Literary Criticism: A (Very) Inexact Science
Bonnie Goldstein
Woman Up Editor
Posted:
01/13/10
My friend and colleague, WomanUp writer Sally Denton, has a new book -- "The Pink Lady" -- about former Broadway star-turned three-term U.S. congresswoman from California, Helen Gahagan Douglas, who took Washington, D.C., by a storm in the middle of the last century with her passionate support of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.
The history of a time when a woman's place was rarely in the House (Douglas' East Coast colleague and three-named counterpart was Clare Booth Luce) reminds us all what uppity females overcame to integrate the boys' club. With sharp image and telling anecdote, Sally's history brings to life an independent woman ahead of her time.
Last Sunday, her biography was reviewed in The New York Times Sunday Book Review magazine, the Holy Grail for authors, and the real topic of this post. Every week, thousands of anxious writers are devastated to find their newly published thrillers, potboilers, exposes, memoirs, biographies, histories, bodice-rippers, tell-alls, mysteries and political nonfictions do not rate a summary and evaluation in the paper of record's weekly book review section. Only a handful of writers have the honor of being reviewed by the magazine's editor in chief, Sam Tanenhaus. Most of the others are subject to a mysterious assignment process that matches book subject to qualified commentator.
For the single-most-important event affecting a book's commercial success or failure, the majority of those 20 or 30 new publications chosen for review each week are matched with outside critics. The matches are often quixotic. Since Tanenhaus took the job in 2004, to add edge and fissure, he has dipped into a large pool of conservative writers to review and/or be reviewed in the magazine. Perhaps coincidentally, books on conservative topics crush liberal books in sales and buzz. Best sellers in 2009 of a conservative slant outdistanced those on the liberal end of the spectrum 26 to 2. Admittedly, literature was previously a bit of a liberal bastion and the conservative voices were long overdue, but particularly on nonfiction political topics, I often notice reviews that are laced with predispositions. Needless to say, not all the pairings are happy ones. The author Mark Danner so objected to his former New Yorker colleague George Packer as reviewer for his book that Danner wrote a 1,400-word letter to the editor to the book review section last fall, which was published in full.
For the single-most-important event affecting a book's commercial success or failure, the majority of those 20 or 30 new publications chosen for review each week are matched with outside critics. The matches are often quixotic. Since Tanenhaus took the job in 2004, to add edge and fissure, he has dipped into a large pool of conservative writers to review and/or be reviewed in the magazine. Perhaps coincidentally, books on conservative topics crush liberal books in sales and buzz. Best sellers in 2009 of a conservative slant outdistanced those on the liberal end of the spectrum 26 to 2. Admittedly, literature was previously a bit of a liberal bastion and the conservative voices were long overdue, but particularly on nonfiction political topics, I often notice reviews that are laced with predispositions. Needless to say, not all the pairings are happy ones. The author Mark Danner so objected to his former New Yorker colleague George Packer as reviewer for his book that Danner wrote a 1,400-word letter to the editor to the book review section last fall, which was published in full.
Many of the members of the WUP chapter of the lady bloggers union are also authors ourselves (see "What's Right about Wrong Poems," "If They Only Listened to Us," "Shelf Discovery," "You've Come a Long Way, Maybe," "The Noise of Infinite Longing" or "The Fall of the Evangelical Nation," plus watch for these memoirs in the pipeline: "Bitch is the New Black" and "How to get Divorced by 30"), and lately we've been sharing anecdotes over e-mail about the strange alchemy between book and reviewer. As reviewers are themselves authors with future books to be praised, the natural curve of bias leans toward clubby or competitive. One WomanUp writer said she lost her innocence when a colleague pointed out her boss's book had been reviewed by "like his best friend," but another says when she has written outside reviews for the TBR, her editor "was very, very strict on personal connections, and asked me on every single review."
Thomas Mallon who reviewed Sally Denton's book last Sunday, describes himself as "libertarian Republican." His review was a tempered take, but I was troubled by his disdain for the subject herself. The activist congresswoman was so progressive by 1950 standards her opponent for Senate, Richard Nixon, defeated her with the label "Pink Lady." Despite the Democratic diva's work on behalf of migrant workers and efforts for affordable housing, public education and Social Security, the reviewer questioned whether the "Hollywood Liberal" was worthy of a new book on her life
. ("She has never really been entitled to the long sentimental shower of laurels that continues even now with this new biography," Mallon writes.)
Though Douglas' impact on legislation of the day was modest, the pioneer politician's egalitarian values and penchant for reinvention provide a model for young women with a passion for public service born decades later.
Though Douglas' impact on legislation of the day was modest, the pioneer politician's egalitarian values and penchant for reinvention provide a model for young women with a passion for public service born decades later.