Posted 5:00 PM by Gene

Most books are not interesting. To write a book review just to write one is a waste of time. We have noted repeatedly that most book reviews are synopsizing and logrolling. Writing a thousand words does not make synopsizing and logrolling better. Newspapermen may vaguely sense this. Further there is no reason to dismiss bloggers for their brevity. Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker (who might well have been bloggers today, were they to stoop that low) could discern anything in one sentence. Further still anyone with the gall to suggest bloggers invented puny personal "resentments" does not know of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer. Perhaps what people who moan over the alleged destruction of book reviewing truly carp about is the increasing unimportance of literature, an unimportance brought on by a dearth of talent and subject. Who wants to read the umpteenth literary novel of an affair gone sour? Who wants to read another navel starer showing off an MFA? What people who complain about the death of book reviewing should complain about first is the books, and the ossified culture around them.

We might further suggest an analogy to the alleged destruction of classical-music reviewing. We were not happy when ultratrendy ADAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! fired Peter G. Davis, a move that reeks of what people dense to the language would call "ageism", but how often can today's second-class musical culture with fifth-rate personalities give new meaning to Wagner? And classical-music writing has a bigger problem than book reviewing because lately Beethoven hasn't written any sonatas, and when new operas come on such is the PR they make the public roll its eyes and hold its nose, waiting for the clanking reeking tuneless trains to pass out of sight and sound. Again, it will do no good to blame the messengers' bosses.

(Via ArtsJournal, natch)