My mini-series on book blogging continues. This post grows out of previous discussions on "I"-centered reviewing (part 1, part 2). The third post on the problem with pleasure is here.
___________
This post starts with a confession: I haven't written a review for this blog since January. It's not because I haven't been reading (I have) nor is it because I don't want to (I do). It's because I can't seem to formulate what I want the reviews to do here: I only know what I don't want. I don't want impressionistic "I loved it/hated" reviews; there are plenty places people can get that. I also don't want to try to emulate mainstream reviewing templates, again those exist well enough out there.
What does that leave exactly? I'm not exactly sure.
I have realized though, that what I need to decide first is whom I am reviewing for. This seems like a relatively simple question, but damn and blast, it is not. There are a great many possible audiences and deciding which of these audiences are of interest seems the crucial first step in resuscitating my reviewing. I should note that I am not talking about "taste" here but more about what the reader wants from the review, not what they want from the book being reviewed.
Here are the possible audiences I've come up with:
1. Readers who are looking for a recommendation
I think most book blog reviews write for this audience. This reader basically wants to be persuaded to read a book. The reviewing strategies for this reader can still be varied, but the central goal of the role will be judgment. Frankly, this doesn't interest me as a primary task.
2. Readers who have already read the book
Writing for readers who have read the book opens up a whole range of discussion possibilities. You can mostly eliminate the tedious task of summary and judgment. You can delve deeply into the content and form. You can ask questions and start a discussion (reviews of books most readers haven't read don't tend to generate many comments).
3. Readers who like to read reviews
These folks might fall into the other categories as well, but I do think there is a subset of people who enjoy book talk. They like hearing interesting ideas and particular readings. Their interest might not be so much in the book under discussion but the discussion itself.
4. Writers
Some reviewers write with the author in mind and consider the review space as a kind of instruction. What does the writer do well and what do they need to work on?
5. Review Copies
Book bloggers love review copies and writing positive reviews is a good way to get on that train.
6. Writing to History
This is more the purview of academics, but some reviews function to place a work in social-historical-artistic context.
7. Yourself
Writing a review of a book can catalyze thinking that doesn't necessarily happen in the process of just reading the book. It can serve as memory, just capturing thoughts, and it can serve as a kind of crucible, in which your thoughts about the books are crystallized. It can also be a space of discovery, of engagement with the book that leads you to places you wouldn't have reached otherwise.
____________
The more I think about it, the more I think Groups 2 and 7 interest me the most. I'm not exactly sure what that means at this point, but I think it means something for my future reviewing.
Have I missed an audience segment here? Do you think about who you review for? Do you think about how who you review for informs the kind of books you read and the kind of reviewing you do?
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
The Tyranny of Pleasure
I'm continuing with a series of reflections on book blogging. Check out earlier installments on overusing "I" (and redux) and why we spend so much time not writing about what we read.
________________
I've paid close attention over the last years to the posts in which a blogger lists their favorite books of all time. Most are drawn from a familiar pool (The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, and the like) with a couple of more idiosyncratic titles thrown in. In general, these are a well-crafted, serious works of literary art. This fact stands in stark contrast to something else I've been watching closely: the dominance of crime and romance on bestseller lists.
How is it that most people's favorite books are neither crime nor romance but these are the books that people buy most often?
I think the common answer would be something like "most people enjoy easy, fun reads" and while I don't think this answer is wrong, the emphasis is generally misplaced. This answer tends to blame the unsophisticated reader, but I think the culprit is the verb "enjoy." For once enjoyment becomes the principal mode of evaluation, a certain kind of experience will tend to be sought again and again. Such is the tyranny of pleasure.
Pleasure's tyranny has two sources: the fleeting nature of pleasure and the fact that seat of pleasure resides in the already-known. Taken together, these two characteristics make pleasure the enemy of experimentation, difficulty, and, in the end, enrichment.
That pleasure is fleeting is so well-known that it hardly warrants discussion, but the fact that crime and romance fiction tend to offer the most concentrated doses of readerly pleasure is perhaps not obvious. Readerly pleasure is generally aligned with "page-turning," the almost compulsive need on the reader's part to race through the book. Here, consumption is aligned with pleasure: the more greedily you run-through a novel, the more pleasurable it is. This quality of pleasure, the desire for consumption, then generates a need for more: more pages, more murders, more romantic intrigue, more and more and more to the point where sufficiently successful authors cannot fill demand for their work and farm out their name to other writers.
The second quality of pleasure that is relevant here is pleasure's preference for the known. We tend to desire that which we know. This might seem a tautology (how could you desire something you don't know) and perhaps it is, but for readers, it means that readers who primarily read for pleasure tend to stay within a certain, limited material.
As it so happens, crime and romance deal in consumption and the familiar directly. Both genres hold out the resolution as the goal of the plot: the evidence and investigation lead to a "solved" crime, the courtship and badinage lead to a coupling. That there is a clear finish-line leads readers to race toward it.
Not only do both genres offer a resolution, but it is a resolution that reaffirms normative values. In crime fiction, the crime is almost always solved. The moral fabric of the world is sutured by having the criminals be captured or at least identified. In romance, the chaos of social life is domesticated by romantic coupling. The idea, so romance would have it, is that the falleness and imperfection of the world can be ignored if only the right paramour is located and secured. Both genres create order out of chaos; they transform the unknowable into the familiar.
These two features pleasure, consumption and the familiar, can, given the right conditions, lead readers to strip mine certain genres and authors. If you are a fairly serious reader, you have probably had the experience of reading a new author, loving it, and then tearing through that author's backlist. This was probably enjoyable, but I would also guess that it wasn't exactly gratifying; once you finished the last book, you probably were less satisfied than you were left wanting more. (I call this this "Dorito" effect).
Lest I be accused of snobbery (again), I do not mean to suggest you should only draw your meager gruel from the classics or the high-brow. There is a place in your reading diet both for Fruit Loops and Foie Gras. But if you only or even primarily read "for fun," you are leaving the most complex, most nourishing, most soul-sustaining books on the shelf.
________________
I've paid close attention over the last years to the posts in which a blogger lists their favorite books of all time. Most are drawn from a familiar pool (The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, and the like) with a couple of more idiosyncratic titles thrown in. In general, these are a well-crafted, serious works of literary art. This fact stands in stark contrast to something else I've been watching closely: the dominance of crime and romance on bestseller lists.
How is it that most people's favorite books are neither crime nor romance but these are the books that people buy most often?
I think the common answer would be something like "most people enjoy easy, fun reads" and while I don't think this answer is wrong, the emphasis is generally misplaced. This answer tends to blame the unsophisticated reader, but I think the culprit is the verb "enjoy." For once enjoyment becomes the principal mode of evaluation, a certain kind of experience will tend to be sought again and again. Such is the tyranny of pleasure.
Pleasure's tyranny has two sources: the fleeting nature of pleasure and the fact that seat of pleasure resides in the already-known. Taken together, these two characteristics make pleasure the enemy of experimentation, difficulty, and, in the end, enrichment.
That pleasure is fleeting is so well-known that it hardly warrants discussion, but the fact that crime and romance fiction tend to offer the most concentrated doses of readerly pleasure is perhaps not obvious. Readerly pleasure is generally aligned with "page-turning," the almost compulsive need on the reader's part to race through the book. Here, consumption is aligned with pleasure: the more greedily you run-through a novel, the more pleasurable it is. This quality of pleasure, the desire for consumption, then generates a need for more: more pages, more murders, more romantic intrigue, more and more and more to the point where sufficiently successful authors cannot fill demand for their work and farm out their name to other writers.
The second quality of pleasure that is relevant here is pleasure's preference for the known. We tend to desire that which we know. This might seem a tautology (how could you desire something you don't know) and perhaps it is, but for readers, it means that readers who primarily read for pleasure tend to stay within a certain, limited material.
As it so happens, crime and romance deal in consumption and the familiar directly. Both genres hold out the resolution as the goal of the plot: the evidence and investigation lead to a "solved" crime, the courtship and badinage lead to a coupling. That there is a clear finish-line leads readers to race toward it.
Not only do both genres offer a resolution, but it is a resolution that reaffirms normative values. In crime fiction, the crime is almost always solved. The moral fabric of the world is sutured by having the criminals be captured or at least identified. In romance, the chaos of social life is domesticated by romantic coupling. The idea, so romance would have it, is that the falleness and imperfection of the world can be ignored if only the right paramour is located and secured. Both genres create order out of chaos; they transform the unknowable into the familiar.
These two features pleasure, consumption and the familiar, can, given the right conditions, lead readers to strip mine certain genres and authors. If you are a fairly serious reader, you have probably had the experience of reading a new author, loving it, and then tearing through that author's backlist. This was probably enjoyable, but I would also guess that it wasn't exactly gratifying; once you finished the last book, you probably were less satisfied than you were left wanting more. (I call this this "Dorito" effect).
Lest I be accused of snobbery (again), I do not mean to suggest you should only draw your meager gruel from the classics or the high-brow. There is a place in your reading diet both for Fruit Loops and Foie Gras. But if you only or even primarily read "for fun," you are leaving the most complex, most nourishing, most soul-sustaining books on the shelf.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
An Offshoot of the Buzz
With my one-year anniversary of this blog in the recent past and The Book Blogger Convention fast-approaching, I've been thinking about what I want this space to be and about book blogging in general. The two recent posts about reviewing and subjectivity generated such interesting feedback that I'm going to write a few more in a mini-series about a few issues in book blogging. Here's the next.
____________________________________
There is a great scene in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous where the excitable, huckster frontman of up-and-coming Southern rock band Stillwater tries to describe what rock and roll is all about:
JEFF BEBE: What it all comes down to is that thing, that indefinable thing when people catch something from your music. What I'm talking about is...wait, what am I talking about?
WILLIAM MILLER: The buzz!
JEFF BEBE: The buzz, yes. And the chicks and the whatever is an offshoot off the buzz.
As much as Bebe is selling himself to his interviewer, he strikes something true here about music and the arts in general; it's damn hard to talk about how a work of art affects you. The right words for how you felt at the end of The Grapes of Wrath or the experience of As I Lay Dying or the delight of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are frustratingly elusive.
And so we get "offshoots of the buzz"--placeholders and substitutes for the "indefinable thing" of reading something great. This is a particular malady of book blogging, rather than try to relay our own experience so that someone else might understand it, we make lists of our favorite sci-fi settings. Or fetishize bookshelves. Or geek out about meeting an author or completing a challenge of reading a book for every letter in the alphabet or doing a weekly round-up of what we picked up a the library.
That's not a critique of these practices; I know many people enjoy them. Still, I can't help but wonder if sometimes we mistake the trappings of reading with the thing we like about reading. Do I really like deckle edges, or is just a Pavlovian expectation of something new and interesting? Do I really care who won the Pulitzer Prize or is it just something I can discuss more easily than how sublime the descriptions in say, Gilead, are?
Are we really writing about what we love about reading or just writing about those things about reading that are easier to write about?
____________________________________
There is a great scene in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous where the excitable, huckster frontman of up-and-coming Southern rock band Stillwater tries to describe what rock and roll is all about:
JEFF BEBE: What it all comes down to is that thing, that indefinable thing when people catch something from your music. What I'm talking about is...wait, what am I talking about?
WILLIAM MILLER: The buzz!
JEFF BEBE: The buzz, yes. And the chicks and the whatever is an offshoot off the buzz.
As much as Bebe is selling himself to his interviewer, he strikes something true here about music and the arts in general; it's damn hard to talk about how a work of art affects you. The right words for how you felt at the end of The Grapes of Wrath or the experience of As I Lay Dying or the delight of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are frustratingly elusive.
And so we get "offshoots of the buzz"--placeholders and substitutes for the "indefinable thing" of reading something great. This is a particular malady of book blogging, rather than try to relay our own experience so that someone else might understand it, we make lists of our favorite sci-fi settings. Or fetishize bookshelves. Or geek out about meeting an author or completing a challenge of reading a book for every letter in the alphabet or doing a weekly round-up of what we picked up a the library.
That's not a critique of these practices; I know many people enjoy them. Still, I can't help but wonder if sometimes we mistake the trappings of reading with the thing we like about reading. Do I really like deckle edges, or is just a Pavlovian expectation of something new and interesting? Do I really care who won the Pulitzer Prize or is it just something I can discuss more easily than how sublime the descriptions in say, Gilead, are?
Are we really writing about what we love about reading or just writing about those things about reading that are easier to write about?
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
The "I"s Have It, Redux
Thanks to all who commented on my earlier post about using "I" in book reviewing; you really got me thinking.
There was so much generative feedback in fact that I think a follow-up post is warranted. I don't have a single argument to make here as previously, so let me just address some of the things you guys said.
_____________________________
1. Greg wrote: "Our jobs are to find the middle ground between Kakutani and "It didn't grab my attention, so I hated it"
Maybe I framed this wrong, but I didn't mean to suggest that using the first-person to discuss books forecloses the possibility of thinking about them seriously. In fact, I would very much like to see rigorous, provocative book discussion that manages to be intimate and "personal" (more on this word in a minute). The problem, as I see it, is that so many bloggers who claim to be reviewing books are using the personal nature of blogging to absolve themselves of any responsibility to the text in front of them.
2. Amanda wrote: " I tend to err on the side of "I hated it because Heathcliff is a wanker," but the people who read my blog have a pretty good sense of my sensibilities."
I might be wrong about this, but I have always considered Dead White Guys a bit of a satire of book blogging in general. (Is this something you ever thought about consciously, Amanda?) I tend not to learn very much about the books, but reading her critiques are funny in their own right.
3. Teresa wrote: "I'm all for celebrating our subjectivity and owning our biases ('cause we all have them)"
Teresa is on to something here. The cultural dominance of self-awareness about subjectivity is partially to blame for the infestation of reactive writing in book blogging, in student writing as Heather notes, and the wider world. Unfortunately, our training to speak from the I and to speak only for ourselves has brought along with it a disregard for persuasion and generous analysis, of showing our readers why we think the things we think. If my sensibility is irredeemably idiosyncratic, the logic goes, then there is no reason to explain it, because your subjectivity will be different anyway. This is a rationalization that abdicates thinking and explanation.
4. Sian wrote: "What are blogs for? I suppose to express your feelings and it shouldn't matter how you do it!"
Couple of points here. While I would never try to diagnose the proper use of blogs, I do think that Sian's sense that blogging is to "express your feelings" is rampant. That's fine. My question is "why should I care about your feelings?" And, of course it matters how you do it. Do you express yourself honestly? with empathy for others? with generosity toward your readers? for personal monetary gain? to beat back loneliness? The "how" matters a great deal. I want to the the "how" of book blogging be serious, entertaining, intimate, provocative, and diverse. I want it to enrich not only my own reading life, but the reading lives of everyone. If book blogging is largely individual reaction, I do not think it will play the kind of role in supporting literary culture that it could. And this would be a material loss.
5. Jackie wrote: "I don't expect book blogs to perform deep analysis of a book - all I want to know is whether or not the person enjoyed reading it...there's a book blog out there for everyone."
Perhaps I did come down a little strong. I agree that a diversity of book blogs is both desirable and beneficial. That said, I'm not sure that most book blogs are all that different from each other. Nor did I mean to suggest that all reviews need to "deep analysis": what I do think a responsible book review should do is provide evidence for the judgment/opinion. If you aren't doing that, you aren't reviewing; you are just giving a rating. And there's a place for that, of course. But when we mistake that for "reviewing" or "discussion," then we impoverish both terms.
6. Christina wrote: "To those of you who say you like the "I love it" blogs - there is a place for them in the wide scope of "reviews", but how is a blog reader supposed to determine what the blogger's sensibilities are without any depth?"
If one function of a review is to serve as a recommendation (or lack thereof), then establishing your reading sensibilities is crucial. As Christina suggests, this is very difficult to do unless your reader has a wide set of your reviews to compare against their own taste. One thing more sustentative reviewing does is provide a reader-reviewer connection in the space of one review. If you can manage to say interesting things about a book, I don't need to see the scope of your opinions to be persuaded.
This leads me to another point: the overuse of "reaction" reviewing flattens the possibilities of what a review can do to one thing: help a reader decide if they should read the book under discussion. I think that is an important part of the process, but by no means the only or even the most important goal of reviewing.
There was so much generative feedback in fact that I think a follow-up post is warranted. I don't have a single argument to make here as previously, so let me just address some of the things you guys said.
_____________________________
1. Greg wrote: "Our jobs are to find the middle ground between Kakutani and "It didn't grab my attention, so I hated it"
Maybe I framed this wrong, but I didn't mean to suggest that using the first-person to discuss books forecloses the possibility of thinking about them seriously. In fact, I would very much like to see rigorous, provocative book discussion that manages to be intimate and "personal" (more on this word in a minute). The problem, as I see it, is that so many bloggers who claim to be reviewing books are using the personal nature of blogging to absolve themselves of any responsibility to the text in front of them.
2. Amanda wrote: " I tend to err on the side of "I hated it because Heathcliff is a wanker," but the people who read my blog have a pretty good sense of my sensibilities."
I might be wrong about this, but I have always considered Dead White Guys a bit of a satire of book blogging in general. (Is this something you ever thought about consciously, Amanda?) I tend not to learn very much about the books, but reading her critiques are funny in their own right.
3. Teresa wrote: "I'm all for celebrating our subjectivity and owning our biases ('cause we all have them)"
Teresa is on to something here. The cultural dominance of self-awareness about subjectivity is partially to blame for the infestation of reactive writing in book blogging, in student writing as Heather notes, and the wider world. Unfortunately, our training to speak from the I and to speak only for ourselves has brought along with it a disregard for persuasion and generous analysis, of showing our readers why we think the things we think. If my sensibility is irredeemably idiosyncratic, the logic goes, then there is no reason to explain it, because your subjectivity will be different anyway. This is a rationalization that abdicates thinking and explanation.
4. Sian wrote: "What are blogs for? I suppose to express your feelings and it shouldn't matter how you do it!"
Couple of points here. While I would never try to diagnose the proper use of blogs, I do think that Sian's sense that blogging is to "express your feelings" is rampant. That's fine. My question is "why should I care about your feelings?" And, of course it matters how you do it. Do you express yourself honestly? with empathy for others? with generosity toward your readers? for personal monetary gain? to beat back loneliness? The "how" matters a great deal. I want to the the "how" of book blogging be serious, entertaining, intimate, provocative, and diverse. I want it to enrich not only my own reading life, but the reading lives of everyone. If book blogging is largely individual reaction, I do not think it will play the kind of role in supporting literary culture that it could. And this would be a material loss.
5. Jackie wrote: "I don't expect book blogs to perform deep analysis of a book - all I want to know is whether or not the person enjoyed reading it...there's a book blog out there for everyone."
Perhaps I did come down a little strong. I agree that a diversity of book blogs is both desirable and beneficial. That said, I'm not sure that most book blogs are all that different from each other. Nor did I mean to suggest that all reviews need to "deep analysis": what I do think a responsible book review should do is provide evidence for the judgment/opinion. If you aren't doing that, you aren't reviewing; you are just giving a rating. And there's a place for that, of course. But when we mistake that for "reviewing" or "discussion," then we impoverish both terms.
6. Christina wrote: "To those of you who say you like the "I love it" blogs - there is a place for them in the wide scope of "reviews", but how is a blog reader supposed to determine what the blogger's sensibilities are without any depth?"
If one function of a review is to serve as a recommendation (or lack thereof), then establishing your reading sensibilities is crucial. As Christina suggests, this is very difficult to do unless your reader has a wide set of your reviews to compare against their own taste. One thing more sustentative reviewing does is provide a reader-reviewer connection in the space of one review. If you can manage to say interesting things about a book, I don't need to see the scope of your opinions to be persuaded.
This leads me to another point: the overuse of "reaction" reviewing flattens the possibilities of what a review can do to one thing: help a reader decide if they should read the book under discussion. I think that is an important part of the process, but by no means the only or even the most important goal of reviewing.
Monday, May 2, 2011
2011 Tournament of Books: Handing Out Awards to the Judges
But we're not here to judge the books; we're here to judge the judges. Here are some hits and misses from the omnibus decision:
Bravos
1. The Best Analytical Point Award goes to Anthony Doerr:
From a certain angle these books feel the same: well-made realistic fiction zeroing in on American bourgeoisie. Sharp detailing. A smattering of jokes. Searing observations about suburbia.Many of the judges commented on Goon Squad and Freedom having a certain shared ethos, and Doerr nails it here. This observation is not only true of the final pairing, but of the wider tournament field itself. This was a tournament largely about middle and upper middle class white people in contemporary America. The stylistic differences between Franzen and Egan mask a deeper sympathy and might be making difference out of sameness.
2. The Best Metaphor Award goes to Andrew Womack:
For me, this decision comes down to pacing, and Franzen is the Pink Floyd to Egan’s Sex Pistols; by the end of Freedom I couldn’t take another meandering guitar solo, while I was dazzled by how much Goon Squad packed into such a compact space.While I think Womack is misusing "pacing," which is about cadence and tempo and not length, he's right to mention the reading experience of each work. We're living in a Goon Squad world where shorter, percussive cultural objects about experimentation and recombination seem to be winning the day. Freedom has more in common structurally with Henry James than with anything that exists in our digital age.
3. The Best Perspective Award goes to John Williams:
Egan’s refracted structure seems only half-necessary, and I’m not sure that in 2011 it’s as innovative as it’s gotten credit for.Williams is bang-on here: the "innovative" appellation is overblown. Goon Squad isn't even the most technically experimental work in the field (Nox and Super Sad True Love Story would rank above it). And though most reviewers, myself included, haven't paid enough attention to the why of Egan's structure, I do think there is a relationship between the structure and her central concerns that is stronger than "half-necessary."
4. The Seeing the Forest for the Trees Award goes to C. Max McGee:
Where Freedom is a novel of oversharing, telling many episodes from several angles, Goon Squad, often to its benefit, floats us among characters and across decades.McGee does us the service of noting the difference between scope and length. For all its heft, Freedom is a more focused, exploratory work, concerned with detail, ambiguity, disagreement and indecision. This kind of narrative noodling takes a great deal of time. Goon Squad is like Rufus from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, dropping in and out of history for the most interesting bits. If we prefer Goon Squad to Freedom these days, it might well be that we prefer sampling and observation to sustained investigation.
5. The Best Invocation of Subjectivity Award goes to Elif Batuman:
Freedom, however, sucked me in from page one. Its central issues—the good versus the cool; how to reconcile sex with normal life; how to live—are particularly close to my heart these days.Batumann manages to speak from her own taste in a way that tells us something about the texts at hand without resorting to judgment. I think she identifies the source of the messiness that Freedom is sometimes charged with: how do you write a book about these knotty issues in a way that doesn't end up confused and compromised? Any such effort would likely be dismissed as unrealistic and naive (e.g., the ending of Lionel Shriver's So Much for That). Goon Squad's central themes (time, detachment, and distance) lend themselves more readily to cleaner, more burnished stories. I do wonder if there are two types of reading personalities: one group prefers literature that makes order out of chaos and the other group wants literature to revel in the messiness.
Boooooooooooooos
1. The Beating a Dead Horse Award goes to Jennifer Weiner
It’s like Sophie’s Choice, if Sophie hated both her kids.Worse, neither book was any fun. Freedom’s characters range from loathsome to despicable, with the author’s contempt dripping from every sentence. Egan’s book seemed more like an exercise in Let Me Show You How Clever I Am than anything as lowbrow as entertainment. But Egan gets my vote, because if Franzen takes the prize, then the terrorists win.
Weiner had a chance to add substance to her on-going displeasure about the separation of "serious literature" from "chick lit." Instead, she chose unfunny sarcasm, a reference to the holocaust, and the always creative Let Me Capitalize Things To Show Ironic Distance From a Category strategy of satire. (Also, how is not being any fun "worse" than having to choose which of your children to kill?). If Weiner ever again wonders why people might not take her seriously as she might like, she'll have the comfort of returning to this brief paragraph to assuage her anxiety.
2. The Everyone Who Plays Gets A Ribbon Award goes to Matthew Baldwin
In the first round I decided against Super Sad True Love Story in its second paragraph, so you’ll be pleased to hear that I made it all the way to page 11 of Freedom—in which Jonathan Franzen describes a child as “like an imaginary friend who happened to be visible”—before declaring it the winner. I think I’ve really grown as a critic.I guess if you are aware of and self-satisfied about your lame effort, then it's all OK.
3. The "Mixed" Metaphor Award goes to Matt Dellinger
These books were like cocktail cousins made with the same liquor: a Manhattan and an Old Fashioned. A Visit from the Goon Squad is the more concocted, more garnished drink (e.g., the PowerPoint chapter). It’s wonderfully balanced and beautifully made. Freedom is the high-octane classic, not as easy to drink (e.g., 562 pages), but its seriousness delivers more wallop in the end. Goon Squad delighted me; Freedom clobbered me. The martini beats the Tom Collins.Maybe I need to be Don Draper to understand the alcohol metaphor here, but by this logic would straight grain alcohol be the best possible drink? And isn't a good martini harder to make than a good Tom Collins? And a Manhattan and Martini are not the same, right? To crib from this boozy allegory: the first step is admitting you have a problem.
__________________________
That about does it for the coverage of the 2011 Tournament of Books. Thanks for reading, and we'll be back next year. The Ape's the early prediction for the 2012 final pair is *DRUMROLLLLLLLLL* Tea Obreht's THE TIGER'S WIFE against Colson Whitehead's ZONE ONE. You heard it here first. Unless I'm way off, in which case you heard it from a guy at the laundromat.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
The "I"s Have It
I came across a review of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad on a book blog I read regularly that caught my attention. Not only was it a rare negative review of the book, but it also used "I" 57 times.
57...in about 1100 words. That's more than one use of "I" for every 20 words.
This is an extreme case, but still exemplary of the kind of reaction review that dominates book blogging. Opinion, not assessment, rules. That's not to say that it should be otherwise but simply to note that it is.
My question, though, is this what we want?
At its core, I think book blogging is an antidote to the more detached, analytical reviewing of academia and first-rank reviewing outlets like The New York Times. I think book blogging performs a needed service of re-injecting passion and public conversation into reading.
The "I loved it" mode of reviewing, though, has its problems. For one, it undermines the public and collaborative nature of online discourse by privileging the subjective taste of the reader. Your "I loved it" review will only convince me to be interested in a book if I can be reasonably certain I share your sensibilities.
Second, the spread of "I"-centered reviewing covers for a relative lack of vocabulary and strategies for reviewing books. Rather than discuss the particulars of a novel, these reviews resort to generalities under the cover of the reader's impression. "Unlikable characters," "stilted prose," "uninteresting plot": these qualitative statements absolve the reviewer of doing the hard work of thinking deeply about a book.
Let me be clear: I do not want book blog reviews that sound like The New York Times. I want book blogs to be as diverse, interesting, and engaging as the readers themselves are, but this requires an effort to be interested and engaged.
57...in about 1100 words. That's more than one use of "I" for every 20 words.
This is an extreme case, but still exemplary of the kind of reaction review that dominates book blogging. Opinion, not assessment, rules. That's not to say that it should be otherwise but simply to note that it is.
My question, though, is this what we want?
At its core, I think book blogging is an antidote to the more detached, analytical reviewing of academia and first-rank reviewing outlets like The New York Times. I think book blogging performs a needed service of re-injecting passion and public conversation into reading.
The "I loved it" mode of reviewing, though, has its problems. For one, it undermines the public and collaborative nature of online discourse by privileging the subjective taste of the reader. Your "I loved it" review will only convince me to be interested in a book if I can be reasonably certain I share your sensibilities.
Second, the spread of "I"-centered reviewing covers for a relative lack of vocabulary and strategies for reviewing books. Rather than discuss the particulars of a novel, these reviews resort to generalities under the cover of the reader's impression. "Unlikable characters," "stilted prose," "uninteresting plot": these qualitative statements absolve the reviewer of doing the hard work of thinking deeply about a book.
Let me be clear: I do not want book blog reviews that sound like The New York Times. I want book blogs to be as diverse, interesting, and engaging as the readers themselves are, but this requires an effort to be interested and engaged.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Year One at The Ape: Sincere Thanks
April 4th marked one year of blogging here at The Reading Ape. I have to admit It doesn't feel like a meaningful milestone: the blog is still very much in motion and little in the way of observations or conclusions about it come to mind.
I does seem to me, however, to be an appropriate time to say thanks to folks who have helped with advice, responses, reading, publicity, and support. I should also say I'll probably forget someone or have missed something; I should have been tracking the scores of small good deeds done for The Ape along the way.
If I have it right Rachel at A Home Between the Pages was the first backlink I remember seeing.
Greg at The New Dork Review of Books and Amanda at Dead White Guys started blogging right around the same time I did. Both have commented, retweeted, and blogrolled beyond what The Ape deserves.
I think I owe Rebecca at The Book Lady's Blog at least 10% of my Twitter followers, if not more.
Jackie at Farm Lane Books gave me a fantastic plug during Book Blogger Appreciation Week last year. It came at an opportune time; my energy for the blog was waning a bit during a particularly trying semester.
John Williams at The Second Pass has retweeted and backlinked several pieces. Since I kind of want to have a site like his, this was both flattering and motivating.
The Morning News folks have been particularly good sports about passing along my obsessive Tournament of Books "coverage." I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a contest that is about open discussion doesn't mind including an anonymous internet crank.
Shout-out to a couple of regular commenters and retweeters: Mayowa of Pens with Cojones, Patrick at The Literate Man, Brenna at Literary Musings, Kenneth Griggs at The Ken, lifi of Fat Books, Thin Women, and many others I can't think of right now.
A meta-thanks to the literature bloggers I read before starting The Ape: Mark Sarvas of The Elegant Variation, Maud Newton, Mark Athitakis, and Ron Hogan at Beatrice. I saw what these folks were doing and I wanted in. So far, it hasn't been a mistake.
My friend Clint was there for a couple of early discussions about what would become this blog and has been a great supporter and reader all along.
Least digitally, my better half deserves a mention. I spend a lot of time reading and writing for this little hobby, and if she didn't think it was pretty cool, there's no way I would still be doing it. She reads everything and tells me straight what's what.
Thanks to all mentioned here and all you readers out there.
Onward,
The Ape
I does seem to me, however, to be an appropriate time to say thanks to folks who have helped with advice, responses, reading, publicity, and support. I should also say I'll probably forget someone or have missed something; I should have been tracking the scores of small good deeds done for The Ape along the way.
If I have it right Rachel at A Home Between the Pages was the first backlink I remember seeing.
Greg at The New Dork Review of Books and Amanda at Dead White Guys started blogging right around the same time I did. Both have commented, retweeted, and blogrolled beyond what The Ape deserves.
I think I owe Rebecca at The Book Lady's Blog at least 10% of my Twitter followers, if not more.
Jackie at Farm Lane Books gave me a fantastic plug during Book Blogger Appreciation Week last year. It came at an opportune time; my energy for the blog was waning a bit during a particularly trying semester.
John Williams at The Second Pass has retweeted and backlinked several pieces. Since I kind of want to have a site like his, this was both flattering and motivating.
The Morning News folks have been particularly good sports about passing along my obsessive Tournament of Books "coverage." I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a contest that is about open discussion doesn't mind including an anonymous internet crank.
Shout-out to a couple of regular commenters and retweeters: Mayowa of Pens with Cojones, Patrick at The Literate Man, Brenna at Literary Musings, Kenneth Griggs at The Ken, lifi of Fat Books, Thin Women, and many others I can't think of right now.
A meta-thanks to the literature bloggers I read before starting The Ape: Mark Sarvas of The Elegant Variation, Maud Newton, Mark Athitakis, and Ron Hogan at Beatrice. I saw what these folks were doing and I wanted in. So far, it hasn't been a mistake.
My friend Clint was there for a couple of early discussions about what would become this blog and has been a great supporter and reader all along.
Least digitally, my better half deserves a mention. I spend a lot of time reading and writing for this little hobby, and if she didn't think it was pretty cool, there's no way I would still be doing it. She reads everything and tells me straight what's what.
Thanks to all mentioned here and all you readers out there.
Onward,
The Ape
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
9 Dead Writers I Follow on Twitter
There's a lot I love about Twitter, but it has one major fault: you have to be alive to use it. That might seem a strange complaint, but think about it: the vast majority of the most interesting people are dead. This limits what you can read on Twitter to people with a pulse (plus @colsonwhitehead). Or so I thought.
Turns out, there are thousands of dead people on Twitter, many of them writers. And they are dead fun. These accounts tend to fall into three categories: quote machines, parody accounts, and estate accounts. Here's a brief sampling of each:
Quote Machines
Not since the bumper sticker has the pithy one-liner experienced such a renaissance. Jokes and flaccid self-help dominate the Twitterverse, so a little craftmanship is welcome in even the most carefully crafted feed.
@Wwm_shakespeare
Note: You gotta knock the champ out.
Representative Tweet: "I am so good a proficient in one quarter of an hour, that I can drink with any tinker in his own language during my life."
@samuelpepys
Note: Diarist of the Elizabethan Age. This feed gives a daily account of life in 17th Century England. Come for the slice of life, stay for the truly mesmerizing comma-usage.
Representative Tweet: "Took up my wife and Deb., and to the Park. Being in a hackney, and they undressed, was ashamed to go into the tour, but went round the park."
@mrsdorothyparker
Note: I truly, deeply wish Dorothy Parker was alive for Twitter. Enough to make me want to smash my head on a toilet in hopes of designing a flux capacitor.
Representative Tweet: "Four be the things I'd have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt."
@jacquesderrida_
Note: Add a little gravitas to your feed; it makes all the differance. Or just be reminded why graduate literary studies kind of suck.
Representative Tweet: "we go through the detour of the sign. We take or give signs. We signal. The sign, in this sense, is deferred presence."
@kurtvonnegut
Note: Clever, inspiring, and despairing by turn. Sometimes all at once. Side note: I wish Tom Robbins tweeted.
Representative Tweet: "To me, wanting every habitable planet to be inhabited is like wanting everybody to have athlete's foot."
Parodists
Take one part authorial identity. Add two parts clever interloper. Stir and enjoy.
@Edgar_Allan_Poe
Note: Satire on the events of the day from the gutter of Romanticism.
Representative Tweet: "Our savage selfish interior lives yearn to be followed, but dread w/ an ugly despair the tedium of following back."
@DrSamuelJohnson
Note: Imagine if the dean of English literary critics sat around watching TV. This would pretty much be the result. Also, I dare you to reverse-engineer the capitalization conventions. See you when you finish in 300 years.
Representative Tweet: "The Goodfolk of Brooklyn gad about clad as Lumberjacks, Jack-Tars & Mesmerists, to my Amusement & Mrs THRALE'S Wonderment"
Curators
This is an emerging category, and one I hope becomes robust. These accounts track events, articles, and goings-on about a particular writer.
@janeaustenworld
Note: These good folk index the mind-bogglingly active world of Austen fanaticism and scholarship. From museum exhibits to arcane TV adaptations, they'll cover your Jane addiction.
Representative Tweet: "Mrs. Smith, A Portrait of a Regency Woman from the Rising Merchant Class & Mrs. Poole, Georgette Heyer's Vulgar Creature:http://t.co/dYz"
@williamstyron
Note: This one is run by the honest-to-God literary estate of William Styron. Super, super smart move, and one that other literary estates should steal. I'm looking at you, people-who-control-the-David-Foster-Wallace stuff.
Representative Tweet: "Hilarious and cutting: Styron's play set in the Urological Ward of a U.S. Naval Hospital in the South, summer of '43http://bit.ly/gGkHoN"
_____________________________________________________
If you just want a quick glance at these, I've collected them all in a Twitter list (don't need to use Twitter to see).
I'm sure there are other notable dead-writer feeds out there and would love recommendations. Who do you follow? Or what pulseless penman would you like to see Tweencarnated?
_____________________________________________________
Turns out, there are thousands of dead people on Twitter, many of them writers. And they are dead fun. These accounts tend to fall into three categories: quote machines, parody accounts, and estate accounts. Here's a brief sampling of each:
Quote Machines
Not since the bumper sticker has the pithy one-liner experienced such a renaissance. Jokes and flaccid self-help dominate the Twitterverse, so a little craftmanship is welcome in even the most carefully crafted feed.
@Wwm_shakespeare
Note: You gotta knock the champ out.
Representative Tweet: "I am so good a proficient in one quarter of an hour, that I can drink with any tinker in his own language during my life."
@samuelpepys
Note: Diarist of the Elizabethan Age. This feed gives a daily account of life in 17th Century England. Come for the slice of life, stay for the truly mesmerizing comma-usage.
Representative Tweet: "Took up my wife and Deb., and to the Park. Being in a hackney, and they undressed, was ashamed to go into the tour, but went round the park."
@mrsdorothyparker
Note: I truly, deeply wish Dorothy Parker was alive for Twitter. Enough to make me want to smash my head on a toilet in hopes of designing a flux capacitor.
Representative Tweet: "Four be the things I'd have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt."
@jacquesderrida_
Note: Add a little gravitas to your feed; it makes all the differance. Or just be reminded why graduate literary studies kind of suck.
Representative Tweet: "we go through the detour of the sign. We take or give signs. We signal. The sign, in this sense, is deferred presence."
@kurtvonnegut
Note: Clever, inspiring, and despairing by turn. Sometimes all at once. Side note: I wish Tom Robbins tweeted.
Representative Tweet: "To me, wanting every habitable planet to be inhabited is like wanting everybody to have athlete's foot."
Parodists
Take one part authorial identity. Add two parts clever interloper. Stir and enjoy.
@Edgar_Allan_Poe
Note: Satire on the events of the day from the gutter of Romanticism.
Representative Tweet: "Our savage selfish interior lives yearn to be followed, but dread w/ an ugly despair the tedium of following back."
@DrSamuelJohnson
Note: Imagine if the dean of English literary critics sat around watching TV. This would pretty much be the result. Also, I dare you to reverse-engineer the capitalization conventions. See you when you finish in 300 years.
Representative Tweet: "The Goodfolk of Brooklyn gad about clad as Lumberjacks, Jack-Tars & Mesmerists, to my Amusement & Mrs THRALE'S Wonderment"
Curators
This is an emerging category, and one I hope becomes robust. These accounts track events, articles, and goings-on about a particular writer.
@janeaustenworld
Note: These good folk index the mind-bogglingly active world of Austen fanaticism and scholarship. From museum exhibits to arcane TV adaptations, they'll cover your Jane addiction.
Representative Tweet: "Mrs. Smith, A Portrait of a Regency Woman from the Rising Merchant Class & Mrs. Poole, Georgette Heyer's Vulgar Creature:http://t.co/dYz"
@williamstyron
Note: This one is run by the honest-to-God literary estate of William Styron. Super, super smart move, and one that other literary estates should steal. I'm looking at you, people-who-control-the-David-Foster-Wallace stuff.
Representative Tweet: "Hilarious and cutting: Styron's play set in the Urological Ward of a U.S. Naval Hospital in the South, summer of '43http://bit.ly/gGkHoN"
_____________________________________________________
If you just want a quick glance at these, I've collected them all in a Twitter list (don't need to use Twitter to see).
I'm sure there are other notable dead-writer feeds out there and would love recommendations. Who do you follow? Or what pulseless penman would you like to see Tweencarnated?
_____________________________________________________
Through April 15, I am donating all referral fees generated through The Reading Ape to an effort to buy Rock City Books up in Maine. So if you have a little Powell's, Indie Bound, or Amazon shopping to do, click through the below links and a percentage of your purchase will go towards the effort.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Why You Should Be Cheering for the Ad-Subsidized Kindle
It's so easy to predict the reaction of the literary web to some stories. Combine the specter of Amazon with inserting advertising into the reading space, and you have yourself a sure-fire whipping boy. Which is too bad, because the new ad-subsidized Kindle is a really, really good idea.
For some, the idea of advertising in literature is anathema; it contaminates the sacred space of art-writing. The publishing business, literary historians, and writers themselves have long gone to great lengths to keep the business of books outside the realm of literary discourse. It is devilishly difficult to know much, if anything, about the economics of literature: how much writers are paid, how many copies a particular book sells, and the other ledger items of publishing seem to be actively obscured. This has, in turn, created the illusion that money and literature are somehow separate.
The division of "writing" from the literary-publishing economy has been a real obstacle for the ongoing viability of the publishing business. Thinking that literature exists beyond the pale of economics allows and excuses a variety of practices and beliefs that are detrimental to the maintenance of a healthy, diverse literary economy. For example, in what other business can you borrow, subsidized by state and local government, the products of an entire industry? That literature exists in an imaginary space outside of financial pressures makes it even more subject to economic forces.
So that's one reason to be interested in the new ad-subsidized Kindle. When you now flip on your Kindle to read the new David Mitchell, you see a Buick ad first; it will be difficult to maintain an artificial separation of the business of writing with the texts themselves. Some argue that introducing advertising into literature will cheapen it. I would argue just the opposite; commercializing the literary space will reinforce the idea that that space has financial value, just as the annual ritual of tracking how much a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl costs reaffirms the value of the Super Bowl.
I think advertising in e-readers is exciting for another reason; it has the potential to open up channels of discovery. Book advertising is notoriously difficult, to the point that most people don't see any book advertising in their daily life. That "word-of-mouth" is the most powerful force in the industry speaks to the ineffectiveness of literary publicity. That said, the kind of reader-centric, targeted opportunity that integrated literary advertising presents is unprecedented.
Say I am the publisher (or, increasingly, author) of a novel about race relations in the South. Buying and crafting a specific ad that would appear to the tens of thousands of people reading Kate Stockett's The Help on their e-reader would seem outrageously appealing. From a reader's point of view, this might even be helpful; finding titles like a book you are currently enjoying is usually a task you have to take to your local bookseller, as long as they know what they are talking about. For most readers, this is a friction point that will not be surmounted. In this new scenario, a sample of the advertised, related work is just a couple of clicks away. (And if you don't think this can work, remember that Google's empire is built on accessible, contextual advertising.)
It is somewhat unfortunate that this effort is starting with Amazon, since most interested in publishing look upon them warily. I don't particularly care if this new Kindle sells, but I do think that it is in the best interest of publishing if something like it succeeds.
_______________________________
Through April 15, I am donating all referral fees generated through The Reading Ape to an effort to buy Rock City Books up in Maine. So if you have a little Powell's, Indie Bound, or Amazon shopping to do, click through the below links and a percentage of your purchase will go towards the effort.
For some, the idea of advertising in literature is anathema; it contaminates the sacred space of art-writing. The publishing business, literary historians, and writers themselves have long gone to great lengths to keep the business of books outside the realm of literary discourse. It is devilishly difficult to know much, if anything, about the economics of literature: how much writers are paid, how many copies a particular book sells, and the other ledger items of publishing seem to be actively obscured. This has, in turn, created the illusion that money and literature are somehow separate.
The division of "writing" from the literary-publishing economy has been a real obstacle for the ongoing viability of the publishing business. Thinking that literature exists beyond the pale of economics allows and excuses a variety of practices and beliefs that are detrimental to the maintenance of a healthy, diverse literary economy. For example, in what other business can you borrow, subsidized by state and local government, the products of an entire industry? That literature exists in an imaginary space outside of financial pressures makes it even more subject to economic forces.
So that's one reason to be interested in the new ad-subsidized Kindle. When you now flip on your Kindle to read the new David Mitchell, you see a Buick ad first; it will be difficult to maintain an artificial separation of the business of writing with the texts themselves. Some argue that introducing advertising into literature will cheapen it. I would argue just the opposite; commercializing the literary space will reinforce the idea that that space has financial value, just as the annual ritual of tracking how much a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl costs reaffirms the value of the Super Bowl.
I think advertising in e-readers is exciting for another reason; it has the potential to open up channels of discovery. Book advertising is notoriously difficult, to the point that most people don't see any book advertising in their daily life. That "word-of-mouth" is the most powerful force in the industry speaks to the ineffectiveness of literary publicity. That said, the kind of reader-centric, targeted opportunity that integrated literary advertising presents is unprecedented.
Say I am the publisher (or, increasingly, author) of a novel about race relations in the South. Buying and crafting a specific ad that would appear to the tens of thousands of people reading Kate Stockett's The Help on their e-reader would seem outrageously appealing. From a reader's point of view, this might even be helpful; finding titles like a book you are currently enjoying is usually a task you have to take to your local bookseller, as long as they know what they are talking about. For most readers, this is a friction point that will not be surmounted. In this new scenario, a sample of the advertised, related work is just a couple of clicks away. (And if you don't think this can work, remember that Google's empire is built on accessible, contextual advertising.)
It is somewhat unfortunate that this effort is starting with Amazon, since most interested in publishing look upon them warily. I don't particularly care if this new Kindle sells, but I do think that it is in the best interest of publishing if something like it succeeds.
_______________________________
Through April 15, I am donating all referral fees generated through The Reading Ape to an effort to buy Rock City Books up in Maine. So if you have a little Powell's, Indie Bound, or Amazon shopping to do, click through the below links and a percentage of your purchase will go towards the effort.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Literary Fact of the Day | March 2011
It's time again for my monthly round-up of literary facts of the day (#lfotd). If you follow me on Twitter (@readingape), you get these everydayish. For the rest of you, here is a dispatch of tidbits from the writing world.
- Wallace Stegner once refused a medal from the NEA because be believed the institution had become too political.
- Joan Didion shares the screenwriting credit for the 1976 version of A Star is Born with her husband John Gregory Dunn.
- Port Warwick, a 150-acre development in Newport News, VA, is named after a fictional city in William Styron's Lie Down in Darkness.
- James Salter defined youth as the time when one "mispronounces words and believes dreams."
- Walker Percy's father and paternal grandfather both committed suicide with a shotgun.
- In an effort to duck a drug charge, Ken Kesey faked a suicide by leaving his truck by a cliff with a suicide note.
- HG Wells wanted his epitaph to be "I told you so. You damned fools." Instead, he was cremated and his ashes spread at sea.
- In 1956, friends gave Harper Lee a year's wages to write "whatever she wanted"; it became the 1st draft of To Kill A Mockingbird.
- Paule Marshall fought with her husband about hiring a babysitter so that she could finish her first novel Browngirl, Brownstones.
- John Cheever came to hate his first short story collection so much that we would eventually destroy every copy he came across.
- Paul Bowles was forced to return his advance for The Sheltering Sky because Doubleday said "we asked for a novel."
- Norman Mailer married his fifth wife for one day in 1980 in order to legitimize the child they had together.
- Betty Smith published and produced more than seventy one-act plays before A Tree Grows in Brooklyn brought her widespread acclaim.
- Carson McCullers' husband tried to convince her to commit suicide with him. She then fled to France & he overdosed on sleeping pills.
- At age 23, Nathaniel Weinstein changed his name to Nathaniel West, later citing Alger's slogan "Go West young man" as the inspiration.
- After Margaret Mitchell divorced her abusive, bootlegging first husband, she married John Marsh, who had been best man at her wedding.
- In 1928, John Dos Passos went to Russia to study communism. More than 30 years later, he would actively campaign for Richard Nixon.
- John O'Hara had more than 200 stories published in The New Yorker.
- Henry Miller's first published pieces were under the name of his Chicago Tribune editor, since proofreaders weren't allowed to submit.
- First published in 1934, Henry Roth's Call It Sleep received mixed reviews but went on to sell 1 million+ copies after a 1964 reissue
- After the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese government denounced Pearl Buck as an "imperialist" & forbade her from ever again visiting.
- Though he had contracted TB during WWI, Dashiell Hammett pulled strings to enlist during WW2. He was then blacklisted by HUAC in 1953.
- A few months before his death, Thomas Wolfe submitted more than one million words of manuscripts to his editor.
- Tony Blair closed his 9/11 speech with the last two paragraphs of Thornton Wilder's The Bridge on the San Luis Rey.
- Between 1914 and 1917, Jean Toomer attended six institutions of higher education, including NYU, CUNY, U of Chicago, and Wisconsin.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)