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So the characterization in OP is out of date, to the extent that it ever had some truth.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.”
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So the characterization in OP is out of date, to the extent that it ever had some truth.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.”
As quoted in: https://www.cjr.org/cover_story/goodbye_to_all_that_1.php