I spent this St. Patrick’s Day and the following Friday at the New School in New York’s Lower West Side in the company of the National Book Critics Circle, a group of literati large and small, known and would-be known. Like 700 others, I’m a dues-paying member of the NBCC, an association dedicated to furthering fine literature. Each March, the NBCC gathers to present awards in general nonfiction, criticism, biography/autobiography, poetry, and fiction. The 2004 winners in those respective categories were Diarmaid MacCulloch’s “The Reformation: A History”; Patrick Neate’s “Where You’re At: Notes from the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet”; Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan’s “De Kooning: An American Master”; Adrienne Rich’s “The School Among the Ruins”; and Marilynne Robinson’s unusually long-gestating “Gilead.” You can see pictures of these books, along with some other candidates, on this entry.
Besides the awards – and selected readings by finalists – the event featured “Ax-Grinders, Score-Settlers and Pattycake: The Politics of Reviewing and The Reviewing of Politics,” a panel featuring Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review and as such, one of the country’s key cultural gate keepers; Rick Perlstein, author of “Before the Storm,” a book about the rise of the conservative movement in the ‘60s; Dennis Loy Johnson, editor and publisher of the blog mobylives.com and publisher of the Melville House Publishing; Jim Holt, a prominent science writer who writes for the Times, the New Yorker and Slate; and Liza Featherstone, author of “Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Worker’s Right at Wal-Mart.” Free-lance critic and NBCC board member Art Winslow moderated.
The key issue was whether book reviews are ideologically driven. The conclusion was they are, and that may be OK. Occasionally obscuring the discourse: the preening and stroking by the panelists, particularly Perlstein, who spent much of his opening statement telling Tanenhaus how wonderfully he has modernized the Times Book Review. Tanenhaus broadened the field by praising Steve Wasserman, the highly tailored editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, for raising the reviewing bar.
Article comments
1 - John Freeman
Carlo:
I think you misunderstood my point -- I don't believe that American fiction is inferior. I was simply pointing out to Johnson, who *did* argue it was a weak moment for American fiction, that believing that shouldn't prevent you from expanding the circle of books you think might affect American life -- from Orhan Pamuk's "Snow" to say Monica Ali's "Brick Lane." I mean, we had books by Joy Williams, Annie Proulx, Philip Roth and Russell Banks last year for starters. Not bad.
The bigger question I wanted to think about was how do we allow fiction the space to remain fantasy when it seems more and more that a novel has to Say Something Important About Right Now to be successful.
JF
2 - Phillip Winn
John, But is it possible for a novel to not say something important about right now? It hardly seems go, given that every book I've picked up lately tries. I'm not sure if that's because authors have trouble leaving that out, or because publishers pick up on that, or if maybe it is the fault of we the readers, seeking out and spending money on the things which affirm our own views.
3 - Rodney Welch
Nice roundup, Carlo, sounds like it was a good meeting -- and I especially like what Tanenhaus said. Just recently I reviewed this really awful book for a newspaper, and the editor has apparently freaked out for good about running it when he heard from someone else that the book was actually good. It’s good to see an editors who aren't neccessarily bound to conventional opinion.
I do tend to lean toward Romano's view about experts in the field reviewing (presumably non-fiction) books -- I'd be interested, for example, in what Henry Kissinger might have to say about Jared Diamond, to cite only one expert who can write.
Regarding Mr. Freeman's remarks: it's interesting that the novel of the year, Gilead, didn't really Say Something Important About Right Now. Of course, I guess you can argue than any book is relevant at some level, but that one really went against the grain -- this story of a dying preacher in the 1950s writing a letter to his son, pondering at length the nature of grace and forgiveness. The book has no little messages about George Bush or 9/11 or multi-culturalism; the thing that's weird about it, more than anything else, is that it's a great book that comes from a frankly devout point of view that is almost unthinkable among the literati. It's a very lonely kind of book when you look at it in the sea of American fiction of the past twenty years; it's the one novel I can think of that none of the other novels would much want to play with, which is what makes it such an exciting, bracing, unsettling read. There's nothing else out there lately (in my experience anyway) like it. It's a novel by a Christian that isn't, thank God, "Christian fiction."
4 - Eric Berlin
Very cool, very interesting gathering and review, Carlo.
Big Picture question: was there any discussion of literature versus genre fiction, or was concentration more on non-fiction and political writing?
Random question on a small point: Is there a Lower West Side in Manhattan? I've never heard of that before. Are you sure you weren't in the West Village? Is the New School located in the NYU buildings near Broadway and 4th St.? That's pretty much the Village or NoHo then. Just some NYC semantics for you.
5 - Eric Olsen
thanks Carlo, super report from live on the scene, much appreciated!