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02/25/2003 Archived Entry: "Book Reviewers"

I'VE SUSPECTED THIS ALL ALONG: Steve and Orrin, the methods you have perfected for sustaining your unbelievable "reading" rate are finally exposed for all the public to see ;) The literary editor of London's Evening Standard has provided his fellow literary hacks with a how-to guide for book reviewers who have a deadline to fill and a paycheck to earn, but who just don't want to read their assigned books. The paragraphs that say it all:

My predecessor as literary editor in this paper, A.N. Wilson, told a remarkable story in a book of essays called Secrets of the Press. He had rung the historian Paul Johnson to ask him to review a big book - more than 800 pages - on the American Civil War. To give Johnson more time, Wilson asked his assistant to have it biked over that same day. The next morning, she admitted she had forgotten to send it and that it was still sitting on her desk.

At that moment, "the fax machine had begun to whirr into action, and 800 perfectly formed words on the American Civil War, with observant comments on the merits and faults of the book, had dropped into the intray. I saw no reason not to publish this review", says Wilson. "Like all really good journalists, Paul had somehow intuited the true nature of the thing under discussion."

Now, A.N. Wilson believes all journalism to be a form of imaginative literature rather than "an exact science", so this incident, too, may have been somewhat shaped by the crebadative impulse. But we must believe him, when in the same piece, he cheerfully announces: "I have lost count of the number of dull books I have hailed as masterpieces, rather than trouble myself to finish."

I'm going to print this out and file it away for future reference. (Via The American Scene)

Replies: 2 comments

Ha ha, I won't admit anything that might damage my credibility but I will say that I have read every book I have reviewed no matter how exceptionally dull it was. If anything that just makes me even more acerbic when I write the review.

That said, I plan on printing that article out myself :-)

Posted by Steve Martinovich @ 02/26/2003 09:02 AM EST

I resent the implication--I don't get paid.

Posted by oj @ 02/25/2003 09:28 PM EST