This is a perennial difficulty in book reviewing, yet the Times has turned it into a subtle system of patronage and servitude, a carrot and stick approach that perpetuates an incestuous system of backslapping and mutual admiration, rather than any independent judgment of the quality of books under review. If it's not plain and decipherable on the surface, then there's a problem for the reviewer.ģ. In literary writing, established authors, should they attempt experimentation, are chided for venturing into forbidden territory, and the reader given no credit for interpretive ability. The Times has perfected the art of cutting down to size even the most mildly incorrect opinions in generally conventional books the author is criticized for letting his passions get the better of him, for stooping to populism, for tainting the entire system when only selective correction is called for, for throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This is one reason innovative fiction and poetry finds no place in the Times's review pages: by definition the territory beyond domestic realism is where the institutions of society are being bombarded, by radical and anarchic and individualistic forces-namely, out-of-control writers. The book review becomes, in effect, a mechanism to screen out incorrect political opinion. Can one imagine the Times finding room on its pages for any of these books, or these? The editors have some explaining to do, if they promote on their pages books by celebrity writers or, in many instances, the actual culprits (or sycophants to the culprits) of the various disasters in progress-the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the corruption on Wall Street-treating these books with the hushed reverence reserved for the sacred truth. And these are the books the Times pushes as the gospel truth: for example, laudatory tomes on the Fed's actions, presenting the agency as the welcome savior of last resort. The major houses tend to ride the trends, promoting conventional wisdom rather than challenging it thus, in the last decade, they've pushed the basic legitimacy of the war on terror, or the facile, personalized exhumation of the financial industry's corpse, or the after-effects of the environmental catastrophe they're sure is imminent, always taking care to stay several steps behind gathering evidence.
The university presses produce the overwhelming majority of worthwhile books in the social sciences, humanities, arts, and sciences, yet they are almost completely unrepresented in the Times's review pages. If we believe that literary taste in America today is debased-weighted toward the transitory and derivative, rather than original advances in writing-then the Times bears its share of responsibility for propagating the collective delusion: for example, that Philip Roth is a writer worthy of the Nobel Prize, or that Jonathan Franzen is a writer in the league of Balzac. The Times has been a very important contributor to the formation of recent American literary taste, showering praise or holding it back according to an occult hierarchy of values perceptible only to its elite cadre of editors. The Times's book section, like any reviewing outlet, hews close to a certain agenda, and it's necessary to point out where in practice adherence to this agenda hurts acknowledgment of important books while elevating unworthy books and writers. The glorious decadence of the Times's book review section holds broad lessons for reviewing and criticism, so it's important to break down where the tyrannous review section failed, and point out better paths for a more democratic future.
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