Speaking of the NYT book reviews, I ran into this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...etirement-plan
It seems like the NYTBR has a new boss and in some circles this is seen as a sign of impending doom. With a sense of resignation, as if it had worn out its welcome long ago. Quite odd in tone. Not sure if he's mourning or chortling or just writing an obit for a faded celebrity.
Quote:
There is an untested assumption among some long time New York Times readers and among writers who measure their careers in the Book Review's pages that the NYTBR is quite a vital and even necessary part of the Times – that the identity of the New York Times is integrally related to higher culture and that there are few more important reflections of that high culture than the Times Book Review. But this, of course, is nonsense.
That day is gone. Only the awkwardness of admitting otherwise maintains the assumption of a necessary Book Review.
It quite simply has no ads. The entire newspaper is challenged by falling advertising, but the Book Review is really at the end of this road. Practically speaking, it has no revenue.
This is a long slide, reflecting not just a hard market but the manners of a bygone world.
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Quote:
In a way, it might be a good thing to have recruited a new editor without literary conceit whose success depends less on taste than it does on the Book Review's very survival. Maybe, she has a really smart and aggressive new approach, which she's sold to the Times' management.
On the other hand, the approach so far seems just to give less space to reviews. The bestseller lists, derived from overlapping and trivial new methods of categorization, now fill most of the back pages. Pamela Paul herself seems to be responsible for a particularly empty weekly Q&A interview feature with celebrities and other banal sorts about their love of books.
Book reviews, I am afraid, are a downer, an outdated form. Literary editors – hell, literary people in general – are mightily outdated, too.
And while the NYTBR has been at the very center of the book business in New York and has been the most influential voice in book culture for the better part of a century, it is surely hard to say quite what to do with this weighty history. Not to mention, how to squeeze a buck out of it. The New York Times has other things to worry about.
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Yet another example of old-school angst, I suppose.