Friday Afternoon at Housing Works Books Cafe: "Grub Street 2.0: The Future of Book Coverage"

This post is from Richard Grayson's MySpace blog for Saturday, September 15, 2007:

Friday Afternoon at Housing Works Books Cafe: "Grub Street 2.0: The Future of Book Coverage"


Yesterday at 4:30 p.m. I was in a very large crowd, perhaps 65 people, filling the Housing Works Used Books Cafe to attend the National Book Critics Circle's second of four panels in their series "The Age of Infinite Margins: Book Critics Face the 21st Century."

Entitled "Grub Street 2.0: The Future of Book Coverage," it was moderated by John Freeman, the widely-published book critic and president of the NBCC, who began by saying it was great to see that so many people left work early to come.

He thanked Scott McNemee for the title of this session, which of course comes from Samuel Johnson, who lived on Grub Street and who popularized the term as one for hack writers when his dictionary called it "originally the name of a street...much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems, whence any mean production is called grubstreet."

Mentioning George Gissing's novel New Grub Street, set in late-19th-century London—which contrasts a pragmatic journalist with an impoverished writer and examines the tension between commerce and art in the literary world—John noted that although the current climate for book reviews was considered bad, things may have always seemed bleak. He quoted from Gissing back in 1891:

Presently the conversation turned to periodicals, and the three men were unanimous in an opinion that no existing monthly or quarterly could be considered as representing the best literary opinion.

'We want,' remarked Mr Quarmby, 'we want a monthly review which shall deal exclusively with literature. The Fortnightly, the Contemporary -- they are very well in their way, but then they are mere miscellanies. You will find one solid literary article amid a confused mass of politics and economics and general clap-trap.'

'Articles on the currency and railway statistics and views of evolution,' said Mr Hinks, with a look as if something were grating between his teeth.

John then said things were no different in 1959, when Elizabeth Hardwick wrote her scathing Harper's essay, "The Decline of Book Reviewing," which lacerated the turgid state of American book reviews:

In America, now...a genius may indeed go to his grave unread, but he will hardly have gone to it unpraised. Sweet, bland commendations fall everywhere upon the scene; a universal, if somewhat lobotomized, accommodation reigns. Everyone is found to have 'filled a need,' and is to be 'thanked' for something and to be excused for 'minor faults in an otherwise excellent work.'

After briefly discussing the NBCC's current campaign to save newspaper book review sections, John introduced the panel:

Melissa Egan, producer of The Leonard Lopate Show on New York's public radio station WNYC;

Dwight Garner, senior editor of The New York Times Book Review and writer of its best-seller list column and its Paper Cuts blog;

Emily Lazar, producer of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report;

Jennifer Szalai, senior editor at Harper's magazine;

Erica Wagner, literary editor of The Times (London); and

Steve Wasserman, former editor of The Los Angeles Times Book Review, currently a literary agent and the incoming editor at Truthdig.com, author of the recent Columbia Journalism Review article on the decline of book coverage, "Goodbye to All That."

John began by asking Erica about the literary situation in England and if newspaper book sections are livelier there.

Erica said the crucial difference between our countries is that England is much smaller and still has national newspapers that have a greater influence over literary culture. At times, that can create an insular literary culture, "as if we are all in conversation with ourselves" and outsiders may feel excluded.

The British literary community knows each other well, Erica said, and are not as dispersed as in the U.S. so that when, say, a new Philip Roth novel comes out, people compete with each other to be the first to review it.

Erica's newspaper, The Times (as opposed to the separate entity The Sunday Times), never had a stand-alone book review section until she started one in 2005. The section is 20 pages, with games and crossword puzzles in the back. She's trying to reach people who ordinarily don't read book sections.

British newspapers also sponsor literary festivals, as hers does the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, which takes place in early October. The Times provides financial support for the festival and has a say in programming, which it ties to coverage of the event. Her book section the Saturday before the festival will be all about it and other sections of the newspaper, such as the arts section, will cover other aspects of Cheltenham's guest authors. The sponsorship has proven to be a good value all around.

John said that this reminded him that authors today can't hide from the public until they've developed a loyal cult following. Before that, they have to be out on tour, plugging the book as much as they can. He asked Emily how she chooses authors to appear on Stephen Colbert's show.

Emily said they viewed the show's primary obligation to be one of entertainment; it's not a book review show, but books are a great resource for them. They rely on book reviews to help select author guests from the many books that they get (about 60-80 each day).

Of course the premise of the show is that the Colbert character never reads any of the books he's interviewing the authors about. They would rarely have a novelist on, as the audience (and Colbert) need to understand the idea of the book right off the bat. Novels usually don't have clear arguments and their show isn't about stories. They are looking for books, essentially, that contain arguments that can easily be made fun of.

While Salman Rushdie did appear recently on Colbert, it wasn't for any of his novels. They also had a recent appearance by Garrison Keillor, but he is less a literary writer to them than the apotheosis of NPR banjo-playing folksiness, something that can be satirized.

John noted that much of the news about the Bush administration, including revelations seen nowhere else, have come not from newspaper or magazine journalists but from the authors of books. He asked Steve, now at Truthdig.com as opposed to the Los Angeles Times Book Review, about the differences between reviewing books about current events on the Web and general book reviewing in newspapers.

Steve said that the fact that newspapers have to rely on books for news about the Bush administration testifies to newspaper journalists' total abdication of their responsibility to search for the truth. As for technological change, it may make communication more swift, the human desire to make sense of our world and seek answers remains the same.

He looks for the same qualities in all reviews: the degree to which the writer is accurate and composes with style and grace and has something interesting to say. He thinks victory will ultimately go to those blogs and older forms that have these qualities in abundance.

Steve said that the proliferation of blogs and other new forms still hasn't shown that they can produce an economic model for employment of people to write about books. Zealots in their garages now can post their manifestos on the Internet without first going through a discriminating filter that editors provide.

John then turned to Dwight and asked him about his blog for The New York Times. Dwight said that blogging is sticking a live wire into one's neck. At the book review section, they don't really have much contact with readers except for the relatively few letters that come in, but when he posts something on his blog, people respond immediately. That people online are "always yapping" means that the blogger has something like a pet that constantly craves attention and it's difficult to keep up.

Dwight likened book reviews to restaurants, while blogs are more like good hot dog stands, a fun place to go for a quick bite.

John asked Jennifer about her magazine's use of long-form reviews. In view of the widely-assumed decline of people's attention spans, has Harper's thought about changing this format and going to shorter reviews?

Jennifer said that the magazines had no plans for shorter reviews, that they and their readers seemed to appreciate the 4,000-word reviews they run or John Leonard's 2,000-word columns covering a number of books. As far as shorter attention spans go, Harper's appeals to readers curious about the world around them, people who like the long form. A not-for-profit organization, her magazine doesn't have to worry so much about economic imperatives.

John turned to Melissa and said that Leonard Lopate's radio show had the same instant feedback as blogs. He asked how she finds the authors to appear on the program.

Melissa said she usually goes by her gut feelings about the book; if they like a book, they invite the author on without worrying that she might be boring. Some people are amazingly good writers but find it hard to communicate over the air. Leonard Lopate's job is to pull them out. Their show does loads of first novels, often before there are many reviews out of these books.

John asked if she ends up reading a lot of stuff, and she said they do aggressive screening since they get 40-60 books a day. They have to do a lot of skimming.

John then discussed all the multimedia add-ons newspaper book sections now contain: the podcasts, Q & A's, etc. He asked Erica about these in both her paper's print and online book sections.

Erica said we are trying to do more and more multimedia, but nobody really yet knows what the effect of these add-ons will be and if the expenditures made will be worthwhile. After all, if they decide to do a podcast, someone has to be the interviewer. They are basically throwing stuff out and seeing what sticks, but none of this material comes without costs. The current confusion about all this comes down to economic reality.

John asked Dwight if the New York Times is also heading in that direction, and he pretty much echoed Erica in saying they were throwing everything out at readers online in particular and are waiting to see what works. For him, blogs and podcasts are not as much fun as book reviews themselves.

John noted that there were fewer newspaper reviews, and while there were many blogs, blogs don't have editors. He asked Steve about this: are we losing the kind of incisive criticism a Susan Sontag-type review once provided.

Steve said newspapers and all mass media worry about the need to "retain eyeballs" and so they can neglect the pure mission of providing criticism. Many book review outlets have blurred the boundary from being critics to being spin doctors for authors or publicists for book publishers.

In a furiously visual culture, Steve went on, mass media depend upon "a certain velocity of image." He views books as the most pure form and hates interviewers who ask authors, "What more can you tell us about your book?" An honest author might answer, "I spent three years writing my book and put everything in in. If you want to know that, just read my book. It says everything I have to say."

All podcasts, Q & A's and the other add-ons are a species of higher gossip, Steve said, a kind of Rope-a-Dope or junk food, to bring in the kind of person who normally doesn't go near straight book reviews. But they have little nutritive value compared to the work itself, and the work should be the primary focus.

John quoted Updike when he said that the perfect book review would quote the book under discussion in its entirety.

Then John asked Emily about the relentless plugging of books and whether Colbert satirizes that in his author interviews, making fun of the current system of book publicity.

Emily said the Colbert persona is so misinformed, his guests have to constantly correct him about his assumptions regarding their books. Keep in mind that their show's demographics skew toward very young viewers who probably read fewer books. If they were more conventional in their author interviews, their audience would get turned off.

She said Colbert can sell books that no one else is paying attention to. At work she has to deal with books in a "circus atmosphere," but at home, as a reader, she wishes her work self didn't have to resort to these circus tricks to bring attention to books.

John noted the paradox that while technology is making it easier to publish, it's also making it harder to find time to read. He then turned to Melissa and asked how she gets listeners to the radio show involved when so much else is competing for their attention.

Melissa said the show asks for the listeners' direct involvement, and uses it, in the form of email questions and comments to Leonard Lopate during the show; he incorporates these into his interviews with guests and also takes phone calls from listeners, who can talk to the authors who are guests.

The radio show also has contests, such as a recipe swap, and it recently had a contest for drawings using googly eyes in connection with a new book by Amy Sedaris; the contests often draw as many as 400 entries from all over the country.

John said that Steve Wasserman was a recent guest, discussing the decline of book reviewing, and he noted that soon after the interview, it could be downloaded and streamed online and that people could post comments about the show.

Melissa said that people suggest ideas for segments and guests constantly, that they use many of these ideas but only if they agree they are worthwhile.

John asked Jennifer if young reviewers, who grew up in a different mass media environment, write differently than old-time critics like Irving Howe. She said every generation takes a somewhat different approach, but young Harper's contributors are also their readers and are comfortable with the long form; reviewers in their twenties for them are happy to write 4,000-word reviews. While most twentysomethings may have a different attitude toward reading than people in their twenties did forty years ago, that's not true of the young reviewers Harper's publishes.

John turned to Dwight and asked about the Times Book Review, noting that many older book reviews the paper had in their online archives, unless they were by critics like Helene Vendler or Edward Hirsch, were often quite badly written in comparison with today's reviews.

Dwight said that he's pleased when he can go back and find reviews of old stuff, like John Gardner novels, that still stand up, but he agreed they have higher standards today. Back in the day, when he was coming up, young book reviewers could hone their craft in alternative weeklies, which have drastically cut or eliminated book coverage by now. Blogs, with a lack of editors, don't help a writer develop in the same way.

Steve Wasserman said that he doesn't understand then why the chain bookstores and some others seem to have tons of literary quarterlies. Even if these are subsidized and read by only fifty people, can't talented writers get their start there? All the quarterlies actually seem desperate to find fresh, excellent material, so talented young writers still can get published today.

Steve mentioned a UCLA student who a few years ago approached him after a panel like the one today who asked if he would look at her stuff. He did and liked it, and Cristina Nehring has gone on to produce superb work for Harper's and other magazines and has a book contract with HarperCollins. Of course, not all people with literary aspirations have as much talent as she does, and they will not succeed, and that's a good thing.

Steve affirmed that there were lots of outlets for writers with talent although he admitted they pay abysmally. Erica said she would agree, though England is a more closed world and sometimes she gets people writing her saying the British literary world is a kind of conspiracy to keep certain people down. She wishes she had more space to publish more writers who can genuinely contribute to the literary discussion.

John stated that novelist and poets write for their own enjoyment and don't feel terrible if their stuff doesn't get published, but nobody sits home and writes book reviews for their own pleasure. Without enough outlets, potential book reviewers are frustrated.

John said this frustration leads to the acerbic quality of some, but not all, literary blogs, who feel they must shout out to get heard. Some have compared them to the English essays of the eighteenth century who were similarly acerbic. Is this an apt comparison?

Steve said that at the risk of psychoanalyzing anyone's rage, he believed it was better that these people get their anger out with words on their blogs rather than climb up to a tower and start shooting people willy-nilly. Their rage is a perverse acknowledgement of how deep people's feelings about literature are.

What he dislikes about the Internet is that its neat aesthetics confer an unearned authority on the scribblings of ranters. You used to be able to tell a "nutter" by the bizarre formatting of addressing on their envelopes, their disregard for margins, their crazy scrawl. It was so much easier in the old days to spot an unhinged person. Now the Internet makes it harder to tell; all opinions, at first glance, appear equal. This is terrifying, so you've got to read online stuff carefully.

John asked Dwight how he reads the Internet, and Dwight said that at the Times Book Review, they don't really look to litblogs for literary criticism but for news of the publishing world and gossip. To look at literary criticism, they search the online book sections of other newspapers like The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, etc. Although they don't provide real literary criticism, Dwight said, blogs do have the virtue of distinctive voices.

John said that the NBCC blog Critical Mass can get famous writers to send them articles without paying them – a somewhat depressing situation if you think about it – but people don't read them, like a great essay Richard Powers did for them. Most of the traffic to the organization's blog comes from some link by another site, like Arts and Letters Daily.

Jennifer said she looks at litblogs for news as well, but she might not want online criticism because she herself is not used to reading long pieces on the Internet. Probably young people feel differently. She uses the Web to "get a sense of what's out there." But there's a lot of glut, and sometimes good things are hard to find.

Emily said some of the reviews of her husband Jonathan Alter's book seemed so petty. When reviewers aren't thoughtful, they lose credibility. She noted that some reviewers discredit an entire book because an author got one or two facts wrong. Then she said she was speaking more as the wife of an author than a TV producer.

Jennifer said there are real problems with book reviewers who want to feel superior to the books they are assigned.

When Emily said snark is more entertaining, Jennifer said that reviewers must communicate their critical experience in encountering work. It's bad to be condescending to the books under review; particularly with fiction, reviewers need to have a little bit of humility. Being a showoff results in the worst reviews, and editors need to guard against letting condescension creep into their publications' reviews.

Emily said she wanted a review of a book that was written, not the book the reviewer thought ought to have been written. Dwight said he was a fan of Emily's husband Jonathan Alter's writing and said that his columns are tough, and so he should expect tough reviews of his own work.

John asked Dwight if they often had to kill poorly-written reviews. Dwight said they rarely do this; instead they try to fix it. It looks bad if the Times Book Review kills a review because it seems as if they are favoring a writer and don't want her to receive negative criticism. They hate cheap shots, but some hits and fair hits.

Steve said that to him, a worse sin is the widespread prevalence of indifference in book reviews. "I'd embrace a crime of passion, however wrongly directed," he said, "over the indifferent complacency I see in many reviews."

Steve said he wanted to feel a presiding sensibility informing a book review, a sense that the reviewer holds readers in high regard and understands the high stakes of a review. He wants reviews that embrace the strange, the unknown, even the perverse – writing like that would go a long way toward gaining eyeballs for book review sections.

John asked Melissa if discussions on the Leonard Lopate radio show ever get combative or confrontational, and she replied that emotions are sometimes important, though if you're interviewing Henry Kissinger, you must approach him with respect. They try to have on only people that Leonard respects, and if the conversation gets heated, that's fine.

John then turned to Emily and asked her role in scripting the interviews; if they've got on a Swedish writer with a skeptical view of global warming as they did recently, what's their strategy to make the interview entertaining?

Emily said lots of writers make good foils for Steve's Colbert character, and it's Steve who usually figures out how. She couldn't do it for Keillor and would have passed on him as a guest, but Steve said he'd out-folksy him. Steve loves the challenge of interviewing guests his character would really have nothing to say so. The more difficult the interview, the better Steve likes it.

John said they were nearing the end of the hour session and asked each panel member what they were currently reading. Some of their answers:

Emily: Philip Roth's The Counterlife

Steve: Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism ("be very scared")

Melissa: Akiko Busch's Nine Ways to Cross a River: Midstream Reflections on Swimming and Getting There from Here

Erica: Carol Gould's Spitfire Girls: A Tale of the Lives and Loves, Achievements and Heroism of the Women ATA Pilots in World War II

Dwight: Phoebe Damrosch's Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter
Jennifer: Gyula Kruda's Sunflower

With that, John closed the session by thanking the panel and the audience, reminding them that at 5:45 p.m., there would be another panel, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Books: Can Criticism and Promotion Coexist Today?"

Unfortunately, someone's grandmother was waiting for me at Sal's Pizzeria in Williamsburg and so I could not stay for it.

Thursday Evening at Housing Works Bookstore Café: “Literary Magazines Go Electronic”

This was posted to Richard Grayson's MySpace blog on Friday, September 14, 2007:

Thursday Evening at Housing Works Bookstore Café: “Literary Magazines Go Electronic”

Last evening at the cozy Housing Works Bookstore Café in Soho, I was one of about two dozen people in a mostly older crowd in the audience for the initial panel in the National Book Critics Circle series, "The Age of Infinite Margins: Book Critics Face the 21st Century." This panel was "Literary Magazines Go Electronic: Where's the Print Edition in the Library?"

First a staff member explained that Housing Works is a community-based, not-for-profit corporation providing housing, health care, advocacy, job training, and vital supportive services to homeless New Yorkers living with HIV and AIDS, and she discussed the workings and activities of the Used Bookstore Cafe; for me, it's always been a wonderful place to visit.

Then the panel's moderator, Barbara Hoffert of Library Journal, an NBCC board member, was introduced.

Barbara, who got to stand at a podium with two rather rickety-looking raised platforms on either side of her, asked the panelists to take their seats and then introduced them. From the audience's left to right, they were:

Brigid Hughes, editor of A Public Space;

Karen Gisonny, Helen Bernstein Librarian for Periodicals and Journals at the New York Public Library;

Jeffrey Lependorf, executive director of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses;

D.T. Max, author and former New York Observer book columnist;

Kevin Prufer, poet, NBCC board member, and editor of the literary magazine Pleiades;

Scott McLemee, columnist at Inside Higher Ed columnist and award-winning critic; and

Susan Thomas, Assistant Professor/Evening and Weekend Librarian, Philip Randolph Memorial Library, Borough of Manhattan Community College (where I'd be teaching this morning if not for the Rosh Hashanah holiday).

Barbara began the discussion by going to Kevin's article in which he described how he'd hoped to spend an afternoon at the University of Central Missouri's library catching up on his reading of literary magazines such as Virginia Quarterly Review, only to find that the library had canceled all print subscriptions and he was directed to get the journals on the online database. Barbara noted that this will be the "flip year" for many academic libraries – the year the majority of their holdings will become electronic rather than print-based. Serials (periodicals) are, of course, much more likely to be in digital form than books.

Barbara's first question for the panel was whether the electronic reading experience is measurably different than the print reading experience. Kevin said the obvious difference in terms of literary magazines is that they are edited lovingly and carefully, not just the content of the texts (stories, poems, essays) but also the layout: both the look of each page and how the contents are placed so that reading the journal from poem to story to poem, etc., is a continuous aesthetic experience – that is lost when the material is transferred to digital form.

A second issue is that the majority of book reviews of small press books, particularly poetry, appear in literary magazines, and readers will look through the latest issues to see what books are being published – something they're far less likely to do when the current reviews are available only electronically.

A third issue, Kevin continued, is that some writers refuse to give electronic rights to their works, so that a magazine's story by such a writer (Brigid Hughes gave Nadine Gorimer as an example) will not appear in the digital version, only in the print one.

Karen noted that people love to browse through new issues cover to cover, looking the ads and graphics that are lost electronically.

Jeffrey said online reading is simply harder; in addition, literary magazines – unlike research-centered academic journals – are a "curatorial experience." The only advantage electronic forms may have is in presenting the moving image, joking that can be gotten from print only accidentally when a reader is drunk.

Scott, who said that for the last two years he's written exclusively for online publications, said that while we may revere old literary magazines like Partisan Review, often the print artifact of journals isn't really necessary. An advantage to electronic text is that it is much less expensive since the cost of storage and upkeep is negligible if it even exists. Distribution is not a problem as it is with print publications. The old quarterlies relied on more expensive library subscriptions (sometimes several times the price of individual subscriptions), but in an age of shrinking library and academic budgets, when storage and shelf space is finite, electronic forms have a crucial advantage.

Jeffrey noted that literary magazines often have distribution problems, and just a few weeks ago, the leading distributor of literary magazines went out of business. Newsstand distribution has never been a revenue-generating business for periodicals, which are out of date after 90 days at retail outlets (some, like the weekly People, go out of date sooner than that) – at which point their covers are ripped off, sent back to the publishers for credit and the rest of the magazines are thrown away.

Susan noted that older journals like Kenyon Review and Antioch Review were the most likely to be available on online databases and therefore most likely to be cut from libraries. Newer journals, such as A Public Space, not so readily available online, were more likely to be ordered in print form. At BMCC, one goal is to promote reading among our students, and having journals around – Susan mentioned the new Bronx Biannual – encouraged that. But budgets are being slashed and so academic libraries are less likely to order newer literary magazines, whose extras like DVDs, CDs and flipbooks (easily found in bookstores like St. Marks) are just not in the electronic versions if they even exist.

Jeffrey remarked that people are trained to read on pages and said the "virtual page" was different. J-Store, which electronically delivers electronic journals with the scanned print pages in their original form, is branching out from scientific and academic journals into literary magazines. But J-Store is primarily an archival enterprise, with something like a three-year window for publications, so that current issues of literary magazines would not be available that way. Karen said that J-Store was good but limited, and there are really no others doing the same thing.

Brigid distinguished between magazines on online databases and the websites of magazines like A Public Space, which can supplement the print issues with all kinds of extra features, like an interview with an author whose poems are in the print version. But when she goes to universities with MFA programs, their staff and students want the current print editions in their libraries and never ask for the electronic version.

Kevin said that after his experience at the University of Central Missouri library, he emailed a number of people for their opinions. Other small state university library staff members also noted that they carried far more electronic versions of periodicals than dead-trees ones, but editors at places like Kenyon Review worried about the loss of income from $24-a-year library subscriptions. Some magazines, like Boulevard, actually charge libraries less than they do individuals because libraries provide vast exposure.

Barbara said that at Library Journal, they thought the print and web versions of the magazine were designed to do very different things, some of which are only feasible online. Brigid said online editions were a necessity now for literary magazines, and editors in their twenties were much more comfortable with using their website versions. It is older writers and editors having trouble making the transition.

Jeffrey noted that online versions of litmags can link to other pieces by the same contributor or to their books for sale or supplement the print edition in numerous ways. Karin said that the New York Public Library is still subscribing to print issues and that many people prefer to look at text in things they can hold in their hands.

Jeffrey said that CLMP now has far more literary magazines in its database than when they began compiling it in the 1980s, that new litmags are being created all the time.

Then he brought up the issue of blogs. So much literary discussion, as well as discourse in other fields, today takes place on blogs, yet who is archiving the contents of blogs to make them available to scholars half a century from now who will undoubtedly want to look at blogs to understand the present literary scene? Karen admitted that the New York Public Library is doing nothing with blogs except reading them (mostly discussions on library blogs), that someone may need to scan them to preserve their contents.

Scott pointed to a recent study about the need to archive blogs. One problem noted is that there is such an explosion of blogs, it is hard to figure out just which blogs should be archived. Who would make these decisions? It also would be very expensive to archive blogs and probably would require some not-for-profit organization like J-Store. In addition, there are numerous intellectual property issues raised by blog archival.

Scott noted this transition to digital text is much harder for older people, that younger people are much more comfortable with screen-reading and manipulating the texts; for example, college students may download complex texts and then add notes or commentary, while older people view screen-reading as a more passive activity.

D.T. Max said that books are not good online, that there's no market for electronic books yet despite years after their introduction. In the mid-1990s he wrote an article for The Atlantic on the fate of reading in an electronic age (which, ironically, is not available online); at that point people believed the transition away from printed text would happen much faster than it actually has.

D.T. went on to say that his own book about a family with a fatal insomnia disorder is part-science and part-story. Some readers more interested in more information about prion diseases and other technical material mentioned in the book might benefit from hyperlinks that could be available if the book were online; yet those readers more interested in the narrative about the family would not.

Reading novels online, D.T. said, was just "not fun." The aesthetic experience is lost. He also wondered about the financial benefits for writers to having their work online. D.T. emphasized, though, that change is coming and this will also change the way in which writers write and what they write about. No area more than literature is more sensitive in changes in form. D.T. doesn't compose by hand anymore. Jeffrey noted that even the change from pencil to pen can change what people write. How will the transformation of text change literature?

Jeffrey said that whenever there is a middle person, like a distributor, it means less money for the creators and first publishers. J-Store is a not-for-profit outfit, and importantly, they not only scan and make available pages for electronic distribution but carefully preserve in a library the actual physical pages of each journal; this is another important part of their mission.

Jeffrey thinks things will be different in just a few years. Very thin electronic "papers" will exist and store and display text so that people are reading books and journals they can hold in their hands, something very close to what we now think of as physical pages. We should not assume that digital reading means online reading. Twenty years from now, most material will probably be read in electronic form. Just as there is moveable type, there will be "moveable print." How this will change reading is something worth considering.

Kevin said that while he's not a technophobe by any means, he still composed poetry by hand and that perhaps things will change less than we now think, just as D.T's article from a decade ago featured prognostications about electronic text which have not yet been realized.

Susan said that for her, it can be a relief not to have to read onscreen; for that reason alone, print culture should be preserved. She finds it dehumanizing when libraries require patrons to access certain material at terminals rather than giving them access to the physical objects of books and periodicals.

Jeffrey said that printed text slows us down in our reading, and with literature, especially with poetry, that can be a good thing, as literature is often savored rather than consumed in a utilitarian way as information is.

D.T. said books will eventually migrate to electronic forms. Books are esteemed as the emperors of information, the top form, above periodicals. But, D.T. said, look around at the books on the shelves here; they're not interacting with each other, the way species on remote islands in the Galapagos couldn't intermingle and so produced forms found nowhere else on earth. Electronic books would have malleable text and therefore would become more accurate and probably would be cited more. He noted that when newspaper reporters wanted to reference a book for an article they are writing, they traditionally call the author for a quotation or ask her what her book means rather than reading the book themselves; that may change when the book is available digitally.

Scott said that the tendency to skim more online or to skip around more may be beneficial, noting that many 450-page books contain only 150 worthwhile pages. The current organic structure of books will almost disappear, though. Oddly, he said, when he writes for online publications, he does so by hand.

Echoing a recent statement by Steve Wasserman, Scott said that while online publications have the ability to contain material of any length, in reality people get more impatient and don't read long stuff [my interpolation: like this blog entry?] online. It's only in print periodicals like Bookforum that Scott can publish articles of 4000 words. With the advent of all electronic text, 2000-word articles will have to merit it.

There was a discussion of paper submissions versus electronic submissions to periodicals; Jeffrey noted that most litmags now took material online, and Brigid say that she did but they ended up printing out most submissions for easier reading.

Barbara asked what can be done to prevent the disappearance of literary magazines from library shelves. Should there be sit-ins or read-ins like NBCC's effort in Atlanta to protest the dismissal of the book review editor at the Journal Constitution? Susan said that in the case of academic libraries, readers who wanted print copies should go over the head of the library directors to higher-ups who control the budgets.

Finally, Kevin noted that the University of Central Missouri library, whose lack of print journals spurred this conversation, has actually decided to go back to subscribing to the physical issues of many magazines.

I got to ask one of the few questions, addressing my query to Jeffrey. I said the titles of literary magazines I'd heard during the panel discussion were all established names that nearly everyone has heard of. Yet there are hundreds of literary magazines put out by individuals and groups all over the U.S., most getting little distribution and no library coverage whatsoever. When I was starting out publishing my stories, the only place I could find many of the little magazines that I submitted to and got published by was in the small private library of the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines, the predecessor organization of Jeffrey's Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. I spent hours there, yet had I been anywhere but New York, I would not be able to find these litmags unless I ordered copies individually. Was this discussion relevant to the vast majority of small literary periodicals?

Jeffrey said first that he was happy to announce that the CCLM/CLMP library had now been given to the New York Public Library and was in the care of Karen and her colleagues and more readily available to the public. He also said that people who wanted to see literary magazines that might be more obscure should come to the Housing Works Used Bookstore Café during June because CLMP sends over many recent issues, all of which are available for just two dollars each. Karen noted that the NYPL has about a thousand different literary magazines available in print.

After a few more questions, Barbara thanked the panelists for their thoughtful comments, the audience for its attention, and especially John Freeman and Jane Ciabattari for their work on making the evening possible.

Wednesday Evening at the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen Library: "Save Our Book Reviews!" Panel

Recently many newspapers have been cutting or eliminating their book review pages or sections and downsizing their book review staffs. Last evening we went to the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen Library on West 44th Street for a "Save Our Book Reviews!" panel discussion sponsored by the New York Center for Independent Publishing (NYCIP; formerly the Small Press Center) and the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC).

After being introduced by NYCIP executive director Karin Taylor, moderator John Freeman, the NBCC President, who's reviewed hundreds of books in publications worldwide, in turn introduced the panelists: M.A. (Michael) Orthofer, managing editor of the web site The Complete Review; Sarah McNally, owner of McNally-Robinson Booksellers; Dan Simon, publisher of Seven Stories Press; Tim W. Brown, freelance reviewer and NYCIP Executive Council member and Hannah Tinti, author of Animal Crackers and editor of One Story.

John began by asking if book reviews matter, if they sell books.

Dan said that at best, book reviews start beautiful electricity, that some books would have been ignored but for an inspired New York Times Book Review notice that led to a snowballing series of events that got them a lot of notice and sales. Historically, book reviews have made all the difference in the world; in some ways, reviewers are his press's ideal readers. However, today book reviews carry less weight than they used to. Once the cover of NYTBR would be magic for a book's sales, but now a NYTBR cover review may not create a ripple.

John noted that the crisis in newspaper book reviewing did not affect the New York Times, whose book review is healthier than ever.

Sarah said that in smaller cities, book reviews did affect customers. Younger people may use websites to get book information, not reviews, but older people are very review-conscious. She wondered if fewer local reviews outside the New York area, particularly in the South and Midwest, have affected book sales there.

Sarah continued that although the NY Times may be okay, literary culture is based locally all around the U.S. Some reviewers do sell books, and she said that Dan's use of the word "inspired" was perfect. A single review can bring in dozens of customers in one day. An example she offered was Australian writer Tim Flannery, who got a glowing daily NY Times review for his novel Deconstruction Acres.

Tim agreed with Sarah about the importance of reviews for sales, but said that newspaper cutbacks were leading to fewer reviews. People also use their personal networks and word of mouth to decide what books to buy as cracks appear in the edifice of mainstream media.

John asked Hannah about One Story's audience, and she said the publication's now five years old; it began to fill a gap after Story and other fiction magazines closed. It provides a focus on one story, is only subscription-based, and now is sent out 18 times a year, every three weeks, to over 4,000 subscribers. When her authors do have books published, they have to work harder than ever to get book reviews.

John brought up the example of Virginia Woolf and how her literary criticism provided her with income. If literary interest leads to fewer book reviews, where will today's Virginia Woolfs make their living? He then turned to Michael and asked him about the Complete Review.

Michael said he was interested first in the possibilities of the Internet, where he noticed lots of book reviews but few places with links to them. He wanted to provide access to opinions and publish information. The Internet has great potential for book information, but it's not a substitute for newspapers.

John said that the Complete Review focuses a lot on independent presses and asked if print review culture does less for indie publishers. Michael said yes, and gave Tina Brown's book on Princess Diana, which got the cover review in Sunday's NYTBR and is being reviewed by many newspapers. But it's not appropriate punishment for lack of newspaper attention to small presses to cut back these reviews. It's just that papers aren't living up to their potential when they pick Tina Brown on Diana over their own local literature.

John said that print reviews vary widely in quality. Some NYTBR reviews are so badly written that no one would buy a book because of them while a more stylishly written review on the web could be more productive of book sales.

Sarah quoted the line said to the nineteenth century literary critic Belassarion Belinsky in Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia: "You are our one true critic." What is the point of reviews, though, if publishers have only a short-term mentality?

John said that Dan published the 2007 Human Rights Report but found it impossible to get reviews because of newspaper editors' fealty to mainstream publishers' frontlists.

This led Dan to discuss what being an "independent" publisher actually meant. He saw it not so much about non-corporate ownership but about non-corporate values: an alternative set of values that have created a network or an ecosystem that includes not just presses but indie bookstores, web people, reviewers (including NBCC folks): picaresque underpaid true believers. Nobody owns these people, so smaller newspapers can't tell them what to write. The literary ecosystem can't function without any one of these groups. As publishers, it's hard to get reviews yet somehow we always get them. When the ecosystem breaks down somewhere, as in the loss of book reviews, it has a devastating effect; writers get depressed they can't sell their books and they stop writing.

Sarah said that for her as a bookstore owner, it's impossible to buy books without review quotes, especially for paperback originals. Consumers respond to the review quotes when they see books at McNally Robinson's front tables. John asked if front table placement affects sales more than book reviews, and Sarah said yes, but not without review quotes. She will not buy paperback originals that don't have review quotes.

Tim said this was not so much interconnectedness, the term Dan and John used, but a kind of sick symbiosis in a highly dysfunctional publishing industry and went back to his metaphor of cracks in the edifice of mainstream media. He mentioned Rain Taxi, which he reviews for (copies were being given away for free at the symposium), as an example of a thoughtful independent journal that reviewed books. Other ways to sell books are through personal appearances, panel discussions, publicity events. NYCIP's mission is to defend and uphold the ethos of indie presses. Aside from Rain Taxi, Bloomsbury Review, American Book Review and other publications exists besides the NYTBR.

John said he was worried that Tim's model for book culture excluded the mass audience. Tim said no, books like Jerry Seinfeld's autobiography are review-proof and will sell to the masses regardless. The type of book Tim wants to review is not for everybody, it's for a niche audience: "I work as a reviewer below the radar."

John noted that many of the publications Tim mentioned are also available on the Web and that Rain Taxi is sold in China. Turning to Hannah, he asked if her story collection (an excellent book, if I can intrude here) Animal Crackers got a wider audience due to book reviews.

Hannah said word of mouth helped more, especially her parents' word of mouth. (Laughter.) But also before every reading she did in various towns, the local indie bookstore would usually contact the local newspaper, which would schedule a review or interview her. She said that playing all angles with a lot of will power can overcome a publisher's lack of financial resources for publicity.

Book blogs are exploding, Hannah said, and these vibrant websites are more "where the action is" than a newspaper recycling an AP review. Authors want a variety of reviews, wherever they are found. She said that One Story's website provides information about their authors' books and their forthcoming readings; this has made a lot of difference for some of these writers.

Tim said that journalists were very lazy people, that the books they write about are the result of being fed press releases: "Every newspaper reviews the same five damn books on Sunday." Book review pages shouldn't be this passive; they should be more engaged and proactive.

John noted that of NBCC's 700 critic members, many live outside New York, with the largest contingent in San Francisco. The NBC believes that the more people discuss books, the better off American culture is, and the best way to reach average people is in the local newspaper. However, regional papers are abrogating cultural responsibility to the New York Times, AP, etc. No matter how great book websites are, the average person can't read 200 blogs and webzines every day, but they can pick up a newspaper.

These papers are, with the exception of some family-owned entities like the NY Times, owned by conglomerates, John said. For example, the Village Voice is run by a Phoenix-based chain of alternative weeklies that is openly hostile to book reviews. The venues for young writers to get paid for their reviews are shrinking as these weeklies tool their culture coverage to entertainment, pop culture and corporate interests. While the Internet exhibits a lot of promise -- and have the advantage of being able to review books past the narrow time frame newspapers require (very close to a book's pub date) -- does this mean giving up on the "accidental reader" that a newspaper review may attract? Will book reviews be read only by a certain niche?

Michael said that although he publishes on the Internet, he wanted accidental readers. If we are just talking talking to ourselves, separating ourselves into a group of people who think the same, can that be good?

John then turned the discussion to literary prizes, one of which seems to be given out every three weeks. What effect do prizes have on sales?

Sarah said that prizes are a huge deal. People particularly love her store's Booker Prize display (they put out the current and past winners) even more than the displays for the National Book Award or the Pulitzer. Prizes bring people into the store and give books a wider audience. She thinks it is a good thing for a lot of people to read some particular book so that it serves as a pillar for discussions. Prizes also can eliminate the gap between indie and corporate publishers. She reiterated that indie books sell well only when they are on a table with "mainstream" books, and this happens when stores create displays based on prizes and awards.

Then the panel took questions from the audience.

Someone asked who is the "client base" of book reviewers, publishers or book buyers? Reviewers seem to hype big-advance Random House books, for example. If you rip off a book's title and strip it of its publisher and author, it would be better for the many good books that get published but not read.

John said that critics don't all think a lot. He just sends publications queries about reviews he wants to do, and some venues are more receptive than others. If he suggested doing a book in translation to an editor in Cleveland, she might counter by suggesting a book for which she'd received a press release that day.

If a critic said he wanted to review Robert Walser but the editor wanted a review of Jasper Fforde's latest book, the latter would be the one to get assigned. If we reviewed only small press books, we'd miss out on good work. One problem small presses have in getting reviews is that unlike large publishers, they can't afford to print 5,000 galleys for distribution.

Tim said that being proactive pays off. He's never reviewed for major newspapers. He deliberately looks for books to review based on his own level of interest; for example, he reviewed one of Dan's books for that reason. Employees of newspapers are beholden to their corporate employers, but he had a day job and just got paid in copies, like most writers whose work appears in literary magazines.

An audience member said she had been reviewing books for 30 years, but she can't find anything out about small press books before their pub date. At small press book fairs, she approaches publishers asking for info before the pub date; these small presses seem unaware that editors won't accept books for review after the pub date.

John said there's a six week window generally. He just reviewed a book published in March and tried to hide the pub date from his editor. He agreed that there are structural problems regarding both time and information; if it's hard to get a book, people can't review it.

Tim said that proportionally, books from small publishers probably get reviewed more than most conglomerate books because at these giant companies, only their top tier books get reviewed and they don't care so much about the others.

Karin said that small presses should realize that they can declare the pub date later than when the books actually come back from the printer. NYCIP can help provide small presses with information like this, that they don't necessarily know but which might be crucial to success. Also, prizes specifically for indie presses tend to get overlooked and that they should work with the NBCC to get these prizes better known. John mentioned that NBCC's poetry prize winner had a press run of only 500 copies, so how many copies could that publisher afford to give away for free? They needed a targeted list.

An audience member who identified himself as a self-published writer noted that the New York Times dropped its Sunday TV listings section but kept the book review because it generated ads. He gave What Color Is Your Parachute?as an example of a book originally self-published that gained a large audience through word of mouth, which is how music albums also have achieved commercial success.

John agreed that word of mouth is the number one reason books are bought. People pick up books that look and sound interesting to them.

Tim said there's a difference between the corporate and indie personalities, and reviewers are, of course, individuals. The empowerment of an individual voice can do a lot in assessing the value of books or other cultural objects.

Hannah mentioned the lack of profitability of books of short stories, which she said were just "one step ahead of poetry."

An audience member identifying herself as an academic said that in the academic book reviews she writes, the pub date is irrelevant, that she's reviewed books years after they first came out. She stopped reading the NYTBR because it's too boring; missing from is a sense of style, a sense of verve, pizazz, or a moral vision.

She asked if NBCC members discuss this problem of style. She herself never reads reviews of fiction books because they are all plot summary; instead,she depends for recommendations on booksellers and, yes, Oprah. She is not interested in plot summary but in the use of language, a book's theme and vision, but the NYTBR fiction reviews are almost entirely plot summary when they should be the kind of essays that Woolf wrote.

John said it was often a question of space in a review that could not be more than 600 words. Once a critic presents the book, there may only be 450 words left. But longer reviews are not necessarily better; an example was the 6,000-word NYTBR review of Norman Mailer, which he found "deadly." The academic in the audience said that she enjoyed that review.

John said some NYTBR reviews are quite well-written. The NBCC has the Nora Balakin Citation for excellent book reviewing, and it was won recently by someone who reviews for the San Antonio Current. Other great stylists have also won this award.

But, John continued, some newspapers require an institutional style. It's almost always verboten to use the first person. He was assigned a review on the aftermath of Hiroshima and was writing the review on the morning of 9/11; he thought that it would be relevant to use "I" in the review to describe what he saw from his window that day, but it got edited out. For the most stylish reviews, people probably have to go to literary journals and magazines like The New Yorker.

Tim said his novel reviews were often from 400-600 words, and he compared composing this kind of book review akin to the structured way a poet might write a villenelle. Most of the skills to do this kind of review he learned by third grade, from doing book reports, perhaps combined with what he learned in high school about "theme."

Hannah said that she got a lot of responses to reviews of her book that appeared in small local newspapers. Whether the reviews were good and bad, she connected with people, and it was interesting to see the different responses.

John asked everyone to name a stylish critic and he himself offered Anthony Laine and also John Updike, whose tools include his vast experience and vocabulary. Karen said she agreed with the audience member who found the NYTBR boring. Dan offered the name of Joel Agee (an old friend of ours from a Park Slope writing group in the 1970s), who reviews books in translation. John mentioned that the New York Sun has well-crafted reviews, particularly by NBCC member Adam Hirsch. Tim said Christopher Hitchens was a stylish reviewer and Hannah offered "this guy named John Freeman." (Laughter.)

A young audience member discussed the issue of not wanting to alienate the casual reader. There is a myriad of strategies publishers can follow. He mentioned Big Crossing, a book borrowing system, as well as niche blogs. Casual readers, especially if they're older, don't have the time to do Internet surfing. But for younger people, aren't these alternative methods of reviewing becoming mainstream?

Dan agreed that the Web is becoming mainstream; as a publisher, he couldn't survive without it.

John mentioned the NBCC blog, Critical Mass, which has half a million readers. However, in comparison, every Sunday's Hartford Courant had 400,000 readers, half of whom read the paper's book reviews while the NBCC blog attracts about 2,000 each day. He said a recent New York Times article portrayed a "beef" between bloggers and print reviewers and said this was inaccurate, that there is no war happening: "If people stop talking about books, we'll all be screwed."

An audience member asked what the panel thought of C-SPAN's book coverage. He also wanted to know about the demographics of Michael's Complete Review website. Michael said that The Literary Saloon blog gets about 10% of viewers and the reviews get the rest. Individual reviews can get as much traffic as the blog on a particular day; recently, reviews of Lolita and The Coast of Utopia got a lot of hits.

Dan said that C-SPAN did some events right here (the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen Library) and are supporters of indie publishing. Karin said her husband appeared on C-SPAN and for a while afterwards, they couldn't go out on the street without his being stopped by people who recognized it, so it must be bringing attention to books. John said C-SPAN's book coverage was nice but a little too much like cable access. The book coverage on Jon Stewart's and Stephen Colbert's shows is livelier but they never invite novelists on.

An audience member whose voice sounded familiar (later we realized it belonged to Ed, the young roving correspondent who interviews authors on the Bat Segundo podcasts) returned to the question of "the lack of pizazz" in the NYTBR. He mentioned John's statement about the banning of the first person in NYTBR reviews. If book reviews are so dull, why save them? Maybe they are making themselves obsolete with their current format and style (or lack of style). Why not grab readers by their lapels and give book reviews more electricity? And isn't the latter what online coverage is doing?

John said that book reviews aren't perfect. Because the NYTBR is so widely read, people copy the style of the reviews there. But there are hordes of book reviews, not all with that NYTBR "voice." He was not saying that book reviews are perfect.

Dan noted that Ed was speaking provocatively, that a writer can slip stuff in a book review that would never appear in another section of the newspaper.

Hannah said it would be great if reviews are more dynamic, but for that to happen, we need more book reviews. First-time authors don't have the kind of personal networks in the publishing world that allow them to survive without reviews.

Tim said it was bad to cut back on book coverage but that Ed may be right, that what is happening could be creative destruction, as one thing falls by the wayside as another grows up. He said the New York Times treated him well, that the paper was highly useful, but it is still a bit narrow and parochial.

Dan said we need local diversity, not just the NYTBR. We need to make sure books are talked about at the grassroots.

An audience member asked if galleys are beyond the financial reach of some small publishers, will book reviewers or publications that review books accept digital galleys. Tim said, "PDF is OK with me."

John said he recently reviewed a 3,000-page book which he read entirely on PDF, but some reviewers like to make notes in pen or pencil on the pages of the books they're reviewing, something they can't do yet with PDF although perhaps the technology will change. As for himself, he would like to see more books on PDF. He gets 100 galleys a week. Hannah suggested small publishers might try gauging interest and then doing a small sample of galleys to send to selected reviewers.

An audience member asked a question about pack journalism, and most panelist members agreed that was always a concern. Finally, it was well after the 8 p.m. scheduled end to the discussion, and Karin thanked John, his fellow panelists, and the audience for coming.

Afterwards we had the pleasure of meeting for the first time some of our favorite litbloggers: the aforementioned Edward Champion of Return of the Reluctant, Levi Asher of Literary Kicks (Lit Kicks), and MaryDell of Book Blog. Others in the audience engaged in informal discussions with the panelists for the next 20 minutes or so.

Thursday Morning at The New School: "The Mandarin at the Minimart: What We Talk about When We Talk about Mass Market Fiction"

This post is a report on a National Book Critics Circle panel at The New School University and was originally posted on the esteemed blog Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant on March 9, 2007:

The Mandarin at the Minimart: What We Talk about When We Talk about Mass Market Fiction

More and more often professional critics are called upon to review mass-market fiction. Mysteries, thrillers, romances, science fiction, ghetto lit — editors are getting more aggressive about assigning them, and literary writers (Roth, Ishiguro, McCarthy, Chabon, Atwood) more fearless about borrowing from them. Why do critics review genre fiction so condescendingly? Why does genre fiction get so little critical attention? Who are the hacks, and who are the pros, and how do we tell them apart – and do literary critics have the skills to do it? Join moderator and Time book critic Lev Grossman in conversation with novelist Walter Mosley, Publishers Weekly Reviews Director Louisa Ermelino, Little, Brown executive editor Reagan Arthur, and Entertainment Weekly book editor Thom Geier for a discussion about these issues and more.
(The New School University , Wolf Conference Room, 65 Fifth Avenue , Room 229)

~ Free and open to the public.

I got there about 15 minutes early and seemed to be one of the few members of the public there. Nearly everyone else, I guess, were newspaper book section editors, literary critics, people in publishing, etc. As a former taker of minutes at the Brooklyn College student assembly in the early ‘70s and many other academic meetings and weird clubs, I made extensive notes, which are kind of illegible now, but I thought people who couldn’t attend the panel might be interested in reading:

Before the panel, the critics were talking about the decline of book pages in newspapers, like the recent news of the folding of the Los Angeles Times Sunday book section into a larger section of opinion articles. One man (I wish I knew who these people were, sorry) talked about how online reviews may take the place of reviews in the paper. John Freeman of the NBCC said that the Philadelphia Inquirer’s book editor, Frank Wilson, is leading the way with his Books, Inq. blog that has apparently drawn traffic to the newspaper’s book reviews. Someone discussed that some papers put a few book reviews online only, and they don’t pay for these reviews, and someone else worried about the danger that this would only justify publishers who want to take away physical space in the newspaper – unlike print, putting reviews online costs nothing – and they might then decide, hey, if we’re not paying online book reviewers, why bother paying the reviewers in the dead-trees version?

John Freeman then talked about how authors who come to the Twin Cities get reviews and profiles in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, are interviewed on the local NPR station, give stage talks and go to bookstores; he said publicity should be bundled in a creative format, but the newspaper is integral to this. He wasn’t sure how the NBCC could be involved.

A woman (Helen?) spoke about meeting the new editor of the L.A. Times, a Mr. O’Shea, and she talked about moving book sections from Sundays, when the papers are so huge, to Saturdays; someone else noted that in the metropolitan area, New York Times subscribers already get the NYT Book Review on Saturday so maybe they have more time to read it.

Another man said Mr. O’Shea of the L.A. Times is a friend and that he really cares about books. Whether that translates to more book coverage, he wasn’t sure, but this editor was definitely not an enemy of book coverage. (Someone then said, I think, that he savaged Freakonomics in a review.)

Freeman said they had to wrap up the discussion because the panel was going to start, but he wanted ideas what NBCC could do (lobbying? events?) to help newspaper book sections raise their profiles. He told people with ideas to contact the NBCC board members.

Members talked about how the NBCC blog, Critical Mass, was a great step forward (there were kudos to Rebecca Skloot at this point) as was the fact that members could pay their dues online, which has improved revenue. Freeman closed by reminding NBCC members that March was the time to renew their membership and pay their dues.

Then Lev Grossman of Time and the other panel members took over the table at the front of the room. (I came in late, so I had to sit right up in front of them.) Here’s a kind of transcript. I may have some things messed up. My notes are pretty much a scrawl.

Grossman talked about the genesis of the panel. A few years ago he was in Palm Beach, Florida, to write a profile of James Patterson, and he felt uncomfortable, not just because he was tapering off his antidepressants: He didn’t know what critical language to use regarding Patterson’s work other than “lousy.” He said genre fiction was “hard to grasp for me” although he understands its appeal, but it was like a Higgs-Boson particle for him, not easy to describe critically and fill up three pages of Time. So today’s panel topic was taken to the board members of NBCC, and it had caused a lot of controversy. He read some critical emails, one of which said simply, “Genre fiction is inferior, mediocre.” Another email (or comment post, I’m not sure which) took a sarcastic tone, making fun of the NBCC deigning to discuss something that its members looked down their noses at. (I think it was sarcastic; Freeman said so, but otherwise it was hard to tell).

Tom Geier from EW: Why, for god’s sake, should we assign reviews [of genre books]? I’m not sure what a genre book is. Literary books are genre – consider coming-of-age novels that are so formulaic. Yes, I assign both commercial and literary books because that’s the world of books.

Walter Mosley was addressed by Lev Grossman as “a writer of popular fiction” and asked how he was treated by reviewers. Mosley said he generally got good reviews, except for Entertainment Weekly. He noted the crowd (I’m a bad judge of numbers, maybe 60? 75?) was very white and said all over New York roomfuls of white people like the NBCC members defined what culture is. He said coming-of-age novels are the genre in literary America . It’s impossible to find an genuinely original book that’s literary: they’re all imitative to some degree.

Lev Grossman asked what the dividing line was, if there was one, between literary and genre fiction.

Mosley said that he wrote all kinds of books and it was hard to say what the dividing line is. The tag he’s often given is that he’s the writer who created the first black detective, but of course he didn’t. He mentions Ted —– (I didn’t catch the name) and George Pelecanos and said they don’t get reviewed. Once critics have put you down as a genre author, they want to keep you in there. They give his non-mystery books reviews in the mystery section.

Grossman asked about bookstores because that’s where the hard decisions about who goes where get made.

Mosley said he’s never once gone into the African-American section of a bookstore. Toni Morrison is there, though she’s also with literary fiction.

Louisa Ermelino of PW said they review 100 books a week, including sci fi (they all called it that; no one said SF), mystery, etc. and they put a lot in their “mass market paperback” section. So PW has more latitude than newspapers. It’s a slippery slope. PW has a mystery editor, but sometimes they don’t know if a book is a literary thriller or a genre mystery and it’s a dilemma where to put the review. SF series books are very hard to review in the New York Times Book Review or Entertainment Weekly, but PW can make room for some reviews of them.

Ermelino went on to say it’s a matter of individual taste and that she’s addicted to Pringles potato chips. Books are in fact entertainment; however, the dividing line between genre and literary is there. Her own second novel contained a murder, and she was told by an editor to take out the murder because otherwise the book would be considered detective fiction. She closed by saying genre is in some ways a purely American concept; the demarcation between genre and literary fiction doesn’t really exist in Europe.

Mosley said that the American division is “pure capitalism.” Reagan Arthur of Little, Brown edits some writers seen as “transcending genre.” He asked Reagan Arthur how she sees these books, if she thinks of them as genre fiction.

Reagan Arthur, said yes, with George [Pelecanos?] and Kate [Atkinson?], it’s a different story. Kate’s first book won the Whitbread Prize over Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. Her “genre” book got reviewed seriously because of her literary past, but it also brought her a totally new audience. Arthur mentioned other writers like Ian Rankin; she doesn’t consider them “crime novelists.”

Lev Grossman said (I think; my notes are a bit hazy) that Rankin was considered a crime writer and Atkinson literary. Reagan Arthur said she wants Rankin to be taken seriously and noted he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on Ruth Rendell. Walter Mosley said Robert Parker wrote his dissertation on Raymond Chandler. In any case, things are different in Britain , where crime novels are regularly reviewed and even highlighted alongside literary fiction.

Mosley said he thought the smartest writers wrote science fiction. At that point Grossman brought up the heretofore unmentioned romance genre and called it “radioactive: reviewers don’t touch it.” An audience member shouted out that was because all the readers were women. Lev Grossman said that one-third of all novels published were, in fact, romance novels.

Louisa Ermelino said that at PW, they review certain romance novels under mass market paperback; I believe she said they review four a month. She added, “Good writing is good writing.” People talked about what a great story The Godfather was but how badly written parts of it were, and someone said the same was true of early Stephen King novels.

Walter Mosley said there was less good writing in the romance genre than, say, in science fiction. He added there was lots of really bad “literary” writing. PW’s Ermelino: “Oh yes.” EW’s Tom Geier: Some people find some genres off-putting; they don’t want to read 300 pages about space aliens. Ermelino: Alien is a great novel. Geier said he just knew the film. Mosely said, “A book is a book.” Yeah, Ermelino said, but PW and other review media are sent galleys labeled “suspense,” “romance,” “science fiction” – so partly it’s the publishers’ doing separating genre fiction from literary or general fiction.

Lev Grossman noted that Cormac McCarthy did a genre novel, that Philip K. Dick has been enshrined in the Library of America (he just got the galleys); Grossman said Dick has brilliant ideas but “the prose is bad.” Then he mentioned Susannah Clarke’s books; some are genre, some aren’t.

Reagan Arthur said how books are seen all depends upon how the books are “published” rather than the actual works themselves. She mentioned a vampire or Dracula book (I didn’t catch what she was referring to) which she viewed as “literary/historical” – clearly not for the same audience who likes Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. A novel of Susannah Clarke’s may have supernatural elements, but it’s “bigger” than just that. It’s not just for the literary reader and not just for the genre reader. It’s all about story anyway. Lev Grossman said, “You’ll get genre readers and it will also catch the literary market.”

Walter Mosley said that book readers were one thing, they were eclectic, but critics are “a whole ‘nother thing.” His mystery characters are somehow always seen by critics as more complex than the characters in his non-mystery books. In the L.A. Times reviews, the reviewer is always telling him to stick to Easy Rawlins novels; by now his publisher has stopped sending that newspaper his non-Easy books because of that. Mosley said he had to leave one publisher because they said they couldn’t publish one of his books, that they didn’t “do” science fiction.

Tom Geier from EW said Kate Atkinson can “go genre,” that Philip Roth can do alternate history in The Plot Against America and literary reviewers who don’t know that genre actually give Roth credit for inventing that kind of book, as if he were the first one to do it –- when there have been many alternate history novels written for years. The literary community can be blind to what they do not know. For example, critics who don’t know comics may have a hard time with Chabon or Lethem. Walter Mosley: “Well, their books are good, but their comics suck.”

Mosley said it’s very hard for writers to shift genres and seconded Geier’s notion of literary critic’s ignorance of genre. He brought up Octavia Butler; literary people ignored this fine writer. She told Mosley she once gave one of her books to a neighbor couple, and then, asking them how she liked it, they said, “Oh, we saw it was science fiction so we gave it to our kids.”

Tom Geier referred to a Helen Vendler interview in which said she doesn’t review younger poets who rely on so many pop culture references because she’s not familiar with them and therefore is not qualified to criticize such poetry. Lev Grossman referred to the schism between high and low culture brought about by modernism. The schism didn’t exist in the 18th century, although it started in the 19th century when popular literature was both stigmatized and feminized. Postmodern is supposed to be a melding of high and low culture, however.

Louisa Ermelino said that a hundred years from now, people are more likely going to be reading Stephen King than Philip Roth. Why would the Library of America be doing Philip K. Dick if he’s a bad writer? The notion of what a writer is, is changing. Dickens is still not considered literary among the Oxford/Cambridge crowd.

An audience member (it could have been Ron Hogan; I am very bad with names and faces) said newspaper book review sections are on their deathbeds and as far as popular culture is concerned, they don’t care if the review sections disappear because they were never covered in them anyway. Maybe newspaper review sections will have to become more relevant?

Tom Geier: There’s a simple way to do it; you do monthly SF roundups like EW does. These joint reviews make a bigger impact for the books. EW groups together books by Patterson, Sophie Kinsella, et. al. – they can group them as a particular genre and review them that way. Louisa Ermelino: There may be limited space, but they always seem to cover Stephen King.

Walter Mosley said it is literary fiction that is at the margins. He talked about the people on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn who sell large quantities of books invisible to and unknown by the literary community. (He’s referring to the many “urban” lit books I see sold by street sellers on Flatbush Avenue and on the Fulton Street mall.)

Reagan Arthur: What’s the purpose of a review if books will sell without a single review? She noted that the Denver Post seems to review more non-literary books than any other newspaper. The authors like the ones Walter Mosley was referring to probably sell more books than do much-reviewed novels by Claire Messud and Marsha Pessl, who got tons of reviews. Audiences manage to find these other books without any reviews.

An audience member (Sarah Gold?) noted that romance books have their own websites that contain reviews trusted by people who read romances. And they have their own critics who specialize in romances.

Chauncey Mabe, book editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel (the only one there I really knew fairly well) got up and said his paper doesn’t review romances for the same reason that restaurant critics don’t review McDonald’s: “it’s the same experience all the time.” The paper does regularly review mysteries. Good writing and bad writing can be found in both kinds of books. He found Ian McEwan’s Saturday atrocious. Then he said, “Literary fiction is a genre.” Every genre’s adherents have a romanticized history of the genre and everything can be good writing. Mosley: “Everything but romance?” Mabe: “Yes.” A woman said that she, like Chauncey, once hated romance but she managed to find some well-written novels in the genre – but they weren’t easy to locate: “It took work.” Mabe said they did review Nora Roberts and Janet Evanovich, whom he didn’t consider romance. Harlequin novels are romance.

Sybil Steinberg in the audience said that at PW, she used to get hate mail from romance writers. She said she cast a net out for reviewers of romance books, but a lot of people didn’t want to review those novels. And some of the strictly-romance reviewers’ reviews would be filled the same purple prose in the bad romance novels. It’s important, she said, with limited review space, to review good books. Walter Mosley: That kind of thinking can hurt writers, though, because they get no attention at all.

Someone in the audience (Peter, Lev Grossman called him) noted that NBCC has never nominated a genre book for an award. The argument could be made that we celebrate literary fiction (he mentioned Chabon and Lethem); we can easily say why these books deserve notice and an award.

Walter Mosley said it’s because of (elite?) education that they review the books they do. It’s also why there are no black people in the room. (Someone piped up: Yes, there are.) He mentioned a literary award for poetry and wondered why no Asian-American poet had ever won it. The poetry critics he asked this of said they didn’t know any Asian-American poets.

Chauncey Mabe said that Lethem is a science fiction writer, just a really good one. Walter Mosley said, “Readers are catholic; critics are not.” Readers, but not critics, will read both Philip Roth and Samuel R. Delany. (At that point I nodded, because I love them both, and then I noticed that Mosley was looking at me.) He brought up Edward P. Jones. Where were the critics when he was so many years between books, struggling in his job? Anyway, Mosley said, there’s a kind of tyranny today in publishing: authors must sell 50,000 books; if it’s just 20,000, the publishers will stop publishing them.

John Freeman said he learned about Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delany in college courses. Universities, he and Lev Grossman said, are probably more open to acknowledging teaching genre today than at any time and more open to genre than some critics are. There are lots of Ph.D. dissertations being written today on genre authors. (Someone: That’s because Melville is all used up by now.)

The session ended with a short discussion of poetry reviews or the lack of them. People said that except for a few places, the very literary work of poetry fared no better in getting newspaper and magazines to review them than do the genre books which were the subject of the panel. With that, Lev Grossman thanked the participants, there was applause, people got up, and Walter Mosley gave out some free copies (I snagged one that he kindly autographed) of his new book This Year You Write Your Novel.