Posted 7:37 PM by Gene

An exceptionally acclaimed author and inspirer of a potential Os-CAR® nominee is annoyed:

Do you read any online reviews?

I don't read the blogs much. I don't like the tone-the rather in-your-face road-rage quality of a lot of exchange on the Internet. I don't like the threads that come out of any given piece of journalism. It seems that when people know they can't be held accountable, when they don't have eye contact, it seems to bring out a rather nasty, truculent, aggressive edge that I think slightly doesn't belong in the world of book reviewing.

And here is why, for all the hand-wringing and gnashing of fillings, the status quo in book reviewing will stand. Authors do not want to read negative reviews. Understandable; but frequently negative reviews are the only ones that will speak honestly. One reason we don't get more negative reviews is that no one wants to be the fellow who panned The Great Gatsby; but Great Gatsbys are exceedingly unlikely in this age, for reasons too tedious to rehash, and so we get lots of raves of lots of books that already have little distinction among them, getting less distinction still from the sound-alike raves. And we certainly don't want to upset exceptionally acclaimed authors. What the literary biz needs is a good shaking up, and a good weeding-out of its logrollers, but despite our exceptionally acclaimed author's annoyance it probably won't come from literary blogs, most of which are too obscure to matter, and whose proprietors also seem to believe they should be polite; but given our culture's increasing lack of confidence for all its blowhardness I would not want to guess where that shaking up and weeding out would come from.

And our potential-Os-CAR®-nominee inspirer's favorite Web site is something called Edge, which looks like the kind of hermetically-sealed thing that can only further serve to keep literature down.

P. S.

About The Life Transcripts:

"I just read the Life book and it is fantastic. One of the better books I've read in a while. Super rich, high signal to noise, great subject."
— Kevin Kelly, Editor-At-Large, Wired

Is this Julian Hirsch writing?

P. P. S. I should note Paramount Pete has complained yet again about all those gloomy Os-CAR® nominees, and this masterwork hasn't done that stupendously well at the B.O., so it appears Art must stay in her waiting room a little while longer.

(First link via the sometimes hermetically sealed Arts & Letters Daily)