Vulgarians

Many of my blogging colleagues have already jumped on the excruciatingly stupid remarks on the National Book Award finalists made recently by Caryn James and Laura Miller. Thus, I will not belabor the many good points they have already made. (See especially those as Tingle Alley, Beatrice, The Return of the Reluctant, and Conversational Reading.) What I take from their comments is a quite justifiable sense of astonishment that the New York Times and its staff of "literary journalists" would find it necessary to question the legitimacy of a list of nominees because they're generally not well-known writers and to approach the National Book Awards themselves as if they were indeed literature's version of Hollywood's self-promoting Oscars.

The most notable feature of both of these articles, in my view, is the strange antipathy each author expresses toward what she wants to call "poetry." According to Ms. James, "all five [of the nominated books]are built on compressed observations that easily veer into precious writers' program language, too woozy and poetic for its own good." While Ms. Miller opines that "One good thing about prose poems is that they aren't very long, and one good thing about novels is that, while long, they aren't prose poems," dismissing at least two of the nominees outright for writing such stuff. But neither James nor Miller really have "poetry" in mind at all. It's just a code word journalists like these use, a code word for "literature," something that columnists for the New York Times have no use for unless it provides them with the opportunity to bloviate. (Both James and Miller have taken advantage of that opportunity, of course, even if it does require them to further encode both "poetry" and "literature" as other words for "sissy.")

All of the nominees are women, which makes it all the more tempting to slap certain kinds of writers around for being too sissified. Who wants novels "reminiscent of those French films where long-haired peasant maidens in muslin shifts flash their tawny limbs in fields of wildflowers" (Miller)? Away with "Beautiful sentences, formal experiments and infinitely delicate evocations of emotional states" (Miller). Give us more novels that are "big and sprawling" (James). Brawny readers want meat, er, "substance"!

According to Miller,

Using the National Book Awards to bring attention to fine but overlooked novels is a noble plan, perhaps, but one undercut by the fact that it doesn't really work. The list tends to get received not as a recommendation but as a rebuke: these are the great books you should have been reading and the press should have been covering when you were wasting time and column inches on safe big-name talents and inferior crowd-pleasers, you vulgarians.

Using the NBA awards to bring attention to less-noticed writers "doesn't really work" only if you think the Awards are about publishers, or journalists who get to natter on about them, or even about readers. Miller seems to suggest that such awards are for "people who read, say, four novels a year" for whom "prizes help narrow down a bewilderingly vast field of candidates," James that they are "guides to what the public might want to catch up on, offering something-for-everyone choices." They're not these things, or shouldn't be. If such awards are to be anything other than just more pieces of the "book business" publicity machine, they should be about writers and books. Whether the "public" or NY Times journalists like the choices or not is irrelevant. Further, that these five books did get nominated will make a difference in the long run: More people will read them, eventually, and their authors will get more attention in the future.

And while we're at it: Nominees like these should be received as a "rebuke." Reviewers and critics ought to have been reading such books rather than "wasting time and column inches on safe big-name talents and inferior crowd-pleasers." If this is the message that people like Laura Miller get from this year's nominations, good. To judge by both of these articles (especially Miller's), these reviewers are indeed "vulgarians."

Comments

[Johannes]

Others (including you, Dan) have framed their objections to the Times' tag team approach far better than I can. The only thing I wanted to mention was the irony, in light of all that, of seeing Chip McGrath's piece today concerning Winegardner's GODFATHER book, a piece which--while conceding that the original and its sequels were potboilers--in effect provides this intrinsically shabby book with a SECOND lengthy daily NYT review, complementing the mild-mannered takedown last week. Now, how are all these damnably obscure NBA-nominated writers supposed to get any ink at all if the Times volunteers to perform above and beyond the call of duty by devoting valuable column inches not once (which is one time too many) but twice to this kind of crap?

[Jonathan]

The New York Times really does a poor job of reviewing fiction The complaint by Miller is really a way of saying: "We didn't review these books, so how important can they be?" It doesn't occur to them to aks whether there is something wrong with the NY Times itself, rather than with the selection of these books.

[birnbaum]

What is an "intrinsically shabby book" ?

I read the Godfather Returns. I like Mark Winegardner's work especially his story collection That's True of Everyone and think the Godfather saga is intrinsically American and compelling. And Mark writes circles around Puzo. Call me intrinsically whatever.

I'm glad humorless scolds like Johannes (see above) aren't in charge of the Commissariat of Literature and Culture. He strikes me as a mirror image of the James / Miller clique. What I don't do is waste my time fuming about their gaseous hubris.

Live and let live, I say.

[Johannes]

I know Winegardner's real work. I'm not a huge fan, but it's not crap--and this is. I can write rings around Puzo too, but if I were to write a sequel to the Godfather saga, crap would be what's called for. It's not being humorless to point that out, and if I'm scolding perhaps the Times requires it: were TWO reviews of the Godfather sequel necessary, Birnbaum?

And that's all I'll say here, since this is Dan's space.

[birnbaum]

The NYT two review practice is bad news but it is also old news.

Week after week ,seemingly devoted and serious readers spend countless hours in self-destructiuve fury about the egregious acts of inequity , bad taste, crass pandering and what not, that a New York newspaper is apparently foisting on the literary world. Can I say I am sick of all this carping? Th e Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle, to name just a couple, are doing better (as in less NYorkcentric) literary coverage than every one's favorite target. It'a big subject that I think I'll adress elsewhere but for the time being y'all ought to get clear on what The NYT's obligation is to the world of literature. I suspect the people who are outraged don't need the Times to tell them about the books that it covers. Thus they would, I think, be better served to look elsewhere.

I suppose you can (and have ) define(d) crap ostensively. That's your privilege.But Johannes have you read Godfather Returns? Did you read both NYT's reviews?

Dan, do I (we) owe you any rent money?

[Dan Green]

Rent-free, but I would like to take a landlord's privilege and say that my post was less about what books the Times chooses to cover and more about its gratuitous swipes at five writers simply because they're not famous and because they write a kind of fiction that's apparently too refined for Laura Miller. The Times does have some obligation (the paper of record and all that) not to coarsen the cultural debate.

[birnbaum]

Oh boy!

To refer to th e NYT as the paper of record speaks to the durability and tenacity o f myths (the short fingered marketing types call this brand strength, I think) To allow that the record (whatever a 21st century definition of that is) is in the hands of meritricious careerists is naive —which you are not Dan. The affairs Jayson Blair and Renata Adler show evidence of the Wizard of Oz like flaws of the NYT.

And in the field of literature I doubt it ever was the record (the Paris Review strikes me as a more likely candidate for that honor). A commercial journal that allows Leon what'- his-name to befoul the sport of literary criticism, to let Laura Miller regularly wax jejune, to not give Michiko Kakatuni a well -deserved rest —well, it's hardly providing a record of anything except some idiosyncratic editorial decisions.

We are all , I suppose, in some way obliged not to coarsen the cultural debate. That sounds good. I may make a t shirt up with that legend. But it's naive (and again Dan, you are not naive) to expect that when dollars and careers are at stake.

[Daniel Green]

Well, Robert, you and I may agree that the Times no longer deserves to be considered the "paper of record," but it is still largely perceived to be so. And thus articles like Miller's and James's do have an effect--a pernicious one, to be sure.

[Chris]

Birnbaum's absolutely right that the Times is not the place, or at least not the only place, to which a certain kind of reader turns to learn about new books. I don't think that obviates Dan's point concerning its ad hominem attacks upon the NBA nominees, though. Wyatt, Solomon, James, and Miller: that's quite a group come together to crush a bunch of books just because...just because they're not the books the Times would have nominated. Which sort of brings me back to Johannes's point, about how the Times unloads this faux analysis of how none of these books are deserving strictly as a matter of literary merit, then offhandedly suggests that the authors' relative obscurity and lack of sales also factors into why they shouldn't have been nominated, and then the next day goes back to business as usual by plugging the latest book industry product (via another, haughtily superior, faux sociocultural analysis). I mean, it's not necessary to "spend countless hours in self-destructive fury" to point out that the Times' criticism of shortlisting obscure books, some of which are published by small presses, might be somewhat more justified if the Times didn't double-review Godfather sequels or lavish endless space on specious phemonena like "chick lit," or if the Times ever reviewed a book by Godine, or Soft Skull, or Dalkey, or a university press, or...

[birnbaum]

Dan, perhaps we can enlarge the circle of naysayers on the import of the NYT book coverage. As it stands it seems all the criticism is self-fulfilling. In the same perverse way that some of the NBA authors (thanks to Ron Hogan's stellar efforts) have observed that the attendant publicity from the question of their worthiness hasn't hurt them a whit— what I mean is all this righteous anti-Times reaction just reinforces its importance. The old "I don't care what you say just spell my name right" factor.

As far as I can tell there has been a steady outpouring of dissatisfaction about the NYT's literary journalism since McGrath announced he was stepping down. In fact, I might have missed it, but I know of no one who has come to its defense. The closest thing might be Rick Hertzberg's observation that the Book Review should stay "boring". Meaning, I think, it should eschew some of the grandstanding gimmickry of which Leon what's his name is a prime toxic example.

And Chris, your points are well taken but as I said this is old news. The Times keeps doing this double review thing and obviously they can't then cover the wonderful books coming out of publishers who don't have offices in NYC. As it is regular practice done with apparent deliberation it would seem clear who is being served. It's not you or me or small publishing houses. That is clear, isn't it?

One more thing as long as the adrenaline is flowing. We live in award and list happy culture. It's not a bad thing that there are these little divertimentos to reward some writers with parties and some cash and something to put on their CV. But really besides the MacArthur and the Lannan fellowships, aren't the rest based on a sliding scale of corrupt and disingenuous principles? Just a thought.

[Chris]

Just bitching, Robert. Though I do wonder: why can the Times review dance without first stipulating that the absolute limit of dance is STOMP, why is it that the Times's drama critics routinely creep south of midtown to review theater, why can the Times review art and acknowledge that stuff is going on that isn't drawing its power exclusively from midcentury conceits, why can the Times check out bands recording for independent labels and playing small venues, why does the Times give serious consideration to small and sometimes difficult films? What's more, Times critics can place all this stuff in some kind of context, unlike Times book critics who act as if, say, Ben Marcus is some sort of viral anomaly. I'm not saying the Times is writing brilliantly or even necessarily bravely about these things, and I'm sure people who know more about dance, etc., than I would have quite a bone to pick with any suggestion that the Times's coverage of these arts is ideal. But still.

[Jimmy Beck]

To stop kvetching about the Times would be to deprive myself of one of life's few real pleasures, however jejune...And speaking of those pleasures, I gotta say I am absolutely addicted to Veiled Conceit:

http://nytimesweddings.blogspot.com/

I can only genuflect and say I wish I'd thought of it.

[graywyvern]

they offered me the "Godfather" sequel but it was an offer i had to refuse.

m.