Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America

Notes

Notes \ Introduction: The Reviewer’s Lament 1. Bill Marx,“The Decline of Book Reviewing.” 2. Andrew Greeley, “Who Reads Book Reviews Anyway?”; John Hollander, “Some Animadversions on Current Reviewing,” 224; Max Gissen, “Commercial Criticism and Punch-Drunk Reviewing,”252; Helen E. Haines,“Book Reviewing in Review,”733; EdmundWilson,“TheAll-Star LiteraryVaudeville,”in The Shores of Light: A Literary Chronicle of the Twenties and Thirties, 229; Bookman, September 1897, 45; Scribner’s Monthly, March 1875, 626; Nation, July 6, 1865, 11; Mirror , October 10, 1833, 47; Portico, June 1817, 458–59; Monthly Anthology, December 1805, 620–22. 3. Joan Shelley Rubin, The Making of Middlebrow Culture, 34. Rubin relates “the American affinity for diagnoses of declension—for seeing in the present a waning of earlier glories”—to book reviewing. 4. Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1:408. 5. Reviewers’ frequent use of unsourced information is readily apparent. But to discern inconsistent descriptions requires reading many reviews of a book. See my essay “Inside Book Reviewing,” based, in part, on comparisons of reviews of A Mother’s Work.“Day Care vs. Being There,”review of A Mother’s Work, by Deborah Fallows, New York Times Book Review, October 27, 1985, 12; Review of A Mother’s Work, by Deborah Fallows, Radcliffe Quarterly, June 1986, 48. 6. Review of Blue Shoe, by Anne Lamott, Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 6, 2002, www.startribune.com. 7. Comment on Ian McEwan in“Literature’s Cuckold,” review of Love, Etc., by Julian Barnes, New Republic, April 2, 2001, 36. 8. “Ghost Story,” review of Anil’s Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje, Boston Sunday Globe, April 30, 2000, J1, J4;“Looking for Revelation in All the Wrong Places,”review of The Book of Revelation, by Rupert Thomson, Boston Sunday Globe, April 30, 2000, J2; Short Takes, review of A Girl with a Monkey, by Leonard Michaels, Boston Sunday Globe, April 30, 2000, J2; “Writing the Novel’s Future,” review of 141 White Teeth, by Zadie Smith, Boston Sunday Globe, April 30, 2000, J1; “The Dark Descent,” review of The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions, by Rick Moody, Washington Post Book World, May 26, 2002, 5; review of True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey, Boston Book Review, April 2001, www.bookwire.com/bbr/ bbr-home.html; review of The Autograph Man, by Zadie Smith, Salon, September 5, 2002, www.salon.com. 9. “A.A.R.P. Recruits,” review of Middle Age, by Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times Book Review, September 16, 2001, 7. 10. “Oddities and Ends: Irving Unveils Another Gallery of Grotesques,”review of Until I Find You, by John Irving, Boston Sunday Globe, July 10, 2005, E9. 11. Review of The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, New York Times Book Review , September 9, 2001, 10–12. 12. Martin Amis, The War against Cliché, 370; Victoria Glendinning, “The Book Reviewer: The Last Amateur?” 190; Peter S. Prescott, preface to Never in Doubt: Critical Essays on American Books, 1972–1985 (New York: Arbor House, 1986), 3. 13. Joseph Epstein,“Reviewing and Being Reviewed,” 51. 14. W. H. Auden, “A Disturbing Novelist: On Muriel Spark’s A Muriel Spark Trio,” in A Company of Readers: Uncollected Writings of W. H. Auden, Jacques Barzun, and Lionel Trilling from the Readers’ Subscription and Mid-Century Book Clubs, ed. Arthur Krystal, 150. 15. Virginia Woolf, Reviewing, 7. 16. H. L. Mencken,“Criticism of Criticism of Criticism,” 189. 17. John Simon, introduction to The Sheep from the Goats: Selected Literary Essays of John Simon (New York: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1989), xix. 18. Anthony Brandt, introduction to Rotten Reviews: A Literary Companion, 12. 19. Introduction to“Reporting the Arts II,”National Arts Journalism Program, 10. 20. Ibid., 13. 21. Ibid. 22. Bill Marx,“Critical Condition,” 79; John Simon,“Everybody’s a Critic,” review of Regarding Film: Criticism and Comment, by Stanley Kauffmann; Citizen Sarris:American Film Critic, ed.Emanuel Levy,LosAngelesTimes, March 24,2002, www.latimes.com. Unnatural Selection 1. Motion Picture Association of America, Research and Statistics: Frequently Asked Questions, www.mpaa.org. 142 Notes 2. Florin L. McDonald,“Book Reviewing in the American Newspaper,” 15. 3. Pat Holt, Holt Uncensored #361, March 7, 2003, www.holtuncensored.com. 4. Nora Rawlinson,“A Change in the ‘Forecasts.’” 5. Jim Hoberman,“The Film Critic of Tomorrow, Today,” in The Crisis of Criticism , ed. Maurice Berger, 73. 6. Donald Davidson,“Criticism outside New York,” 249–50. Vermin, Dogs, and...