I can’t tell you how many
people sent me James Wolcott’s New
Republic review of Gail Poole’s Faint
Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America (University of Missouri).
From Wolcott I went to Orwell, and from Orwell to Heidi Julavits at The Believer. Somewhere in between I
read a review of John Updike’s book of essays, Picked Up Pieces, by Anatole Broyard, and the September Library Journal article by Barbara
Hoffert called “Who’s Selecting Now?” Finally, there was Elizabeth Hardwick’s
obituary.
Elizabeth Hardwick
co-founded the New York Review of Books
in 1963 with her husband of the time, poet Robert Lowell. Twenty years later, I
discovered the NYRB when a certain
pompous boyfriend of my mother subscribed to it. What a revelation! It became
the perpetual annual Christmas present and I had it sent to me for years in
Mexico. I felt it was all I needed to stay on top of art, politics, ecology,
science, history, and, yes, literature. In lieu of books, there was the book review.
At ForeWord, the service we provide is not quite the elimination of
the book itself. (Sorry NYRB, but
that is, after all, why I love you.) Our readership is librarians and
booksellers, and our mission is to entice them to buy books for their collections, great books.
But everybody’s strapped for
time. The Library Journal article
referenced above was all about librarians contracting their selection process
to vendors like Baker & Taylor. Heavens! What does that mean? Who selects
the books at Baker & Taylor? What are the criteria? I’d hate to think that
someone could pay to have his/her book placed in a library, that money could
buy position…
On the other hand, I
understand the librarian’s dilemma. So many books, so little time. What with
blogging and analysis and stacking and managing, who’s got time to select
books? Who’s got time to read?
We do. That’s what we do.
Often, particularly in the afternoons, everyone in this office is reading a
book, printed on paper, with ink.
All right, so we read. Lots
of people read. What makes us special?
What can I say? Heidi Julavits, editor of The Believer, says in her article “REJOICE! BELIEVE! BE STRONG AND
READ HARD,” “If I were to write an essay about reviewing, it would make sense
to admit that I have biases; I have opinions; I have some assertions to make
about the current state of affairs.”
I admit that I
have plenty of biases and opinions and assertions. So do Whitney and Alex and
Maryann and Gene and each and every one of our reviewers. But what we also have
is a selection process that takes into consideration popular interests,
national and international concerns, trends and breakthroughs in science and
medicine, new ideas in history, and new voices in prose and poetry. All that
plus our own personal biases, opinions, and assertions.
Let’s look at the selection process here at ForeWord. And, I might
add, that one of Gail Poole’s principle recommendations for improvement of the
book review’s reputation in the world is: "First, and most essentially, I
think we need to devise better means of choosing books for review."
How do we select? First of
all, I open the mail. I know, it’s kind of crazy, and maybe there are better
ways of employing an editor’s time, and maybe I’ll find those ways… But for
now, I prefer opening the mail to receiving a pile of unsorted stuff on my
floor. Like laundry, it gets cold and wrinkled. So, I open, and sort, and yes,
it’s a little like Christmas: most of it you could live without, quite a bit is
completely unnecessary, once in a while you get great jewelry. (FYI, the mail
consists of books both solicited and unsolicited. And the sorting consists
primarily of publication date separation.)
George Orwell says,
inimitably: “The reviewer, jaded though he may be, is professionally interested
in books, and out of the thousands that appear annually, there are probably
fifty or a hundred that he would enjoy writing about. If he is a top-notcher in
his profession he may get hold of ten or twenty of them: more probably he gets
hold of two or three. The rest of his work, however conscientious he may be in
praising or damning, is in essence humbug.” (“Confessions
of a Book Reviewer”)
After the initial sort, the
piles go to the various offices for close review. Close review means reading.
Of course, no one here reads the whole book unless they’re going to write the
review as well, but enough gets read to judge whether or not the book is worthy
of sending it off to a reviewer.
Orwell says,
“…indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless,
irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash—though it
does involve that, as I will show in a moment—but constantly INVENTING reactions
towards books about which one has no spontaneous feelings whatever.”
Worthy is
the key word at this step. And that’s where the third pair of eyes comes in.
The reviewer, who has expertise in the subject, decides, ultimately if the book
is good enough, great enough for a
review.
“Nearly
every book is capable of arousing passionate feeling, if it is only a
passionate dislike, in some or other reader, whose ideas about it would surely
be worth more than those of a bored professional. But, unfortunately, as every
editor knows, that kind of thing is very difficult to organise.”
Ah, but we do organize it.
And that’s what we offer our librarian and bookseller readers:
A book selection process by
people who are excited about ideas and stories.
Worthy submissions sent to
reviewers with expertise.
Great books chosen and
evaluated by people who love to read.