Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

Michael Wolff has run a scintillating article about that Random House cause celebre much like Peter Bart's j'accuse on movie-ad-blurb copywriters. In so many words (which he does not mince) he calls the people in the book biz dummies and declaims that (well, let him speak)

[B]ooks suck. Most books are dopier than television or movies or even advertising (many books tend to be just collateral promotions or the lesser offspring of dopey television, movies, and advertising). Even if there are precious exceptions, the overwhelming number of big-money, industry-sustaining books are incontrovertibly dum-dum things. More cynical, more pandering than any other entertainment product. Calling them books may be a substantial part of the problem with the book business—it provides undeserved and unfair dignity (perhaps there should be a way to certify something as an actual book). Working at a magazine where every day random books come flying in by the bushel (along with the calls from sluggish book publicists), you get a sense of the magnitude of the wasteland. Books may be the true lowest-common-denominator medium.

No doubt Wolff will get much angry mail, and possibly a bit of retribution; but these clowns should first look at themselves in their mirror-shiny dust jackets.