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The NYTBR has been a target for decades. Elizabeth Hardwick wrote "The Decline of Book Reviewing" in Harpers in 1959, and then went on to co-found the NYRB wit
by beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
The NYTBR has been a target for decades.
Elizabeth Hardwick wrote "The Decline of Book Reviewing" in Harpers in 1959, and then went on to co-found the NYRB with Robert Silver during a big publishing strike.
In general, stuff like this is insanely inside baseball and navel gazing for the book review industry (of which little remains of the old glory days).
That said, I don't know anyone into literature who takes the NYTBR seriously. That the Best Seller list is a gamified black box is basically an open secret. The NYTBR, in particular, has become far too interconnected into the MFA-publishing-literature industrial complex. The reviews are so bland and milquetoasty because so much MFA-lit is bland as all hell and the reviews are just marketing.
The NYRB and the LRB are orders of magnitude better reading than the NYTBR, even if this article seems to criticize them (unfoundedly, in my opinion) as fuddy or old fashioned. They're not traditional "reviews" in the sense that they usually don't come around to saying whether a book is good or bad, though; they're essays that use the books reviewed as launch vehicles for pushing the ideas in them into new directions or put under a new light. The NYTBR, in contrast, often reads as ad copy or toothless summary (the latter being the plague that has infected nearly all film criticism as well).
There has also been a big resurgence in smaller mags, like N+1 (now an elder statesmen of the new upstarts), The Drift, The European Review of Books (heavy focus on translation), and many others that have excellent, lively, criticism. Also subreddits like r/truelit are a great way to expose yourself to new or interesting books. I usually find a book to add to my TBR list once or twice a week. Is the writing always up to par with professional publications? Not always, but sometimes it honestly is. (r/truelit does have a strong slant towards formal experimentation, though, which some people aren't a fan of. People more interested in "the classics" or contemporary-lit can find great recs still in r/literature.)
- 23B1 2y agor/truelit seems even more rampantly political than the NYTBR though. Any tips on filtering that out or finding something similar? Thanks for your post btw, good response.
- adolph 2y agoThis always has something interesting with links to high quality discussion: https://hackernewsbooks.com/ https://hackernewsbooks.com/ (Not affiliated, just an appreciator)
- crossroadsguy 2y agoBooks recommended on hn are almost always books that are "useful" in the spirit of productivity and all that. Not that it's wrong, but it feels heavily tilting towards monotony i.e just one kind of books, sort of.
- creer 2y agoIf you look for it, there is quite a bit of science fiction, history (okay, often of science and tech), economics, etc on HN.
- StefanBatory 2y agoUltimately those books are the best. Fiction books don't have much of value, as does the rest of entertainment. If you can lean - you could study instead or work instead. And there's always going to be someone who does who will kick you from your job.
- a-french-anon 2y agoAre you for real? I mean, it's fine if your dream life is that of an ant worker where art has no place, but don't think for a single second you're the sane one.
- patates 2y agoNot the person you are replying to but I highly suspect it was sarcasm. A caricature of a stereotypical HN-way of thinking.
- 2y ago
- jfim 2y agoIn this context, what does MFA stand for? Master of fine arts maybe?
- metabolian 2y agoMaster of 'effing around. Seroiusly, programs like that are for ineffectual offspring of elites to feel important and successful.
- dmvdoug 2y agoYes.
- hydroxideOH- 2y agoMasters of fine arts in literature or creative writing.
- cafard 2y agoI hardly have the time to read the books I want to read. My second cup of coffee on Sunday morning is about the time I'm willing to give to reading about books somebody else wants me to read (or not), and for that the NYTBR is ok. Anthony Trollope give a chapter to criticism in his autobiography, which you can find at Gutenberg.org (else I wouldn't be quoting it). The second-last paragraph concludes And readers will also find that by devoting an hour or two on Saturday to the criticisms of the week, they will enable themselves to have an opinion about the books of the day. The knowledge so acquired will not be great, nor will that little be lasting; but it adds something to the pleasure of life to be able to talk on subjects of which others are speaking; and the man who has sedulously gone through the literary notices in the Spectator and the Saturday may perhaps be justified in thinking himself as well able to talk about the new book as his friend who has brought that new book on the tapis, and who, not improbably, obtained his information from the same source.