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.)
I 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.
Just because art always has a political component, doesn't mean reviews and discussions of it need to focus on viewing it through a political lens.
Yes sure, art is political, but art is political in a different way in which a discussion forum might be said to be political, and it's entirely reasonable to wish for a discussion forum with a less political bent.
I think there's a misunderstanding in this discussion. As an observer you can make all art political if you project politics onto it. All art isn't political in that it can be – and often is – created without politics in mind.
> That's a nonsensical definition. By that standard literally everything is political
The definition implies it, yes
> which means the word has no meaning.
I disagree, the "if everithing is X then nothing is X" applies only to thing that are in part defined as negative/contrapposition like being special, tall, a luxury, progressive, conservative, etc. it does not make sense when applied to things like being religious, having human rights, being moral.
"Everithing is political" means that nothing can be fully separated and insulated from the surrounding political atmosphere. I personally think it is not a constructive way to perceive the world, but it is perfectly self-consistent
Van Gogh painted it in an asylum (social safety net) run by Franciscans (repeal of anti-Church laws during the Third Republic) because he had self-admitted after cutting off his own ear (treatment of physical violence as a medical problem) because he owed money to Gaugin (private property). It includes an imaginary house and was painted from memory because he wasn't allowed to paint in his room (medical treatment in a total institution), but he was allowed to use a spare room in the half-full asylum which was normally for the wealthy (obvious). That said, he considered it a painting from nature, rather than an "abstraction", a form which was preferred by Gaugin in order to indicate harmony between man and nature (a fin de siècle concern which also directly lead to the rejections of liberal democracy and bourgeois society in the early 20th Century). On his own account, the subject matter of stars connotes a spiritual hope — and you can make what you will of the more specific religous and astronomical interpratations that came later.
In a narrow sense, there's no political art except electoral propaganda, in a broad sense anything made by humans is political.
So I don't find the game of definitions is not particularly interesting. It's not even that interesting whether the political content of art is intentional or self-concious on the part of the author or whether it's imposed by others. The process which I think is worth thinking about is the very second-order process we're engaging in now: who wants to make a claim about the politics (or lack thereof) of art, and why are they interested in doing that?
I have no idea, nor do I necessarily think that they exists. An hypothrtical person holding the opinion I described might try to point out some effect the artwork had on the world as a political effect, I for sure do not know enough about art and/or history to speculate.
In this view authorial intent has a second-class position to its tangible effect.
I actually do not like the emphasis on death of the author that much[0], I appreciate the relativism of saying that authorial intent is not the only allowed interpretation, yet it is still a very important one.
[0] Also I feel the need to reiterate that I was expressing the possible opinions of a hypothetical person I made up, not my own.
Do you read boring books because they're all about working in fields and mills? Do you enjoy adventure books, but avoid reading them because the content isn't weighty enough?
Personally I powered through some boring-but-virtuous books in my youth, but now I'm a middle-aged adult with less free time, I've realised reading is supposed to be fun.
So if a book review tells me a book is virtuous without telling me if it's fun, that book review isn't much use to me.
Everything involving a substantial agreement or disagreement between persons is politics, that's what it means. Claiming that something 'should not be political' is almost always an assertion that your position is unassailably correct.
The act of asking those questions is politics, you don't have to ask those questions.
The real answer to those questions is that it makes the story more interesting. You are searching for a political reason where there is none. The question "what makes a story interesting" is philosophy and writing and not politics.
umm... There you go injecting politics where it doesn't belong.
Although the first sentence "YA about young heroine rebelling" is itself about politics really, so my comment doesn't apply.
Authors write what they feel like writing and what readers feel like reading, not what some liberal arts professor wants to include in their "the politics of YA books" course. Let me assure you that neither the writer nor the reader are interested in your concerns.
Art is intrinsically political. If you think it's not political, that's because it's just taking a political position you either don't see, or one you agree with.
The only way to remove politics from art would be to remove the people.
Is this art? What is the context? I can't tell without knowing the context. Who drew it? How did they draw it? Why did they draw it? What inspired them? Without understanding these aspects, nothing is art, or everything is art, and it loses its meaning.
Yes, art is the projection of skill and beauty, but how we define skill and our perception of beauty also depend on context. You accepting the painting of the Mona Lisa as art tells something about you, while my grandfather rejecting it with the words "my 7-year-old granddaughter can draw better" tells something about him. This is inherently political. A modern art painting with color splashes is, in the most basic sense, not distinct from a 5-year-old playing with paint without context. With context, whether you accept it as art or not is political.
> Politics is the set of activities associated with making decisions in groups or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.
So even if you could argue that art itself is not political, you surely cannot argue that the perception of it isn't.
> you surely cannot argue that the perception of it isn't.
Your perception of it is, most people don't see art as political. Nobody would find a painting of a sea with a rock to be political, except really annoying people.
> To repeat what a previous commenter said, nothing is political as long as they fit your political view.
I don't share the politics of Van Gogh, yet I don't feel "The Rocks" is political.
So in general there are plenty of stuff that you wont find political even if you don't share the views, that is what people mean when they say an art piece isn't political. A person who says such an art piece is political is just trying to find politics in art where there isn't one.
Even if the original artist says it is political it isn't, because there is no politics in the art the politics was in his statement that it is political. Art stands on their own free from the opinions of their creators. You can of course embed political messages into art pieces making them political, but this isn't such a case. If you can't deduce what politics the person is trying to convey just from the art piece alone then it isn't political.
> I don't share Van Gogh's politics, yet I don't feel "The Rocks" is political.
Don't you see the contradiction?
I know people often complain that everything has become political. I understand because I do it too. The main problem in this discussion is the loss of nuance in the different usages and meanings of the word "political." In everyday usage, it refers to views being part of the policy-making process, especially when more pressing matters exist. What we really mean and criticize is divisive politics.
However, in the extended view of politics, which is a very common view, designating something as art involves politics. It's a political process. This doesn't degrade art or make it inherently divisive. It certainly doesn't make art a subset of politics.
Nonsense. Art is strongly related to culture, and culture is strongly related to politics. The fact that art these days is very much viewed in a political frame, in the US in this case, is because politics have taken a huge role in US culture. Like, it's all American people seem to be thinking about these days.
But no, art is not political in itself. Art, by some definition, is a thing whose meaning is created by who experiences it. Art might look political if the observer looks at it in a political point-of-view. But in reality, tinned faeces [1] are not a political statement nor a reflection on the human condition. They are literally just shit in a box.
I think this is too strong. If art has no inherent meaning, you can't say that it's not making a political statement, only that whether it's making a political statment or not is undefined.
Otherwise, saying that something is not making a political statement is actually a very strong political statement in itself (e.g. things which are "not political" can't be negotiated or changed).
"All art is political" is like "atheism is a religion". Obviously true if politics is everything to you. I'd call it 'true' in the same self-referential way as "dollars/bitcoin have value": it holds to the extent everyone believes in it. It's worth asking if the world where it holds is a better one.
All art is political, because art relates itself to the society it is made in whether the artist likes it or not. Is a Nazi painter that paints totally apolitical pictures of landscapes while the genocide is happening one village over apolitical? i'd argue that this would be deeply political art, even if it wasn't meant to be just that. Taking no stance, while the world around you is happening is a political stance in itself.
Being apolitical is also political – in a stark difference to various gods politics will also affect you and your life, if you don't believe in politics.
I did kind of say that to the extent the people around you make all of life political, you can't avoid that constructed social truth. But like the value of money it's a 'truth' conditioned on a particular equilibrium. There's another equilibrium where pushy haters of private life are a small minority.
By definition, all art should challenge the participant/consumer of it.
That challenge can be personal, or something else.
But all is not political. It only looks that way because in the current cultural environment The Politics Industrial Complex has over-developed (?) it's position in the hierarchy of the broader culture. It creases unhealthy biases etc to the point that We have forgotten "The government needs us, we don't need it."
Everything is not political. We as individuals still have influence. The PIC's lens isn't working. It's a false god. The sooner we change that, the better.
Which flower did you choose to paint? Why? Is it native, an import, a new arrival, or endangered?
Is there cultural context? The Victorian Brits encoded messages into flowers; some of those meanings are still current. (Give a friend a red rose, another friend a potted daisy. Do they react differently?) A red poppy is a symbol of one thing, specifically because of culture. Chrysanthemums mean different things in America and Japan.
And if the artist writes a statement: "This is just a painting of a pretty flower." that too is a political statement.
Please display your definition of "political" which makes sense in all our usual contexts but also makes at least some art unable to be viewed as political.
Books 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.
Ultimately 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.
Are 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.
The NYRB is that very boring family friend who has no idea how to talk to anyone who’s not a tenured professor and consequently spends most of his time in an armchair.
We must be reading a different NYRB. The NYRB is one of the few remaining consistently thoughtful and interesting magazines. Nobody has better political coverage now and their book reviews transcend the issues the author of this article laments.
Yeah, that was when I knew for sure that the author is trying to make a point and didn’t care about the facts. I’ve read NYRoB since the 1990s and you are right, they had and have a lot of really good writing and reviews.
The thing OP unforgivably misses is that today’s NYRoB is not the same as a decade ago. The editors have changed and it’s noticeably less “clubby” (less, as they used to say, “New York Review of each other’s books”). Also, worryingly thinner?
So the characterization in OP is out of date, to the extent that it ever had some truth.
Also, what’s the fucking problem with writing at the level of sophistication of a tenured professor?
*
Also, someone has to toss this quote in somewhere:
>> Thirty-six years earlier, disgust with the same ubiquitous, thin gruel [in NYTBR] had prompted Edmund Wilson to declare in the second issue of The New York Review of Books: “The disappearance of the Times Sunday book section at the time of the printers’ strike only made us realize it had never existed.”
Michiko Kakutani didn't work for the Book Review. She was the chief book critic of the arts section. The Book Review is a separate organization within the NYT, with an entirely separate editing staff. Sure sometimes critics like Kakutani and A.O. Scott would review things there, but it was always an assignment, not representative of the NYTBR. Generally, editors in the NYTBR strive to pick folks who are "interesting" to review the book rather than not, which leads to spicy reviews because they want to sell the Sunday section.
I can't take any article that opens up with an emotional story seriously. I actually don't like NYT, but this lede ruins the article for me. Facts should always come first, or at the very least a some concrete idea about the thesis or main points of the article. Instead I get an emotional appeal. Ironically this is exactly the kind of thing I would expect to find in an NYT feature story.
I find it effective when I come into the article predisposed against one side. When that happens, I don’t mind if the author pulls out all of the emotional stops to engage me because I was most likely going to skim it anyway.
The Economist recently did an analysis of bias on the NYT Best Seller list and (entirely unsurprisingly to anyone with the faintest whiff of objectivity) found it to have a clear political bias.
> there are still some basic principles of reviewing: reviews should in some way let readers know whether or not they should buy or borrow the book ... Most of all, a review should deliver an opinion.
I think this is usually interpreted as saying the reviewer should tell me whether a book is bad or good, but I don't want reviewers to do that. Ignore the bad books; let them sink into obscurity on their own.
My ideal book review outlet would only showcase books the reviewers personally thought were worthwhile, and the reviews would focus on what the reviewer themselves liked about the book, or (if not liked) at least thought was significant enough to present in their publication. Instead offer me what you think is best, make your case for it it with specifics, and entertain me with your own wit and insight if you can.
That's what I want, but I recognize it's probably not what most people look for.
This is what The Comics Journal does. Any occasional whining / coverage of uninteresting material is usually just about mainstream comics from the Big Two, where a definite golden age has long been defined, and the era vulgaris is a foregone conclusion. Any indy stuff is covered because it's worthwhile, and the review itself is just additional color.
Fun story. Someone who lived at my address in NYC worked for the NYTBR and we still get pre-release books from publishers several times a year. We tried to contact this person, NYT, no one cares. So, I open them, read the cover letter, and put them out on the side walk with a note, "Free".
I dont think I have ever seen numbers on any of these "books", they often don't have covers... I imagine some of them if reviewed poorly may never even make it to market.
I remember this quote from a 1930s book when the topic of book reviews come up, and I think it applies to NYT in particular.
"There are critics and reviewers, literary and artistic journals, which ought to be at work mitigating these evils and establishing contact between a writer or painter and the kind of audience he needs. But in practice they seldom seem to understand that this is, or should be, their function, and either they do nothing at all or they do more harm than good. The fact is becoming notorious; publishers are ceasing to be interested in the reviews their books get, and beginning to decide that they make no difference to the sales."
The quote is about connecting writers with an audience interested in that kind of work, and allowing writers to receive feedback which will improve the writer's future output, which is a relationship beneficial to both.
Without it, writers may be "driven into a choice between commercialism and barren eccentricity". I'm not sure the NYT book reviews help; they may do more damage than there would be without their interference.
The NYT is notable for having transitioned to very successful online subscriptions business model.
This has lead to a subtle but noticeable shift in tone and content to satisfy that subscriber base. One can hardly blame them.
The quality of their reporting still remains generally quite high, but you often have to read 20 paragraphs in before they get around to facts many of their subscribers might be put off by.
I don't read the NYT since I disagree with their politics, but honestly I much prefer news outlets pandering to an audience, with those people's subscription revenue allowing them to create decent quality journalism, rather than them churning out lowest common denominator slop for volume of clicks and ad revenue. Sure, it creates bubbles, but that's always been the case and it's much better than the alternative.
Good article, gives a enjoyably written dressing down of the NYT's culture of elitism.
> Give me an opinion, damn it! Now! Or I drop you!
I mean that's the core of it, right? You're looking for an opinionated review in a place where the writers are tasked with being objective, what you called "8th grade summary" style. I understand the desire and would prefer it myself, but a shift to opinionated reviews changes the game. The tastes of the reviewer are now front and center and whether or not you find the review valuable is dependent on how similar they are to your own. It's hard to build a long-lasting brand when the tone becomes intertwined with the individual.
> The dawn of the internet did not bring about a democratization of book reviews for the better—let us look again at Goodreads as an example of what can happen and then, quickly, look away. We still need critics to review publications that bring in intellectual and other histories while making judgments about books but without fetishizing books or authors.
In many ways I thoroughly enjoyed this section. It's truly a blessing to watch an author undermine their entire argument so completely all at once. In a way I suppose it's a compliment, Mr. Nair is so talented at arguing for a position that in a moment of distraction took a wrong turn into the contra and simply kept moving forward without skipping a beat. To build up such a strong foundation and then knock it down like a sandcastle is, if nothing else, entertaining. You're there on the eve of battle inspired to charge in and destroy the ivory tower and evils that precipitated it only to find out the plan is to build a new one, but paint it eggshell this time. And it's not as if eggshell isn't an improvement, ivory is after all stilted and antiquated but-- perhaps we could make the new thing not quite as tall?
I look into the NYT book review most Sundays, though I almost never read the fiction reviews. If the best seller lists are doctored to uphold some standard, I can't imagine what those standards are.
> Among the many ill effects: the Book Review tokenizes non-white writers in essentialist ways, reducing them to mere standard-bearers of their perceived cultures
There is a hilarious film right now about a black American writer being forced to do this by liberals. The terrible book he creates takes off and people think he is the caricature.
> There is a hilarious film right now about a black American writer being forced to do this by liberals. The terrible book he creates takes off and people think he is the caricature.
The author characterizes this as a takedown of NYTBR (which I couldn't care less about, frankly), but spends much of the writeup developing criticisms of NYT as a whole, then applying those criticisms specifically to NYTBR.
I can't speak for NYTBR specifically, but I think she's on point. I spent 6 months as a NYT subscriber a couple years ago, expecting high-quality journalism and brilliant op-eds, and what I got was largely insular, milquetoast "rich white liberal" lukewarm takes. Why would I pay for that when I can get it by having a conversation with just about anyone in my neighborhood?
Kind of strikes me as fighting over crumbs at this point. It is extremely rare to make money writing books, let alone a living. That’s just a basic consequence of people not reading books as much anymore. (People read more than before, but usually shorter-form content.) And the distribution of books people do read tends to be highly concentrated.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ve ever looked at NYT bestseller or any other listicle to find a book. I don’t tend to like the books that “book” people like. Usually I buy a book because someone has specifically recommended it to me, or it is mentioned around a topic I’m interested in.
To my knowledge, anything with an ISBN counts towards book sales. It's funny though how many things have an ISBN that you wouldn't call a book. Playing cards, empty notebooks, adult coloring books, etc all count towards book sales. That fad of adult coloring books from about 9 years ago boosted book sales quite a bit.
> Adult coloring books were the main driving force behind the rise of adult nonfiction 12% sales growth during the first half of 2016 compared to the first half of 2015.
The chart of book sales, covering just seven years, shows four increases and two declines, with revenue ending up below 2021 in the most recent period.
So they have not been “rising year over year.”
(The figures for 2027 are obviously projections and don’t count.)
> unspoken traditions about how to read and whom to read and why have taken hold and authors are compelled to write in ways that conform to gendered and racialized expectations or the apparently unrelenting public desire for more trauma memoirs.
> In fact, the book industry is increasingly skewed to include only those who can work for free in unpaid internships or for meager salaries supplemented by family or spousal wealth.
In fact, if you look at the photos and bios of agents in any literary agency, it's overwhelmingly younger women without obvious career paths, except the one they're on.
> its core readership is either the very wealthy or those who aspire to be so
These things are all true, but I don't think it's entirely fair to blame the NYT book review section for the trends. Its main function is to provide blurbs for the book's Amazon page. The shallowness of our cultural discourse created that section, not the other way around.
I generally agree with your critiques regarding the site and the readability, as someone with mild vision issues myself. Why not use your browser’s reading mode though? I usually do that these days instead of futzing around with web dev tools trying to make somebody’s idea of good design readable.
I've never used it (reader mode) before and I've just taken a peek at it ...
... nope. I'll just not bother. I'm old enough to remember <flash />, and other atrocities against my senses.
It's not rocket science making words legible in a browser for most people and allowing for a fair amount of astigmatism and other common issues.
I think what is really wrong is imposing ... anything. My eyesight has changed a fair bit through out my life. I've always been short sighted with some astigmatism in my left eye. That stayed largely stable from age 19 (glasses deployed) to around 45. Then my eyesight decided to degenerate quite quickly by also losing close sight too. All a bit of a faff but livable.
"Dark mode" is really horrible for me. I had no idea that you can have bright black or bright dark grey! I prefer pastel ("light mode") shades for comfort and dial down the brightness.
Just in an effort to help someone out: you should be able to customize Reader Mode so that the background is pastel. I use Safari's Reader Mode and have it customized to set the background to a comfortable sepia tone (almost like HN's background color), with dark, slightly larger text in a font that I like. And those settings are applied to all sites, they're not something you need to apply to each individual site you visit.
Note that the comment is flagged dead now which normally implies multiple readers flagged it. This means if one doesn't have show dead or isn't logged on it is invisible to other users.
This basically is exactly what happens to all such comments because they are nearly universally regarded as undesirable on forums. People come here to engage with actual people. Commenters here would rather hear your opinion rather than chatGPTs.
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.)