Win and Lose in the Book Review!
It’s always a little game of win and lose in the New York Times Book Review. You’ll get long (well, long-ish), thoughtful analysis on one page and puerile log-rolling on another, and some of it will do justice to the immense amount of influence the publication has in the book world, and some of it will only undermine that influence. 20 or so reviews of varying length every week, week after week – sometimes the devil will win a hand.
Take today’s Book Review: on one page, there’s a review of Geoff Dyer’s new novel Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi that heaps ecstatic praise on the book, calling it “profoundly haunting” and “fearless” and assuring readers that “Dyer’s trademark wit and uniqueness, in fact, surround you before you’ve even turned the first page.”
This is confusing for two reasons: first, because it’s entirely mistaken – Dyer’s book is actually a time-wasting little spill of a thing (as Open Letters‘ Steve Donoghue points out here), and second, because the Times review was written by Pico Iyer, who’s normally an extremely talented and insightful guy. Anybody can have an off day, but even so, it’s painful thinking of how many loyal Book Review readers will now buy Dyer’s book expecting haunting and getting daunting (or even flauntingly taunting) instead.
Train move And then on the next page, there’s Jennifer Senior reviewing Dave Cullen’s Columbine Immer nie am Meer divx in a piece that does full justice to the forensic rigor and sledgehammer power of Cullen’s book, the first and likely the ultimate examination of the people, the media, and the dark events of that day in 1999 when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire on their fellow students. Senior is excellent throughout:
Yet what’s amazing is how much of Cullen’s book still comes as a surprise. I expected a story about misfits exacting vengeance, because that was my memory of the media consensus — Columbine, right, wasn’t there something going on there between goths and jocks?
In fact, Harris and Klebold were killing completely at random that day. Their victims weren’t the intended targets at all; the entire school
was. Columbine, it turns out, was a failed attempt at domestic terrorism. Shortly after 11:14 a.m., the two boys hauled a propane bomb into the cafeteria, programmed to go off at 11:17. It never did. Had the massacre gone as planned, it would most likely have killed more than 500 people, yielding far less readily to rumors about high school’s tribal politics.
After School Special video You can read her full review here, and then you can turn to Open Letters‘ Brad Jones giving the book much more detailed attention here.
And in the meantime, what’s a conscientious Times reader to do about all this hopscotching around of review reliability? Step #1: tread warily, on alert for reviewer tricks and bull-hockey. And Step #2: whenever possible, let Open Letters be your confidential guide!
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