Where have all the book critics gone?

Patty here...

In case you haven’t heard, there's a storm brewing.



An alarming number of newspapers nationwide are cutting costs by eliminating book reviews from their pages. This does not bode well for the many writers trying to be heard above the din of the crowded book market.

Michael Connelly weighed in on the subject in this recent Los Angeles Times article:

I can't help but wonder, though, how long Harry would have lasted had he been born in today's newspaper environment. Across the country, papers are cutting back on the space, attention and care they devote to books. Recently, for instance, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced that the position of book editor would be eliminated in a cost-cutting move. Without a specific editor directing book coverage, the paper will rely more heavily on reviews from wire services.

But that's just the latest in an ongoing crisis. The Chicago Tribune announced last week that it was moving its books section from Sunday to the less-read Saturday paper — an edition that becomes almost obsolete by noon, when the early Sunday edition hits the stands. At the Raleigh News & Observer, the book editor's position was recently cut. At the Dallas Morning News, the book critic quit rather than face significant space reductions. Books coverage has also been cut at the Orlando Sentinel, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and other papers.

Even at the Los Angeles Times, the fine newspaper at which I am proud to have once worked as a reporter, the attention devoted to books is changing. Gone is the stand-alone Book Review. Two weeks ago, Book Review was merged with Sunday Opinion as part of a plan to save pages and save money.

A burgeoning number of Internet bloggers have picked up the slack left by ousted newspaper reviewers, but are they up to the job? Not according to Richard Schickel.

Schickel, who reviews for the Times and also for Time magazine, published a well-reasoned and masterfully written op-ed piece in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, called “Not everybody’s a critic,” in which he challenged the notion that Internet bloggers can or should fill the void left by the downsizing of professional reviewers.

Schickel defines criticism:

[Criticism]…is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author’s (or filmmaker’s or painter’s) entire body of work, among other qualities.

He cites Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Edmund Wilson, and George Orwell as examples of the best that literary criticism had to offer. “All three wrote for intelligent readers who emerged from their reviews grateful to know more than they did when they started to read, grateful for their encounter with a serious and, indeed, superior mind. We do not—maybe I ought to make that “should not”—read to confirm our own prejudices and stupidity."

He claims the reviewer’s job is to “initiate intelligent dialogue about the work in question, beginning a discussion that, in some cases, will persist down the years, even down the centuries.”



Here’s what he thinks criticism is not:

Personal opinion. Hack writing.

"Anyone who has written a book has had the experience. Your publisher kindly forwards the clippings, and you are appalled by the sheer uselessness of their spray-painted opinions."

"And we have to find in the work of reviewers something more than idle opinion-mongering. We need to see something other than flash, egotism and self-importance. We need to see their credentials. And they need to prove, not merely assert, their right to an opinion."

"I don’t think it’s impossible for bloggers to write intelligent reviews. I do think, however, that a simple “love” of reading…is an insufficient qualification for the job."

Here’s what I think:

Book review blogs have their place, but I agree with Schickel. It is the exceptional amateur who can equal the seasoned writing and well-rounded analysis of a professional critic, maybe because amateurs don’t have the time or incentive to dig deep enough to find the art of it all.

What do you think?

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