“Demented” is right. Seems like somebody or other needs to start a book review publication featuring smart, honest reviews and leaving room for writers to vigorously disagree with one another!
This is the the kind of cultural criticism I came to Substack hoping to read, and much of it is right on target from my perspective as a former gatekeeper (the book editor of the Plain Dealer and more). Thank you!
But most of what you say applies more to literary criticism in the U.S. than to other countries. You find more honest criticism in the British media: for example, Philip Hensher's book reviews in the Spectator, Brandon Taylor's when he writes for the LRB, and some in the Guardian, though the paper has more American-ized lately.
I think the Faulkner analogy is apt. "A Fable" even won the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer, as far as I know. Probably more lifetime achievement than anything, akin to John Wayne winning the Oscar for "True Grit" (or more recently DiCaprio for "The Revenant"). Side note: I always felt "Purity" was woefully underrated. It was the rare Franzen that actually moved me to tears.
Agree with much of what's said here (esp. that that the decline of professional reviewers in favor of novelists writing reviews on the side has warped coverage) altough I have to politely disagree about James. James is not Everett's best book, but it was still very good and the level of accessible that books (sadly) have to be for awards consideration. Mostly though, I think it was much better than some of the other awards contenders this year that strike me as better examples of connected authors and inflated reviews.
For me, James is less late obscure Faulkner no one read and more late Scorsese that will endure. Yes, earlier work was better but the late work is still superior to most of the competition.
I respect your argument, but I was not moved by James. I honestly almost felt it was a prank, his version of My Pafology. But maybe not. I am definitely in the small minority there, so I could be wrong.
No right or wrong, but I do think most of the critics praising it sincerely loved it. (Though again I'm with you that Telephone, Erasure, and I'd add The Trees are superior.) But to your larger point, this is NOT always the case. Often you'll see books praised publicly that privately most seem to dislike.
Spot-on, and essential in its analysis of the conflict of interest that faces so many novelists / critics. Some of my best reviews (there weren't many) for The Washington Post or the NY Times Book Review, were the negative ones, which were bought, privately praised, then buried.
Thank you, Ross for explaining why I find so little that’s persuasive or interesting in the New York Times book review. I have seen at least eight reviews of Rachel Kushner‘s latest book which I have no interest in reading. It does seem to be a circle jerk of young writers applauding each other. If you ever read Jane gardam? Now there is an outstanding writer who hardly ever gets discussed!
"New novels from prestige presses have been hyped since time immemorial. What is changing, I believe, is that fewer and fewer of these books warrant the hype."
This is not a new trend. Orwell was complaining about this back in the 1930s. From his essay "In Defence of the Novel":
"Here is just one specimen [of a blurb], from last week's Sunday Times: ‘If you can read this book and not shriek with delight, your soul is dead.’ That or something like it is now being written about every novel published, as you can see by studying the quotes on the blurbs. For anyone who takes the Sunday Times seriously, life must be one long struggle to catch up. Novels are being shot at you at the rate of fifteen a day, and every one of them is an unforgettable masterpiece which you imperil your soul by missing. It must make it so difficult to choose a book at the library, and you must feel so guilty when you fail to shriek with delight. Actually, however, no one who matters is deceived by this kind of thing, and the contempt into which novel reviewing has fallen is extended to novels themselves. When all novels are thrust upon you as works of genius, it is quite natural to assume that all of them are tripe."
The flip side of what you see as the golden age of book reviewing was deliberate nastiness. A negative review is always more fun than hosannas. John Simon built a nice career out of funny takedowns. I also think you’re setting up a straw man— the careerist writer who reviews dishonestly. It’s possible that a novelist goes easy on other novels because they know the difficulty of the task. Guessing motives puts a thesis in a neat package but it ain’t necessarily so.
The feminization of the literary world could be the cause of this. One simply must SUPPORT other writers, no matter what. The quality and competitiveness of just about everything seems to have fallen by the wayside.
I write acerbic reviews on Amazon, and wrote a particularly acid review on King Nyx, which was written by a peer, whose referral to her agent I've been courting. I had the review up for a few days, then took it down, even though my true name isn't even on it!
Meanwhile the novel is enjoying the usual accolades, because, well, Bakis is a NICE PERSON. Therefore, the novel must be nice.
And as for JAMES, well, anything written by a black man must be great. Especially if it's upending something that was written by a white man first.
And don't you know, it's the identity of the writer that matters most? Have you read what so many agents are looking for? "Marginalized voices," that in the old world, were very likely marginalized because they weren't good writers.
I agree wholeheartedly with your criticisms of criticism. But I question whether substack will have the effect you envision. It seems to me Notes have already made it into mini-twitter; I think as with most things on the internet quantity will drive out quality. But I could be wrong!
Group think over Perceval Everett? Stop it. The public didn’t even know who he was until American Fiction as you state. People may not remember or read the book 10 years from now as you state. Compared to other examples and current examples of groupthink how is praise for this one book groupthink? Plenty of books and other pieces of art are hailed as masterpieces when they are not and nobody calls it groupthink. That level of exaggeration, especially over a book written by an Afro American centering an Afro American in a story that originally centered a white character and one that has shaped America’s view of itself, sounds bias if not racially bias.
Ross, if you look at my comment I never said you had to think it was good. Also how do you know I haven’t read “So Much Blue”? How do you know I have or haven’t read “James”?
Those questions lead back to my point. The issue is that to call praise and garnered accolades of the book possible groupthink is an exaggeration. It’s exaggeration that is so gross and unsubstantiated that it sounds that if anyone has a bias about the book it’s you.
There's no doubt that logrolling is part of the publishing industry, most visible in blurbs, some of which are so over-the-top they make my eyes roll out of my head. (I remember the rapturous endorsements of Sean Penn's "Bob Honey Who Do Stuff" from leading literary lights that everyone should have been too embarrassed to print.) I also sometimes read a review where I feel like I can detect a reviewer pulling their punches, but I also think it's a dead end to go into reading someone's review and trying to suss out their motives or hidden agendas behind a review. If that's going to be my stance towards another person's articulation of their opinion, I'm dead in the water when it comes to taking those ideas in and letting them intersect with my own thoughts.
It's just as easy to turn things around and say that Ross Barkan is throwing (minor) shade at "James" because he's trying to establish his bona fides as an iconoclast truth-teller in the face of the elite who are afraid to risk their status. Now, I read your newsletter, so I don't actually believe that, but this is why I think worrying about this stuff is a dead end. I have to assume that the reviewer is this being truthful. That doesn't mean I'm going to agree with them, but I take their message as it is. I'm not interested in publishing industry intrigue, and as a reader, I don't know how to factor in potential insincerity to what a review is really saying. I once thought that Dale Peck was a sort of negative review performance artist, totally insincere in the degree of his haterade, but it became clear that he was entirely sincere and his animus was the fuel for his writing. To each their own.
I should say that I also only read reviews after I've read a book for myself, so my engagement is more of a "I thought this, what does someone else think" way, rather than using reviews in a consumer choice way. I particularly enjoy negative reviews of books I liked because it's a great way to reflect on why a book worked for me.
Even though I write lots of book reviews, I've never actually considered myself a true book reviewer (and definitely not a critic) because I almost exclusively write about books I think are good and worth the attention of others. (I wrote a column years ago explaining I write enthusiasms, not reviews.) This is a total cop-out if you think a reviewer's job is to sort through the contemporary firmament and and separate the wheat from the chaff and articulate those differences, but that's not the task I've given myself. When I talk about a book I mostly explain why it worked for me as a reading experience, and then try to articulate that in a way that allows my readers to decide if it sounds like a book they might want to check out. I don't have any desire to write a negative review because when a book doesn't work for me, I assume that it's not necessarily because the book is objectively bad, but simply because that book and I do not connect. I think it was Naomi Kanakia (whose newsletter I read every time) that said she couldn't imagine anyone thinking "Small Rain" was a good book and that it was a product of industry hype, butI found it genuinely hypnotic and wonderful. I don't know what to tell anyone who thinks the book is overrated trash other than maybe I like overrated trash.
My reviews are entirely honest, but they are obviously not the whole picture of what I think about the many books I read. The books that did not connect with me, or they I find wanting don't show up in my column. I suppose one could argue that this is itself a form of deception, but I guess that returns to my original point that judging the work of others based on the motives you think went into its creation is a dead end, for me at least.
I wouldn't say what I wrote was aimed at you and I often feel the same way in my own writing life. I tend to write on books I like and ignore ones I don't. I will also say, for certain book critics, there is a sorting that should happen. It's ok for a book critic to write that a book didn't speak to them or failed on some level. That honesty is needed.
I do think motives are worth considering in an industry where incentives are aimed in one clear direction - praise the novelist that is already being feted - and novelists themselves, when reviewing today, have every professional incentive to hail a book. They want to make friends and get ahead in a precarious moment. I *am* suspicious of the rapture around "James" (as I am other novels, to be fair, like "Creation Lake") because I respect Everett's oeuvre so much and know (as I think you do) this is not his best. There is a part of me that thinks "James" is Everett's version of "My Pafology" as Everett now recognizes the (largely white) publishing apparatus enjoys afro-pessimism, whereas in the 90s and 2000s it was the salacious tales from poor neighborhoods, the Precious writing that Everett seemed to dislike so much. Of course, I am *speculating* but my point is, on a meta-level, it is fine to do this. I get to be suspicious. And I am fine if people are suspicious of me. If they want to think "Ross is clout-chasing by knocking a popular book" then they can. I let my record speak for itself.
Re: Dale Peck, yeah, I understand why people thought that about him. It's also notable there are basically no Dale Pecks today. The industry incentivizes against it. The closest, probably, is Blake Smith, but Blake is much more an outsider than insider.
“Demented” is right. Seems like somebody or other needs to start a book review publication featuring smart, honest reviews and leaving room for writers to vigorously disagree with one another!
TK!!
Sounds like a case for peer review 😊
This is the the kind of cultural criticism I came to Substack hoping to read, and much of it is right on target from my perspective as a former gatekeeper (the book editor of the Plain Dealer and more). Thank you!
But most of what you say applies more to literary criticism in the U.S. than to other countries. You find more honest criticism in the British media: for example, Philip Hensher's book reviews in the Spectator, Brandon Taylor's when he writes for the LRB, and some in the Guardian, though the paper has more American-ized lately.
Honest criticism of fiction is a) quite hard and b) attempts at it are often simply not written well enough to carry the criticism itself.
It would be great if you and your colleagues are able to do this well.
I think the Faulkner analogy is apt. "A Fable" even won the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer, as far as I know. Probably more lifetime achievement than anything, akin to John Wayne winning the Oscar for "True Grit" (or more recently DiCaprio for "The Revenant"). Side note: I always felt "Purity" was woefully underrated. It was the rare Franzen that actually moved me to tears.
Purity is a novel I need to offer a reread - I didn't love it in 2015, but I also may feel differently now
Putting my hat in for Purity! I adored that novel - I feel like he’s swinging higher in this one and I appreciate that
The chapters with the mother in East Germany shatter me. And I have a theory that the Andreas Wolf character is a DFW surrogate, which also moved me.
Agree with much of what's said here (esp. that that the decline of professional reviewers in favor of novelists writing reviews on the side has warped coverage) altough I have to politely disagree about James. James is not Everett's best book, but it was still very good and the level of accessible that books (sadly) have to be for awards consideration. Mostly though, I think it was much better than some of the other awards contenders this year that strike me as better examples of connected authors and inflated reviews.
For me, James is less late obscure Faulkner no one read and more late Scorsese that will endure. Yes, earlier work was better but the late work is still superior to most of the competition.
I respect your argument, but I was not moved by James. I honestly almost felt it was a prank, his version of My Pafology. But maybe not. I am definitely in the small minority there, so I could be wrong.
No right or wrong, but I do think most of the critics praising it sincerely loved it. (Though again I'm with you that Telephone, Erasure, and I'd add The Trees are superior.) But to your larger point, this is NOT always the case. Often you'll see books praised publicly that privately most seem to dislike.
You know what novel is good? Suder. A truly nutty book, and I really enjoyed it.
Spot-on, and essential in its analysis of the conflict of interest that faces so many novelists / critics. Some of my best reviews (there weren't many) for The Washington Post or the NY Times Book Review, were the negative ones, which were bought, privately praised, then buried.
Thank you, Ross for explaining why I find so little that’s persuasive or interesting in the New York Times book review. I have seen at least eight reviews of Rachel Kushner‘s latest book which I have no interest in reading. It does seem to be a circle jerk of young writers applauding each other. If you ever read Jane gardam? Now there is an outstanding writer who hardly ever gets discussed!
I have not! What book(s) do you recommend?
Read the old filth trilogy. Here’s an interview with her. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/7878/the-art-of-fiction-no-251-jane-gardam
Ditto for Mark Slouka.
"New novels from prestige presses have been hyped since time immemorial. What is changing, I believe, is that fewer and fewer of these books warrant the hype."
This is not a new trend. Orwell was complaining about this back in the 1930s. From his essay "In Defence of the Novel":
"Here is just one specimen [of a blurb], from last week's Sunday Times: ‘If you can read this book and not shriek with delight, your soul is dead.’ That or something like it is now being written about every novel published, as you can see by studying the quotes on the blurbs. For anyone who takes the Sunday Times seriously, life must be one long struggle to catch up. Novels are being shot at you at the rate of fifteen a day, and every one of them is an unforgettable masterpiece which you imperil your soul by missing. It must make it so difficult to choose a book at the library, and you must feel so guilty when you fail to shriek with delight. Actually, however, no one who matters is deceived by this kind of thing, and the contempt into which novel reviewing has fallen is extended to novels themselves. When all novels are thrust upon you as works of genius, it is quite natural to assume that all of them are tripe."
The flip side of what you see as the golden age of book reviewing was deliberate nastiness. A negative review is always more fun than hosannas. John Simon built a nice career out of funny takedowns. I also think you’re setting up a straw man— the careerist writer who reviews dishonestly. It’s possible that a novelist goes easy on other novels because they know the difficulty of the task. Guessing motives puts a thesis in a neat package but it ain’t necessarily so.
The feminization of the literary world could be the cause of this. One simply must SUPPORT other writers, no matter what. The quality and competitiveness of just about everything seems to have fallen by the wayside.
I write acerbic reviews on Amazon, and wrote a particularly acid review on King Nyx, which was written by a peer, whose referral to her agent I've been courting. I had the review up for a few days, then took it down, even though my true name isn't even on it!
Meanwhile the novel is enjoying the usual accolades, because, well, Bakis is a NICE PERSON. Therefore, the novel must be nice.
And as for JAMES, well, anything written by a black man must be great. Especially if it's upending something that was written by a white man first.
And don't you know, it's the identity of the writer that matters most? Have you read what so many agents are looking for? "Marginalized voices," that in the old world, were very likely marginalized because they weren't good writers.
I agree wholeheartedly with your criticisms of criticism. But I question whether substack will have the effect you envision. It seems to me Notes have already made it into mini-twitter; I think as with most things on the internet quantity will drive out quality. But I could be wrong!
Group think over Perceval Everett? Stop it. The public didn’t even know who he was until American Fiction as you state. People may not remember or read the book 10 years from now as you state. Compared to other examples and current examples of groupthink how is praise for this one book groupthink? Plenty of books and other pieces of art are hailed as masterpieces when they are not and nobody calls it groupthink. That level of exaggeration, especially over a book written by an Afro American centering an Afro American in a story that originally centered a white character and one that has shaped America’s view of itself, sounds bias if not racially bias.
It's not that good a book, sorry. And I judge is harshly because he is that talented. Read "So Much Blue" and get back to me.
Ross, if you look at my comment I never said you had to think it was good. Also how do you know I haven’t read “So Much Blue”? How do you know I have or haven’t read “James”?
Those questions lead back to my point. The issue is that to call praise and garnered accolades of the book possible groupthink is an exaggeration. It’s exaggeration that is so gross and unsubstantiated that it sounds that if anyone has a bias about the book it’s you.
Can't we just create a new literary world and not invite the old people?
There's no doubt that logrolling is part of the publishing industry, most visible in blurbs, some of which are so over-the-top they make my eyes roll out of my head. (I remember the rapturous endorsements of Sean Penn's "Bob Honey Who Do Stuff" from leading literary lights that everyone should have been too embarrassed to print.) I also sometimes read a review where I feel like I can detect a reviewer pulling their punches, but I also think it's a dead end to go into reading someone's review and trying to suss out their motives or hidden agendas behind a review. If that's going to be my stance towards another person's articulation of their opinion, I'm dead in the water when it comes to taking those ideas in and letting them intersect with my own thoughts.
It's just as easy to turn things around and say that Ross Barkan is throwing (minor) shade at "James" because he's trying to establish his bona fides as an iconoclast truth-teller in the face of the elite who are afraid to risk their status. Now, I read your newsletter, so I don't actually believe that, but this is why I think worrying about this stuff is a dead end. I have to assume that the reviewer is this being truthful. That doesn't mean I'm going to agree with them, but I take their message as it is. I'm not interested in publishing industry intrigue, and as a reader, I don't know how to factor in potential insincerity to what a review is really saying. I once thought that Dale Peck was a sort of negative review performance artist, totally insincere in the degree of his haterade, but it became clear that he was entirely sincere and his animus was the fuel for his writing. To each their own.
I should say that I also only read reviews after I've read a book for myself, so my engagement is more of a "I thought this, what does someone else think" way, rather than using reviews in a consumer choice way. I particularly enjoy negative reviews of books I liked because it's a great way to reflect on why a book worked for me.
Even though I write lots of book reviews, I've never actually considered myself a true book reviewer (and definitely not a critic) because I almost exclusively write about books I think are good and worth the attention of others. (I wrote a column years ago explaining I write enthusiasms, not reviews.) This is a total cop-out if you think a reviewer's job is to sort through the contemporary firmament and and separate the wheat from the chaff and articulate those differences, but that's not the task I've given myself. When I talk about a book I mostly explain why it worked for me as a reading experience, and then try to articulate that in a way that allows my readers to decide if it sounds like a book they might want to check out. I don't have any desire to write a negative review because when a book doesn't work for me, I assume that it's not necessarily because the book is objectively bad, but simply because that book and I do not connect. I think it was Naomi Kanakia (whose newsletter I read every time) that said she couldn't imagine anyone thinking "Small Rain" was a good book and that it was a product of industry hype, butI found it genuinely hypnotic and wonderful. I don't know what to tell anyone who thinks the book is overrated trash other than maybe I like overrated trash.
My reviews are entirely honest, but they are obviously not the whole picture of what I think about the many books I read. The books that did not connect with me, or they I find wanting don't show up in my column. I suppose one could argue that this is itself a form of deception, but I guess that returns to my original point that judging the work of others based on the motives you think went into its creation is a dead end, for me at least.
I wouldn't say what I wrote was aimed at you and I often feel the same way in my own writing life. I tend to write on books I like and ignore ones I don't. I will also say, for certain book critics, there is a sorting that should happen. It's ok for a book critic to write that a book didn't speak to them or failed on some level. That honesty is needed.
I do think motives are worth considering in an industry where incentives are aimed in one clear direction - praise the novelist that is already being feted - and novelists themselves, when reviewing today, have every professional incentive to hail a book. They want to make friends and get ahead in a precarious moment. I *am* suspicious of the rapture around "James" (as I am other novels, to be fair, like "Creation Lake") because I respect Everett's oeuvre so much and know (as I think you do) this is not his best. There is a part of me that thinks "James" is Everett's version of "My Pafology" as Everett now recognizes the (largely white) publishing apparatus enjoys afro-pessimism, whereas in the 90s and 2000s it was the salacious tales from poor neighborhoods, the Precious writing that Everett seemed to dislike so much. Of course, I am *speculating* but my point is, on a meta-level, it is fine to do this. I get to be suspicious. And I am fine if people are suspicious of me. If they want to think "Ross is clout-chasing by knocking a popular book" then they can. I let my record speak for itself.
Re: Dale Peck, yeah, I understand why people thought that about him. It's also notable there are basically no Dale Pecks today. The industry incentivizes against it. The closest, probably, is Blake Smith, but Blake is much more an outsider than insider.