the complete review Quarterly
Volume IV, Issue 4   --   November, 2003


The Year in Reviews
An overview of the most-discussed review-events of the year
(November 2002 - October 2003)

Fact and fiction in What I Loved
Why bother reading it in order to review it ? (I)
Why bother reading it in order to review it ? (II)
Cashing in on being a fraud: The Fabulist
The Devil wears Prada
Harry Potter: Speed-reading, and Byatt
Tibor Fischer on Martin Amis
Laura Miller reviews Chuck Palahniuk
Only good reviews will do !
Dale Peck retires ?
The Believer and the s-word
Reviewing in general



Fact and fiction in What I Loved

       Paul Auster's wife, Siri Hustvedt, published her novel What I Loved in the spring. Joe Hagan's review in The New York Observer (17 March) pointed out (in great detail) that much of it was taken from real life -- in particular, in the form of a character apparently based on Hustvedt's stepson, Daniel Auster.
       In response to Hagan's piece Katie Roiphe -- perhaps not the most objective judge -- wondered: "Are critics paying too much attention to literary gossip ?" in The Fact in Fiction in Slate.
       This seems to have been one of the central reviewing-issues of the year, cropping up again most prominently with regard to Lauren Weisberger's The Devil wears Prada and Stephen Glass’ The Fabulist. These two books (see mentions below) are even more clearly grounded in reality -- yet choose to present themselves as fiction; reviewers clearly had some difficulty in how to approach them (though other factors -- such as what many perceived to be their very poor literary quality -- also played a role).

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Why bother reading it in order to review it ? (I)

       In the 26 January issue of The New York Times Book Review Beverly Lowry reviewed The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk, Susan McDougal's autobiographical work, written with Pat Harris . (McDougal was involved in the Clintons' Whitewater dealings, and refused to testify to Kenneth Starr's Office of the Independent Counsel.)
       On 29 January Gene Lyons published a piece in the Arkansas Democrat–Gazette (now available here, at MobyLives), in which he came to the conclusion that Ms. Lowry didn't bother to read the McDougal book before reviewing it. (The New York Times did also mention some of the mistakes contained in the review in their 'corrections' section, and also published a letter from McDougal in the Book Review addressing some of the inaccuracies.)
       This story did receive some attention -- see, for example, the Book Babes piece on The Case of the Reviewer Who Didn't Read and Alex Good's commentary, Reviewed and Unread. Surprisingly, however, the general reaction was a muted one. Readers apparently weren't surprised to hear that a reviewer hadn't read the book they were discussing -- or perhaps (even pre-Jayson Blair) expectations of editorial integrity at The New York Times were already limited, and lapses like this one expected. Arguably also Lowry's review centred on the events described in the book, rather than the book itself, leading to different standards for what might have been considered essentially an opinion piece rather than an actual book review.
       This incident also served to spotlight the fact that book reviews generally are not fact-checked, even at an institution that has such tremendous resources as The New York Times does. While not quite as embarrassing as a reviewer getting names and plotlines wrong in a review (as occasionally also happens) Lowry's review certainly demonstrated the need for fact-checking in this area. (One imagines this could be done at relatively low cost -- all that is needed is to have someone else read the book and compare the statements made in the review -- but it's apparently not something The New York Times is willing to shell out a couple of extra bucks for.)

       An amusing postscript to this review was that the publishers of the book felt no compunctions about referring to it in their ad-copy. An advert for The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk in the 11 February issue of The New York Times has as the top quote:
"Moving and compelling" -- The New York Times Book Review
       Bad enough, quoting from a dubious review (and not mentioning the reviewer's name) -- but consider the sentence from which the quote comes from. It actually begins:
This part of the book is altogether moving and compelling
       Suggesting, of course, -- as the ad-copy doesn't -- that most of the rest most certainly wasn't. (Aren't there consumer protection agencies that are supposed to look out for hapless consumers and guard against this sort of misleading twisting of words ? Of course not, it's just advertising for books .....)
       No one seems to have made much of a fuss about the fact that this ad ran in The New York Times, of all places, the one venue that certainly should have known better, considering all the questions that had been raised about the review (and the corrections they had run).

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Why bother reading it in order to review it ? (II)

       A bit more tongue-in-cheek, some other reviewers also wondered why they should bother reading a book in order to review it when considering another Clinton-related memoir, Hillary Clinton's incredibly successful Living History.
       In Reason (17 June 2003) Charles Paul Freund wrote about Living Hillary: The art of ghost-reading, noting: "Hillary didn't actually write her own book, so why should I read it before joining the public chorus about it ?" P.J. O'Rourke went so far as to suggest in his review (Weekly Standard, 7/14 July 2003) that: "If you plan not to read this summer, Living History is just the book" (though O'Rourke actually offers a fairly close reading of the book).
       The focus of attention on the book was again much more with what stood behind it rather than the text per se. In any case, it didn't seem to matter what sort of review attention the book received: it sold phenomenally well.

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Cashing in on being a fraud: The Fabulist

       Among the most offensive books of the year was Stephen Glass' The Fabulist (which was also turned into and released as a film). Glass famously wrote for The New Republic, and managed to get a number of articles based largely or entirely on fictions published.
       Bafflingly, a publisher (Simon & Schuster) actually agreed to publish this novel -- a thinly disguised account of Glass' misdeeds.
       Many journalists and reviewers had great difficulty in writing about the book -- though, somewhat surprisingly, a great deal was written about it. (We would have expected everyone to simply (but completely) ignore it.)
       In the National Review John J. Miller devoted an entire article to wondering: "What to do with my copy of Stephen Glass’s novel" in Book Burner ?, finally asking readers what he should do with it. Some 300 responded, with some creative ideas, as amusingly described in his follow-up piece, The Unwanted Book.
       Reviews include Chris Lehmann's in The Washington Post, who found:
In short, the thin insights in The Fabulist suggest an uglier (and ongoing) motivation behind Glass's career than the simple compulsion to lie: a thoroughgoing, unearned contempt for the numberless people he plays for suckers -- not merely editors and colleagues, but readers, journalistic subjects and the bit players who populate the novel's social background.
       In the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal Erich Eichman finds: "the novel's prose resembles that of The Hitler Diaries, but without the ring of authenticity."
       In a review in Policy Review titled The Banality of Fictions Benjamin Wallace-Wells says: "Stylistically, the book is a disaster."
       There were also reviews by those who knew Glass, including Hanna Rosin, whi discussed the book in Glass Houses in Slate.
       The book also elicited discussions such as the BookBabes wondering: "Has the book world encouraged journalistic fiction by allowing once too much blurring of fiction and nonfiction ?" in The Nonfiction Fabulist.

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The Devil wears Prada

       Among the most stunning and baffling successes of the year was Lauren Weisberger's The Devil wears Prada, a roman-à-clef about Anna Wintour, editor of the fashion magazine Vogue (apparently a figure of interest to a large segment of the population), which spent a phenomenal 24 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. As surprising as its success is the amount of review coverage and media attention it received -- much of which was very harsh.
       The unwarranted attention on a very flimsy first book (albeit about someone well-known in media circles) itself attracted considerable notice, and so, for example, Mark Goldblatt wondered about The Devil & the Gray Lady in the National Review:
Still, an interesting question emerges if you reverse Capote's dictum and ask whether all gossip is literature. It's a question that surrounds the most gossipy novel in recent years, The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger, and percolates within the critical jihad the book ignited at the New York Times. The fact that the paper twice reviewed a literary debut by a previously unknown author would be noteworthy in itself; what's unprecedented is the fact that its reviewers twice ripped the book to shreds -- arguing not simply that it fails as literature, but that it should never have been published in the first place.
       About Janet Maslin's review (one of The New York Times' reviews) he notes:
Again, what's actually between the covers of The Devil Wears Prada is mere background noise; first and foremost, Maslin is reviewing not the novel itself but the idea of the novel.

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Harry Potter: Speed-reading, and Byatt

       The most eagerly awaited book the years was the fifth instalment of the Harry Potter-series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. As with the previous volume, the book launch was such a much-anticipated event that the publishers felt no need to send out review copies: practically all reviewers only got their copies at the same time as the general reading public, at stroke of midnight (or thereafter).
       In reviewing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, however, the emphasis was not on offering consumers the best coverage of the book, but rather on offering them the quickest. A large number of reviewers plowed through the book as quickly as possible, headlining their reviews with lines like: 'I stayed up all night. It's a beast of a book, a real page-turner' (Stephanie Merritt, The Observer, 22 June). A few reviewers offered ambiguous excuses, such as Mark Lawson in his overnight review in The Guardian (21 June):
Writers and publishers may say that no book should be reviewed like this. Well, yes. But no book should be published like this.
       This particular rush to judgement is all the more confounding because those most interested in the book surely were not waiting for the reviews but rather had already purchased their own copy (and probably were reading it that weekend), while those who were undecided and might have wanted to learn from a trusted reviewer whether the book was worth their while would surely have been willing to wait a few more days for a more thorough and careful examination

       There was little other Harry Potter-fallout: the largely critic-proof book wasn't written about much after the initial rush of attention. Only A.S.Byatt, in an opinion piece, Harry Potter and the Childish Adult, published in The New York Times on 7 July (also available here, at the Telegraph-site), managed to stir things up a bit. While not a review, it was literary criticism of the sort to elicit many reactions, including Charles Taylor at Salon (A.S. Byatt and the goblet of bile), reports in the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian and sites such as The Pinocchio Theory -- not to mention all the Harry Potter fan sites.

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Tibor Fischer on Martin Amis

       The most quoted and discussed book-comment of the year didn't even come in a real book review. Martin Amis' fall-offering, Yellow Dog, was strictly embargoed, cowing even the likes of Tibor Fischer to remain mum about the contents -- but not keeping him from offering a few general remarks about the book, in an opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph, Someone needs to have a word with Amis.
       The most objectionable aspect of Fischer's piece -- that he was putting down a book without adequately explaining himself, hiding behind the excuse that he was largely forbidden from doing so by the embargo ("So I won't tell you anything about the contents of Yellow Dog, but what I will tell you is that it's terrible") -- was largely ignored. Instead everyone pounced on the wonderful put-downs, as Fischer wrote such zingers as:
Yellow Dog isn't bad as in not very good or slightly disappointing. It's not-knowing-where-to-look bad.
       And then there was the perhaps single most-quoted line, when Fischer worried about being seen reading the book: "It's like your favourite uncle being caught in a school playground, masturbating."

       This piece has been endlessly referred to, in particular then when the book finally did come out, to decidedly mixed reviews. (It should be noted that some -- most notoriously Michiko Kakutani's in The New York Times (28 October 2003) -- were as harsh and dismissive as Fischer's comments.)
       Discussions of the whole affair include:        See also Dog's day ? (Jay Rayner in The Observer), for a general survey of the anti-Amis movement.

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Laura Miller reviews Chuck Palahniuk

       It wasn't a great year for the truly nasty review, but Laura Miller's savaging of Chuck Palahniuk's Diary in Salon (20 August) (only available to subscribers, etc.) made for a few fireworks.
       The most notable -- and pathetic -- reaction was from none other than Palahniuk himself, a letter to the editor, in which he wrote: "Until you can create something that captivates people, I'd invite you to just shut up." He also insists: "It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It's a lot more difficult to perform one."
       Palahniuk's response -- illogical, and nearly incoherent though it is -- is worth a closer look. For one, it is yet another lesson in why authors should be wary of reading reviews of their own works (and why they should be especially wary of the in-the-heat-of-the-moment response). His basic defense -- 'I'm an artist, you're a hack, how could you possibly understand what I am doing' -- is a surprisingly common one. It's also utterly irrelevant. He completely misunderstands the role of the book reviewer: Laura Miller's job in writing her review was certainly not to captivate people, nor does it matter if she is capable of writing creatively in a manner that can captivate people. (In addition, for what it's worth: she certainly seems to have gotten his attention .....)
       Palahniuk is desperately defensive -- and unconvincing. "It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation", he claims. Certainly, anything is easily attacked -- but one of the remarkable things about true art is that it is amazingly resilient: it's pretty damn hard to destroy. Palahniuk's creations, meanwhile, look more like frauds than art (at least to us) -- and, as such, are highly vulnerable to being exposed for what they are (as Miller may have done) -- and then dismissed by critics and consumers alike.

       This was a popular topic among webloggers; see comments at:

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Only good reviews will do !

       Carlo Wolff was assigned to review feel-good author Mitch Albom's new book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven for the Detroit Free Press -- for which Albom also writes. The review was unkind, and the editor refused to run it -- setting off a minor scandal.
       The suddenly much in demand review was eventually printed elsewhere (read it at the Sun-Sentinel, for example), and the Detroit Free Press got a whole lot of bad press (see, for example, the letters to the editor on the subject).
       BookBabes offer a good overview of events.

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Dale Peck retires ?

       One of the most discussed reviewing-related pieces of the year looks to be James Atlas' profile of Dale Peck in The New York Times Magazine (26 October). An occasional reviewer (and apparently also a writer of fiction) with a reputation for being particularly harsh (his Rick Moody review was one of last year's high- (or low-)lights), Peck is among the reviewers -- along with fellow The New Republic scribe James Wood -- who have specific ideas about what literature should be, and use their essay-length reviews to convey it (taking no prisoners along the way).
       Atlas notes at the end of the article that "he's hanging up his gloves" -- though the quote from Peck then is a tantalizing one: "I am not going to write any more bad reviews", he says -- suggesting, of course, that in any future reviews he'd only have nice things to say .....

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The Believer and the s-word

       And then there was The Believer.
       Launched in the spring, this McSweeney's off-shoot was among the most discussed new periodicals of 2003.
       While having, broadly speaking, a literary focus it unfortunately offers relatively little review coverage. Nevertheless, it completely dominated review-news this year, specifically in the form of Heidi Julavits' call to arms in the first issue, Rejoice ! Believe ! Be Strong and Read Hard !. This "Call for a New Era of Experimentation, and a Book Culture That Will Support It" expresses disappointment about the current state of book reviewing ("our present Teflon age of criticism") and hopes for a new, friendlier way of looking at things. A muddle of ambitions (and not bothering to differentiate between book reviews and literary criticism -- two very, very different things), it is nevertheless at least an attempt at an overview of the current situation, and of possible alternatives.
       It is in this piece that Julavits unleashed the terrible word/concept of "snark", with the (admittedly impressive) consequence that by the second half of 2003 there was almost nothing written about book reviewing and literary criticism that did not use that term. From weblogs to the editorial pages of The New York Times, the s-word was everywhere (and it doesn't look like we'll be able to rid ourselves of it any time soon).
       Unfortunately, Julavits does not offer a precise definition of the term. The closest she comes is in introducing the word:
at worst, I fear that book reviews are just an opportunity for a critic to strive for humor, and to appear funny and smart and a little bit bitchy, without attempting to espouse any higher ideals -- or even to try to understand, on a very localized level, what a certain book is trying to do, even if it does it badly. This is wit for wit's sake -- or, hostility for hostility's sake. This hostile, knowing, bitter tone of contempt is, I suspect, a bastard offspring of Orwell's flea-weighers. I call it Snark
       To be completely honest, we're still not very sure what she means (and we have no idea whether, for example, our reviews are snarky or not). But whatever she means, it sure has caught on.

       For just some of the many discussions of The Believer and the s-word, see:

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Reviewing in general

       As usual, there were numerous general articles discussing book reviewing -- a few of which didn't even focus on The Believer.

       Poets & Writers has a series of article on reviewing from different perspectives: Authors On Reviews, Editors on Reviews, and Critics on Reviews

       In The New Yorker Rachel Cohen showed that really bad reviews are nothing new: A Very Bad Review describes one of the very worst and most notorious, John Churton Collins' pillorying of Edmund Gosse that she calls "forty-one of the most scathing pages in the history of reviewing".

       Other reviewing related articles include:        During the year the availability of online reviews from major media outlets was again diminished. Among the newspaper and magazine sites that have largely cut off all but subscribing and/or registered users are: The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Salon, and The Times.

       Nevertheless, many online review-sites continue to thrive and several new ones have appeared -- the most prominent being bookmunch and Blogcritics.org.


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© 2003 the complete review Quarterly
© 2003 the complete review