Book reviews. They certainly don’t make them like they used to.
Today’s “Banning the Negative Book Review” in The New York Times, about BuzzFeed’s
decision not to run negative reviews, is a vivid reminder of how book reviews
have changed over a few decades. Today’s
self-published authors wait for new user reviews on Amazon with virtually the
same anticipation that we back-in-the-day authors waited for major newspaper
reviews.
In the eighties and nineties, every author I knew wanted two
reviews more than any other: the Sunday and daily New York Times. The Sunday
reviews could be long or ‘in brief,’ but since the book supplement was mailed
to subscribers days the paper hit the stands, we knew before most ordinary NYT
readers if the review was thumbs up or down.
The tougher review to nab was the daily. There were only 313 daily reviews a year
(none on Sundays).
If you took away those writers who were publishing that year
and guaranteed to get a review (the Norman Mailers, Philip Roths, Thomas
Pynchons, etc), there were at most 100 days left for midlist writers with books
of interest.
Considering there were up to 50,000 books published annually
by conventional publishers – self-publishing then was dubbed vanity publishing,
not nearly as widespread accepted as it is today – merely being selected for a NY Times daily was a coup. Once you knew you had it, then there were
days of nervous anticipation about which of the paper’s several reviewers had
selected your book, and more important whether if it would be a rave or a pan.
Trisha and I lived for many years in midtown Manhattan. Our 28th-floor apartment overlooked a corner
newsstand. The next day newspapers were delivered to the city’s newsstands just
before midnight. Trisha and I had a tiny
pair of binoculars, and we’d take turns from about 11:30 pm looking out for the
NYT truck or to spot a delivered stack of bundled papers. Once they were there, I’d head downstairs and
buy a copy, while Trisha stayed upstairs doing some mojo trying to make
the review a good one. With my stomach
twisted in nerves, I’d read the review while walking back the one block to our
apartment building (a torrential rainstorm the night I picked up Christopher
Lehmann-Haupt’s review of Hitler’s
Children meant by the time I made it home the paper was virtually
unreadable).
It is impossible to ever duplicate that combination of
anticipatory anxiety and follow-up thrill that accompanied each of those nights
when the ‘paper of record’ weighed in with a good review. But none of us had any illusions. We read the book review daily, and we all
cringed when finding a scorching critique on a colleague’s book. The pens of the Times’ critics could often be
sharp and devastating. Those were the
moments when writers wished they had not been selected for a daily review, but
by then it was in print and far too late.
Today’s news about the BuzzFeed decision not to run bad
reviews is just another indicator of where publishing has come. It’s the equivalent of every student on a
competitive team in school receiving a medal.
No winners, no losers. Not
surprising given that just a few years ago a French academic living in Israel sued a German law scholar and an NYU professor, for a scorching review of her
book. Adding to the feel-good aura is what
Forbes revealed earlier this year about Amazon, “that as many as 30% of user-generated reviews are phony.”
Undoubtedly, traditional newspaper reviews have less impact
than in days past. Maybe only my
colleagues and those who work in publishing or media pay close attention. And to many young digital readers, there is
little or no difference between a review by a professional critic or an Amazon
super reviewer.
Book reviews. They certainly don’t write them like they used to.