest about her sensibilities in the following ways:

First off, James complains about a chapter being composed of one sentence and then inveighs against “bite-size fragments” (and, no, she’s not talking about those bags of tiny Snickers bars, but books, believe it or not!). This is certainly an interesting position to take. I’m genuinely curious to understand why anyone would be so hostile about a book merely because its spine failed to stretch out at least three inches or a single sentence carried over to another page. But the most we get from James is some vague quibble about “the tyranny of white space” and then a logical fallacy (and thus dishonest argument) that employs a backwards Chewbacca defense, suggesting that anyone interested in an abbreviated book inherited this interest from watching too much MTV. (And since Terry Teachout himself has confessed that his attention span has shifted towards shorter books, I get this wonderfully comic image of Teachout sitting through a Real World marathon on the weekend.)

Having failed to reference a single example to support her argument, James then badgers not the similarity of the books, but the close proximity and gender of the authors! How dare this quintet have vaginas or dine in Manhattan from time to time! Why, those two simple facts alone are enough to corrupt literature as we know it! Never mind that within the Bloomsbury Group, you couldn’t get any more disparate than Lytton Strachey’s crisp satire and Virginia Woolf’s baroque paeans to consciousness. No! In the Caryn James universe, if you have at least two personal attributes in common with another person, you will live similar lives and make similar choices. Does that mean that all male writers living in San Francisco put together prose like Dave Eggers or Daniel Handler or Andrew Sean Greer? I couldn’t name three more local writers whose work contrasts more sharply.

Then, after all this flummery, James throws us a frickin’ bone. She likes the Silber. But not so fast, kids! Because all five books are “built on compressed observations that easily veer into precious writers’ program language, too woozy and poetic for its own good.” And not a single example of what these “compressed observations” might be (what a writer sees while diving in the deep sea perhaps?) or the “woozy and poetic” MFA stuff that James takes offense to.

Again, this is unreasonable and dishonest. If you were a lawyer trying a case in court, you’d tell a jury that the defendant raped and murdered 32 squirrels, but you’d point to the police report, the testimony of witnesses, the laboratory tests, and the like. In short, you’d rely upon evidentiary support and ensure that the depraved squirrel killer would pay for the 32 small lives in blood, currency, or imprisonment of the judge’s choosing. It might give the hypothetical attorney a cheap thrill to call the defendant “woozy and perverted,” but without hard evidence, it’s nothing more than silly ad hominen.

Then James offers a valid point about award ceremonies offering variety, only to drift back into the “claustrophobic sameness” of the five books that represents a still as yet unestablished style that she objects to. James turns to the books themselves, but again and again seems confused. Instead of citing examples, she attacks story structure as a “trendy gimmick.” She then tells us, “Trendy gimmick bad, illuminating strategy good,” which is the same thing that a marketing manager once told me. Then there are the handicaps and yet another unfair assualt on Bynum not because of the writing, but because she is 32. (And, by the way, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission is being cc’d on this post.) And still no hard examples.

By then, the James profile ends and the anger across the blogosphere begins. But in rereading James with a more careful eye, I take back my initial assessment. Her article isn’t an “assault.” It’s simply dishonest and incompetent criticism.

by DrMabuse

NYTBR Smackdown

The Observer leaks the shortlist for Chip McGrath’s replacement.

SARAH CRICHTON: Former publisher of Little, Brown, fired, with charges of commercialism and fights with Warner publisher Maureen Egan. Accused by Joe McGinniss of not promoting books. [Working glimpse of Little, Brown.] Before that, editor at Newsweek. Recently worked with Liebermans and collaborated on A Mighty Heart, Marianne Pearl’s book on her husband Daniel.

The Upshot: She was a champion of popularizing literary fiction at Little, Brown. And her journalism background and brief stint as an insider is a plus. Strong personality will be either problematic or embracing.

ANN HULBERT: Slate contributor. Wrote Interior Castle: The Art and Life of Jean Stafford and child development book. Acknowledged as “baby expert” by Boston radio.

The Upshot: Varied journalism background, including books, but emphasis of late has been outside the fray. Non-fiction edge?

BENJAMIN SCHWARZ: Literary editor of The Atlantic Monthly. On the National Book Critics Circle Board until 2006. Delivered clear manifesto in last Atlantic on why certain books are reviewed.

The Upshot: Schwarz embraces obscure work and is clear about his intentions. Although I’m not convinced that the Caitlin Flanagan Dr. Laura review represents the pop-to-literary balance that Keller is hoping for.

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: Writer of the Close Reader column in the NYTBR, which stopped last year. Ex-New York editor of Slate. Made so-so attempt to understand blogs. Might be counted upon to profile juicy disputes. Attacked Dave Eggers.

The Upshot: For those looking for some good fights, Shulevitz might be the one to do it. However, given her power couple status and connections, it’s likely that the bluster may be more talk than action.

RETURN OF THE RELUCTANT PICK: Benjamin Schwarz.

[UPDATE: It’s Schwarz, not Schwartz. Blame really bad Mel Brooks movies for the problematic spelling.]

by DrMabuse

Anne Tyler: Unwavering Instigator of Irritation

Michiko on Joe Ezterhas: “As for the rest of this ridiculously padded, absurdly self-indulgent book, the reader can only cry: T.M.I.! Too Much Information! And: Get an editor A.S.A.P.!” What the F.U.C.K. is up with the A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.S.?

A new book will explain the seven most important unsolved math problems. One of them involves working out the probability ratio for the Democrats in November.

How the hell did the Washington Times snag a review copy of the $3,000 Ali book? Did the reviewer have to fill out a loan application and submit a credit report?

The new issue of the resurrected Argosy is out. It’s the first issue since 1943, with work by Jeffrey Ford, Michael Moorcock, Ann Cummins and Benjamin Rosenbaum. Each issue will be packaged in two volumes: one the main magazine, the other a novella. The magazine is printed bimonthly and has an affordable subsciption rate. The Moorcock story is the return of metatemporal detective Sir Seaton Begg.

The Age weighs in on the legacy of long novels, but cites Tolkien and Patrick O’Brian instead of David Foster Wallace and Rising Up and Rising Down.

Bookslut has posted the standard response the Times is issuing.

Christopher Paolini: the next J.W. Rowling?

A.S. Byatt weighs in on the Grossman translation.

The Globe and Mail reports that Tyler “hasn’t a boring or irritating word in her vocabulary.” Of course. You can find the boredom and the irritation in the Caucasian malaise and the treacle.

And Radosh and Slate are looking into the reliability of that Times sex slave story.

by DrMabuse

NYTBR & Keller Update

I’m stunned by the sudden influx of email I’ve had concerning my call to action re: Keller and the New York Times Book Review (thanks in no small part to the Mighty Book Blog Cabal kind enough to link it). Apparently, a lot of people care about literary fiction. (If I don’t get back to you all immediately, please bear with me. I’ll do my best.) Since I see the makings of a multilateral coalition, I’ve started outlining a plan. More details later.