Book Reviews Debate Rages On

Have you been reading the critics' debate between negative book reviews and positive book reviews? A few weeks after this blog's interview series on The Art of the Book Review began, a fervent and fertile discussion of the ethics, the art, and the state of book reviews started raging through online journals and across the blogosphere. (And they say nothing happens in the publishing world in August.)

Because my blog is currently focusing on book reviews, I thought I'd offer an annotated timeline of the highlights:

July 16, 2012 on the blog, Jacob Silverman:
Jacob Silverman, "Some Notes Against Enthusiasm"
A pre-cursor to THE essay heard round the lit world. "Somehow criticism has become synonymous with offense; everything is personal—one’s affection for a book is interchangeable with one’s feelings about its author as a person. Critics gush in anticipation for books they haven’t yet read,...they exhaust themselves with outbursts of praise, because that’s how you boost your follower count and affirm your place in the back-slapping community that is the literary twitter-sphere....Some of these people have backgrounds in book-selling, publicity, or marketing, so their enthusiasms are understandable. But I’d rather have a culture in which people can establish distinct critical personas."
http://www.jacobsilverman.com/post/27339461334/some-notes-against-enthusiasm


August 4, 2012 in SLATE:
Jacob Silverman, "Against Enthusiasm"
This is THE editorial that sparked a month of debate. Silverman writes, "…if you spend time in the literary Twitter- or blogospheres, you'll be positively besieged by amiability, by a relentless enthusiasm that might have you believing that all new books are wonderful and that every writer is every other writer's biggest fan. It's not only shallow, it's untrue, and it's having a chilling effect on literary culture, creating an environment where writers are vaunted for their personal biographies or their online followings rather than for their work on the page."
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2012/08/writers_and_readers_on_twitter_and_tumblr_we_need_more_criticism_less_liking_.html

August 3 [sic], 2012 at Emma Straub's Life in Pictures:
Emma Straub, "In Celebration of Enthusiasm"
"I am not a critic. I am a fiction writer, and a bookseller. It is not my job to point out the flaws in other writers’ work. It is my job to help draw attention to writers whose work I adore."
http://emmastraub.tumblr.com/post/28643652265/in-celebration-of-enthusiasm

August 4, 2012 in The Washington Post:
Ron Charles, "Has Twitter Made Book Reviewers Too Nice?"
Charles warns about the slippery slope of criticism as publicity: "…[A]t many publications, only the most oblivious — or principled — freelance critics could fail to notice the relative popularity of their own positive reviews. When you really, really like a book, your review appears on the front of the Arts section and high on the Arts homepage, and a link to it gets tweeted around the world, and people 'like' it — in every sense of the word.... And a few weeks later, you see your name appearing in blurbs in [The New York Times], and a few months after that, there’s your name on the back of the new paperback edition….
     "But try telling the truth. . . . You cannot fathom the silence that greets an unenthusiastic review of a mid-list literary novel."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-post/post/has-twitter-made-book-reviewers-too-nice/2012/08/04/641a2610-de34-11e1-8e43-4a3c4375504a_blog.html

Ron Charles wrote an earlier post, "Arthur Krystal: The Excuses of a Mean Book Critic," on March 23, 2012 at the same WaPo blog. He writes, "As a reader of many, many reviews, I have to admit I’m more alarmed by the number of dull ones than the number of unkind ones."
And, “I can’t quite accept [Arthur] Krystal’s complaint about negative book reviews, but I’m all in favor of his concluding advice to writers: ‘Make noise. Call attention to the offending review. In fact, write that letter to the editor that everyone enjoins you not to write and in a few deft strokes outline the reviewer’s bias and how he or she misread, obfuscated, and distorted your work.’" 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-post/post/arthur-krystal-the-excuses-of-a-mean-book-critic/2012/03/22/gIQAUSdAWS_blog.html

August 6, 2012 in SALON:
Roxanne Gay, "Twitter Isn't Killing Books"
Gay writes an astute rebuttal to Silverman, with too many strong points for me to digest in a short space. She writes, "If literary culture is a school, serious criticism can be found in the classroom. Social networks are the cafeteria — what you find there will be loud and gossipy, amusing but not very satisfying." 
     She adds, "I’d also suggest, and I don’t want to belabor this point, that only a white man would believe that the online literary culture — or anything on the Internet — suffers from too much niceness. If you’re a woman, person of color, or member of the LGBT community, the online literary culture is, more often than not, far less hospitable and criticism is directed to the person rather than the person’s ideas."
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/06/the_internet_is_too_nice/

August 15, 2012 in The New York Times:
Dwight Gardner, "A Critic's Case for Critics Who Are Actually Critical"
"[Karl] Marx understood that criticism doesn’t mean delivering petty, ill-tempered Simon Cowell-like put-downs. It doesn’t necessarily mean heaping scorn. It means making fine distinctions. It means talking about ideas, aesthetics and morality as if these things matter (and they do). It’s at base an act of love. Our critical faculties are what make us human."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/magazine/a-critic-makes-the-case-for-critics.html

August 15, 2012 in SALON:
Laura Miller, "The Case for Positive Book Reviews"
"Today, the average work of literary fiction appears and vanishes from the scene largely unnoticed and unremarked. Even the novelists you may think of as 'hyped' are in fact relatively obscure....The idea that more negative reviews of such books...will somehow benefit readers in general and 'make for a vibrant, useful literary culture' strikes me as misguided."
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/17/the_case_for_positive_book_reviews/

August 21, 2012 in HTML Giant:
Johannes Lichtman, "William Giraldi's Review of Alix Ohlin: A Failure in Four Parts"
"An Honest Review," writes Lichtman, "basically aims to tell the reader three or four things:
1.) What the book is about, 2.) What the author is trying to do, 3.) How well the author succeeds in doing what s/he is trying to do, and 4.) What the book’s place in the larger conversation of literature is (part 4 is often omitted in shorter reviews)."
http://htmlgiant.com/feature/william-giraldis-review-of-alix-ohlin-a-failure-in-four-parts/

August 22, 2012 in The New Yorker:
Richard Brody, "How To Be a Critic"
"Enthusiasm should be more or less the only thing that gets a critic out of bed in the morning, except in the case of ghouls who are aroused by the taste of blood....Certainly, in the online discussions about movies, invective, endorsement, (often superbly trenchant) analysis, and personal discussion all blend together into a remarkably vigorous and enlightening virtual conversation. Are things really that different in the world of books?"
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/08/how-to-be-a-critic.html

August 25, 2012 in The New York Times:
David Streitfeld, "The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy"
This was an article, rather than an essay, which reported on a man who runs a service for authors to buy positive book reviews--and makes $28,000 a month.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers-for-hire-meet-a-demand-for-online-raves.html


August 28, 2012 in The New Yorker:
Daniel Mendelsohn, "A Critic's Manifesto"
"I thought of these [critics] above all as teachers, and like all good teachers they taught by example; the example that they set, week after week, was to recreate on the page the drama of how they had arrived at their judgments....More largely, and ultimately more importantly, the glimpses these writers gave you of their tastes and passions revealed what art and culture are supposed to do for a person."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/08/a-critics-manifesto.html

August 28, 2012 in The New Inquiry:
Subashini Navaratnam, "Nice Book Reviews"
"Let’s acknowledge that this discussion about book reviewing/criticism that’s taking place on the world wide web is largely among North American reviewers and critics. (Stuff First World People Like: Talking to Each Other & Assuming It Speaks to a Global Audience.)... The discussion around enthusiasm or positive reviews, whether for or against, seems to assume that all this takes place, in the words of Michelle Dean, 'on a level playing field.' "
http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/nice-book-reviews/

August 30, 2012 in The New York Times
Margalit Fox, "Shulamith Firestone, Feminist Writer, Dies at 67"
In an obituary for this celebrated then reclusive writer/artist, Fox wrote, "The crush of attention, positive and negative, that [Firestone's] book engendered soon proved unbearable, her sister said. In the years that followed, Ms. Firestone retreated into a quiet, largely solitary life of painting and writing, though she published little."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/nyregion/shulamith-firestone-feminist-writer-dies-at-67.html


August 31, 2012 at Frances Farmer is My Sister:
Kate Zambreno, "One Can Be Dumb and Sad at Exactly the Same Time"
Author Zambreno publicly rebutted (on her blog) a negative review (in a high-profile journal) of her forthcoming non-fiction book, HEROINES. She writes, "There has become such a taboo in our literary culture about writing or venting when we receive a bad review. But the thing is, and I've spent some time thinking about whether I should write about it, this wasn't just a bad review, it was a dangerous, mean-spirited, intellectually dishonest review, and the irony is, it was a review that was not aware of itself as committing the same sort of critical crimes against a woman writer, the same sort of shaming and silencing and disciplining, that is itself the subject of the book." 
http://francesfarmerismysister.blogspot.com/2012/08/one-can-be-dumb-and-sad-at-exactly-same.html


September 4, 2012 in The Paris Review:
Caleb Crain, “How Is the Critic Free?”
"Is it possible to shift the question [of rudeness in book reviews] toward ethics? What if we ask: How free should a critic be? An idealist might wish to answer that the critic should be completely free in the exercise of his essential function, but what is the critic’s essential function?"
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/09/04/how-is-the-critic-free/

September 11, 2012 at The Millions:
Darryl Campbell, “Is This Book Bad, or Is It Just Me? The Anatomy of Book Reviews”
Recapping some of the above debate, Campbell writes, “I enjoyed all of these essays, but the one thing that struck me was that they were all essentially negative, in the sense that they set out to describe how things were going wrong or why things ought not to be the way that they are. What they didn’t do a very good job of was describing what criticism or book reviewing is, or what it should be.” Campbell proceeds to dissect what a book review is made of.
http://www.themillions.com/2012/09/is-this-book-bad-or-is-it-just-me-the-anatomy-of-book-reviews.html

*****

Did I miss any interesting essays in this thread? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

The Art of the Book Review: Djelloul Marbrook

Today's book reviews discussion features New York writer Djelloul Marbrook, a poet and prose author who can also claim a long past in journalism (The Providence Journal, The Baltimore Sun, and The Washington Star, among others). I was first introduced to Djelloul when Atticus Books published his wonderful nonfiction story, "Sing to Me of Gangsters." Since then I've been impressed also with his running media critique on Facebook. Relentlessly and in real time, he shows how the stories we're fed are skewed by omission or distortion. Having him in my news feed has been an education even to someone who thinks she's hip to all that.

When the New York Times story about book reviews for sale came out recently ("The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy," August 25, 2012), Djelloul's comments led me to contact him for this interview series, The Art of the Book Review. He said in response to the article: "David Streitfeld [author of the Times story] knows perfectly well that money has always bought book reviews. What has changed is that the web has broadened the field and enabled us to challenge the gatekeepers, like himself. I don't challenge his essential premises, but what the story lacks is an admission that in one way or another, money has always called the shots. The Times, for example, is much more inclined to review a Big Six book than a small press book. The Times would say that a Big Six book has been vetted by a well-established gatekeeping process and therefore is more deserving of attention. But The Times knows damned well that if the small presses spent as much advertising money promoting and marketing books as the Big Six spends, The Times would not be able to ignore them. Money talks. And unless this kind of essay at least makes a passing reference to this truth it proves itself disingenuous, rather like the critic who decades ago avowed that all the books that deserve to be published are eventually published. The story would have served us all better if it had explored the ramifications of the web's challenge to the usual cultural gatekeepers, but gatekeepers never like to talk about the nature of their power. I argued for years as a newspaper editor that the best-seller lists belonged on business pages and not book review sections. It was always a humorous argument, because I knew and the publishers knew that the list is a business gauge, not a measure of merit. I suppose it doesn't much matter anymore, because there are fewer and fewer book review sections, and that is one of the writer's points. But there was and is a measure of dishonesty in presenting it as a measure of merit. The press has many arguments for copping out of this conclusion, but I think none of them hold much water."

Karen: Tell us a bit about your involvement in print newspapers. How closely involved in book/review sections were you and in what role?

Djelloul: I was Sunday editor of the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel from 1965 to 1969, which included assigning book reviews, editing them, and laying out the book review page. That is the only newspaper where I handled book reviews. And since starting my blog some years ago I've reviewed a number of books, mostly poetry. They're at www.djelloulmarbrook.com under BOOK REVIEWS BY MARBROOK. I just added an appreciation of J.P. Dancing Bear's Family of Marsupial Centaurs.

Karen: Newspapers continue to downsize their book review sections. What do you consider is lost when this happens? What will you/do you not miss?

Djelloul: To address both questions, it's a tragedy of shrinking daily newspaper ad revenue and consequent cutbacks of news space and news staff. Newspaper book reviews continue to shrink and drop by the wayside. Responsible newspapers should review local authors at the very least, but local coverage of everything is getting more and more spotty. Newspapers could well do book reviewing online, but little of it is taking place as a result of falling ad revenue. I hope online groups like Salon and Slate, New York Review of Books and Rain Taxi continue to proliferate and take up the slack. But it isn't just shrinkage and the migration of media into cyberspace, there is also a heightened anti-intellectualism at work. We should not look back on the days of healthy book review sections as halcyon. They weren't. They involved a considerable degree of cynicism. They never reflected anything like the full spectrum of our intellectual and cultural life. They always reflected and were governed in their editorial decisions by the amount of advertising revenues made available to them by the major publishers. For that reason they marginalized the vital small press community, paying only occasional lip service. That is still true of what is left of the review community. I argued, albeit humorously, with my publisher in Winston-Salem that the best-seller lists rightly belonged in business sections, because they gauge the commercial life of a book and a publisher's hope for it and not a book's literary merit. Yet, deceitfully I think, review sections continue to present the list as a gauge of merit. I regard this as an ethical breach of faith, but I'm not naive enough after a career spent in the newspaper industry to think that ethics and ideals are paramount in the Fourth Estate. (Nor, for that matter, am I naive enough to think we still have much of a Fourth Estate.) So I think we shouldn't dwell on the loss of what was always imperfect but should rather inquire into how we might address these imperfections in the more hospitable arena of cyberspace.

I write about contemporary poetry that I like to help redress not only the general marginalization of poetry but also the hyper-commercialization of our attitude towards reviewing it. I'm not alone in this project. I tell poetry audiences that poetry says more about the real news in our society than what we call the news and what I call the Theater of News. This is most dramatically true of rappers and hip-hoppers, but it's also broadly true of that body of contemporary poetry, which is not about shuffling of anecdotal material into the semblance of poetry. The poets and artists and musicians are telling it like it is. That can't be said of the Fourth Estate, which tells it like the politicians, oligarchs and pundits say it is.

Karen: In some recent comments on Facebook, you address a sort of opaque hierarchy that you see in the publishing world, which is being carried over (in many cases) as we migrate from print to digital media. You say, “What bothers me most is the hypocrisy of repeatedly glossing over a cultural problem that we should be using our technology to redress. This is an exciting time, and instead of fighting a rearguard action to rationalize a dying model we should be exploring our new opportunities.” Can you tell us what excites you (especially in relation to publishing/the small press) about the digital age?

Djelloul: Instead of defending the traditional models, which often leave many books to languish and be remaindered in three months, the big six publishers should be turning their best minds to promoting all their books more cleverly and making them widely available in digital form to students at discount prices. Speaking of students, one of the best applications for e-books is textbooks, which cost entirely too much. Textbook publishers are ripping off students who are already being exploited by exorbitant tuition and student loans. Other exciting applications include shop manuals, computer hardware and software documentation, language instruction, art history instruction--the opportunities are limited only by imagination.

Ten years ago the most authoritative-sounding pundits were saying the e-book is passing fad and won't catch on. Today they sound like a former head of IBM who famously asked who would ever want a personal computer. They also sound to me like like a well known critic who once averred that all the books that deserve to be published are eventually published. That disingenuous defense of the dead-tree industry's way of doing things can't bear the scrutiny to which it has now been exposed in cyberspace. One problem is that people like this critic have gotten their piece of the pie from the old model, the old industry and its critical establishment, so they're naturally inclined to defend it. That's how they became gate-keepers, so they're defending their turf. I'm not, by the way, implying that the dead-tree industry is finished. I just like the implications of the term. I think we'll go on printing books, but we'll do it differently and what we print will change.

Karen: Can you tell us what new opportunities you would like to see in terms of online book reviews?

Djelloul: I'd like to see more book-reviewing bloggers offering their reviews to online publications and more online publications open to over-the-transom reviews. I wish I could propose business models. I'm sure they'll evolve. The cost of doing online business is operatically lower than the cost of the print industry. There is very little real estate involved, for one thing. And the cost of cyber-technology doesn't begin to compare to the astronomical costs of huge printing presses and their attendant labor. But a rear-guard action is being waged by the existing critical establishment, and some of it is justified. Not all bloggers, like myself, write in a manner and with sufficient intellectual cogency to warrant being published in The Paris Review or New York Review of Books, for example. But some of us do, and it's difficult to earn mass attention when the impression pervades our cultural thinking that only the only the old-line reviews are trustworthy guarantors of qualitative essay and review. This will change. It is changing; Rattle and Rain Taxi, to name only two online reviews, have considerable and well earned reputations. But in the meantime the new cyber writers are suffering a pooh-factor at the hands of the old guard, even though the old guard is itself migrating into cyberspace. In cyberspace the old guard must depend on the reputations their publishers enjoyed in print. That is as it should be, but they're now confronting a new generation of upstarts who understand cyberspace better than they do.

Karen: As an author, what is your own philosophy about reading reviews of your work?

Djelloul: I read all reviews of my work—a division of Marines couldn't stop me. Anyone who has taken the time to read my book deserves my attention. But I have a thin skin. Fortunately for me I have earned the attention of some reviewers—I'm thinking of Susanna Roxman in particular—who have opened my eyes to a great deal in my own work. I myself do not write negative reviews. I'm too old to bother with them. I've seen too much exhibitionism in negative reviews to have much tolerance for them. I write about poets I admire. I try to point out aspects of their work that might be overlooked, particularly in short reviews. I'm a celebrant. I couldn't write a Randall Jarrell-style review if I tried, not because I haven't the scholarship, but because I haven't the stomach for it. I don't like talking about what I don't like. But I' not trying to make a living from my opinions. And I have no desire to assert myself in a world I'm soon to leave.

Karen: Do we all need to develop “a thick skin” and then move on?

Djelloul: A thick skin? A reviewer who has obviously read only a few pages and then makes some snippy comments showing no feeling for language--I still remember that reviewer, and not fondly. But she showed her lack of professionalism. And I moved on, as we all must.

Karen: Is reading reviews of our own books an activity that is necessary, irrelevant, dangerous, or potentially helpful to a writer?

Djelloul: Reading our reviews is necessary and potentially helpful. It's always interesting and often surprising and gratifying to me to see what a fresh eye has made of my work. As a reviewer and editor, I have no use for negative reviews. People want to see recommendations of what to read. I'd be happy to lend my wife to cheer up any writer who is despondent about a bad review. She says if they don't get you, to hell with them, they're not worth any of your energy.

Karen: Where do you think reviews live in the psychology of an author and where should they live?

Djelloul: I can only speak for myself as to where reviews live in the psychology of a writer. I don't dwell much on reviews because I'm always moving on to write new things, which I recommend to everyone.

I do think some writers probably shouldn't read reviews of their own work if it knocks the wind out of them. I'd rather see them write their next poem or story. I admire such writers. I remember reading Nabokov's letters and laughing at his contempt for both critics and editors. But I'm not Nabokov. I reserve my contempt solely for meanness, of which there's plenty.

*****

 I want to thank Djelloul for participating in the series. Don't miss previous interviews about book reviews/reviewing with:

*Lynn Alexander (August 20, 2012)
*Barrett Warner (July 25, 2012)
*Spencer Dew (July 18, 2012)

Art of the Book Review: Lynn Alexander

Full of Crow illustration by Kristin Fouquet

This is the third in a new interview series, The Art of the Book Review, about writing book reviews in today's literature world. I'm taking on reviewers of the small press, many of whom are also writers in the small press. Previous interviews have been with fiction author Spencer Dew and poet Barrett Warner.

Today I'm excited to introduce Lynn Alexander, one of the hardest working women in the small press. A writer and a poet, she also co-edits Blink Ink, writes and edits at Red Fez, is involved with the Outsider Writers Collective, and is the producer and editor-in-chief of Full of Crow, a multi-faceted literary engine. Full of Crow produces quarterly reviews of fiction and poetry; publishes chapbooks, ebooks, and zines; hosts a blog, poetry podcasts, interviews, and online book reviews; distributes micro-press books and journals; and generates various other literary projects including periodic readings around the US.

I wanted to include Lynn in this series in part because her review style is unique: It's often descriptive of what the work is doing and how it is structured, while it shies away from labeling or validating a book as "good vs bad," "a great read," "compelling," etc.

Karen: How do Crow Reviews fit in with the Full of Crow mission?

Lynn: Full Of Crow is over three years old now, and like the people involved, the direction has evolved and changed over time. The reviews section was actually a suggestion that I was resistant to and explaining why will get into some areas of the other questions.

The mission at Crow has always been to create a space for words, because of our sense that these spaces matter. I believe in and support the independent press; I also like the idea of openness and access to all without predetermined ideas about who has legitimacy as a writer and who does not. In the end, it is about the work, which must speak for itself. The idea of a reviews section came from a desire to discuss aspects of work in the independent press, but in particular--work that we enjoyed and did not see represented in well-known publications. As we all know, breaking into any circle is difficult and Crow Reviews was meant to be a place for the appreciation and exploration of what we were reading, whether known or obscure.

That said, I have mixed feelings about the idea of a “review” in the commonly held sense of the word. I acknowledge that I don’t have formal expertise and try to approach reviews from the perspective of a reader, reflective of my experience with the work. On one hand, I think that all people are “qualified” to read and develop thoughts about the work they read and intuitive perception is very valuable. On the other hand, reviews are often seen as a person’s assessment of merit and validity, a process of making a decision and subsequent case for or against work and the value brought to the table.

 So I feel that all are qualified and capable to review in some sense and many do, but ironically--I feel that it is a presumptuous undertaking to decide what has merit and what does not. In other words, we are all entitled to our opinions as readers, but I am less inclined to say that our opinions should be asserted in the sense of giving work a thumbs-up or -down, versus an impression. Review, criticism, and literary analysis involve different agendas and I was reluctant to use the term “reviews.” I don’t think it accurately reflects what I hope to accomplish, particularly now. But there are few outlets for “exploratory essays.” Looking back, maybe I would have stuck to my guns and tried to shape the space accordingly.

If there aren’t many outlets for independent or small press “reviews” there are even fewer for the directions that I like to go in.

My preference is to discuss work, write about work, analyze and dissect elements of the work--but I stop short of saying THIS IS VALID.

I have answered to some criticism about this, told that a review is supposed to rate the merit, and whether or not others should buy [the book]. That is a “review.” And I get that. But I can’t seem to see myself in that self-appointed position. Independent Press often involves the interactions of peers, and the review relationship goes against what I hope to see as the ongoing emphasis of Full Of Crow which is an approach of openness and humility and acknowledging that people have different subjective opinions. You might hate what I love, but let’s talk about what speaks to us and why, let’s talk about the work and what we find there. If doing that encourages people to read the work or have a different understanding of the writer’s execution, that is enough for me.

But in the end, I hope that people read what we have to say and then pursue their own experience with the work, whether positive or negative.

If I had to summarize, I would say it comes down to the difference between analysis and judgment. I am more comfortable with analysis and even criticism, judgment is a different beast. Criticism involves study and subsequent evaluation, judgment is the subjective act of telling the world that something sucks because you say so. I want less of that, and more reflection.

Karen. How do you think reviews complement or complicate the community aspect of the small press?

Lynn: “Community” is wonderful and necessary, but we have to be practical about the dynamics of the writer in context of a community. Some are able to support the work of others and embrace the value and need for community while others cannot. Some will look to what the community can do for them, and think little about what they can give. Motive, ego need, and agenda vary widely. Reviews can therefore be a way to encourage interest and thought about the work of others, or they can be currency. Reviews can be thoughtful, reflective experiences or they can be platitudes. Certainly, negative reviews can cause conflict in a community just as positive comments can demonstrate loyalty. All of these complicate community.

My thought is that what complements community is an effort to understand what others are doing, to read the work carefully, and offer up something that suggests sincere interest and engagement in the process and outcome. Even when we get it wrong, I think we need to also advocate for the work of independent writers and publishers by articulating WHY we find the work to be compelling. I’m amazed by what I read, and I think in our “reviews,” however approached, we need to address the criticism that independent/small press is synonymous with failure, or lack of ambition, or lack of quality, or lack of purposeful art--a default region where “anybody” can thrive without effort. If nothing else, I want to show that as a reader, I see the writer's effort and time.

I think that [approach] complements community more than anything else accomplished by a “review.” It gives proper credit to the talent around us.

Karen: Describe your method of reviewing and how you perceive this to be useful.

Lynn: In a sense, many of us “review” every day when trying to decide on content for a publication. I read hundreds of stories and poems each month between the submissions at Full Of Crow and Red Fez, and part of the editorial process at Red Fez involves providing feedback on submissions. But this involves a different mindset, as we are selecting from a pool of submissions for a limited space and we have to rationalize the decisions somehow. Many of us acknowledge that this is difficult on matters of taste and style.

When writing a review or essay on a book or collection, I often consider the pieces in aggregate and the intended recipient of my review is not necessarily the author, but other readers like myself. I am not filtering potential content, I am coming from the point of view of a reader and try to approach it accordingly. The process is necessarily intense for both cases but with a different objective.

To take an example, I recently wrote about John Swain’s chapbook “White Vases” and I read it cover to cover at least five times. I never write anything after the initial first read, even though that is truly where my emotional response takes shape. I don’t want to focus on my emotional response, so I put it away, and take it out later. I try to identify what I see as common themes and how the structure conveys them--sticking with the text. I try to point to examples and I am not above getting out a dictionary and looking a few things up. I try to answer the primary question- what I think the writer was trying to accomplish, and how they set about doing so.

I’m not sure if this process is useful, no doubt it sounds tedious, but I think my goal is to move toward more useful reviews that move beyond “this is AWESOME.” If I think a writer brings “the goods” I don’t think you should take my word for it. I think it should be evident by the examples cited, let the text speak for itself.

I don’t claim to be a good “reviewer.” I know that I have to keep working at it, but I think the best way to do that is to keep making the effort to understand why certain pieces resonate.

Karen: Where do you read reviews? What do you hope to find in a review? Do you hope for an engaging essay, or are you seeking a specific type of info or opinion on the book in question?

Lynn: I like to read reviews in independent press publications like Big Bridge and Red Fez, and in some print publications like Rain Taxi. What I hope to find is definitely an engaging essay that demonstrates some level of familiarity with the work and genre, that sense that the reviewer is open to what the writer is trying to do, whether you are partial to the structure or not .

For example, you can’t impose your expectations of traditional writing on an experimental artist, and proceed to rip the work apart as “nonsense”--that seems like a bad fit. The author's intentions might not match your expectations, and there might be reasons for particular choices that are dismissed when you take a narrow view of what they hoped to achieve.

In the end, like I said, we all have the right to our subjective experience. If something reads as nonsense to you, own that. But don’t hold it up against a rubric of elements that don’t apply. 

Ten Reasons Why We Should Help St. Mark’s Bookshop Survive

Image from Project Neon

May 15, 2014 update: St Mark's Bookshop has signed a new lease on East 3rd Street, is contemplating non-profit status, and is less than $8,000 away from their moving money goal on Indiegogo: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/st-mark-s-bookshop-on-the-move

Original post, August 2012:

You may or may not have heard that indie St. Mark's Bookshop in New York is trying to raise funds to move to a cheaper space in their longtime neighborhood, the East Village. Currently, their landlord, Cooper Union, has given them a temporary (and slight) discount in their rent, but when it goes back up to the "normal" astronomical $20,000/month at the end of the year, the store fears they will be forced to close. Their campaign at Lucky Ant has been going strong but still needs your help with less than a week left to reach their all-or-nothing goal of $23,000. Specifically, they need to raise $7,000 in four days. Please consider donating.

Here's why I think it matters:

1. St. Mark's is a terrific bookstore with top-notch book buyers.

It’s hard for me to describe in a short space how much I admire this bookstore and its place in American letters, so I’m writing a whole book about it. I had the pleasure of working at St Mark’s Bookshop from 1997 to 2005, and I'm currently writing a memoir about my years there. You can find eleven installments of this book at Undie Press including my observations on which types of people shopped there (from book critics to New York poets to indie rock stars to out-of-town intellectuals to architects to DJs to academics to performance artists to filmmakers to expats to internationals) for what books (design, poetry, photography, cutting-edge fiction, cultural criticism, art porn, zines, queer theory, the latest lit or lifestyle magazines); which celebrities browsed there (like Susan Sontag, Thurston Moore, Richard Howard, DJ Spooky, Diamanda Galas, Harmony Korine, Jim Jarmusch); and what books meant to the people who worked at the shop. My opening chapter gives an overview of why I think St Mark's Bookshop deserves a permanent place in literary history.

2. St. Mark's Bookshop is not just a place that sells (and curates) culture and history. St. Mark's Bookshop IS living history.

As a bookstore, St. Mark's holds an institutional memory of major moments in alternative publishing history. The owners (and some longtime employees) both worked at 8th Street Books, which was the New York bookstore the Beats frequented and the New York bookstore that embraced the "paperback revolution." Both owners worked also at East Side Books, an East Village bookstore which was known as a place to find underground comics, mimeographed novels, and local political pamphlets—at a time when these were a major currency of the cultural revolutions and the avant garde. St. Mark's opened in the late '70s, making a place for artistic expressions to live and breathe alongside new areas of inquiry we take for granted today, such as sections with labels like "Vietnam Studies" or "Lesbian and Gay Studies."

Located in the center of the vibrant and bohemian East Village, the bookstore has long been a place that sells today's forefront thinkers (or poets, or photographers) to tomorrow's celebrated writers (artists, musicians, academics, etc). Writer/editor and former employee Ron Kolm has said, "I took a pay cut to work at St Mark’s Bookshop [in 1985] because I knew that the art scene in the East Village was in full bloom, and I knew that the fiction scene was about to explode, and I wanted to be a part of it." In my time, St. Mark's was known as the store in New York with the widest selection of zines, poetry, and literary magazines, not to mention all the anti-war underground newspapers that showed up circa early 2002. Now it’s the Occupied Wall Street Journal they're distributing, and their newish reading series has hosted such literary lights as Sarah Schulman, Kate Zambreno, Michael Moore, Eileen Myles, Laurie Weeks, Tao Lin, Marie Calloway, Giancarlo DiTrapano, Samuel R. Delaney, and Gary Indiana. Ever since its opening in 1977, the authors, customers, and clerks of St. Mark's have been involved in an easy and fertile conversation hosted by the bookstore. In every era of its existence, St. Mark's has had a keen eye for offering (and a knack for attracting) the cutting edge literature, art, and thought of its time—and the privilege of introducing such books to many of those very creators. To my eye, this store is a living legacy worth helping to survive another 35 years.

3. Give the store a level playing field: help St Mark's Bookshop move to a smaller space with reasonable rent.

People read about failing bookstores and they think the era of the bookstore is simply over. Progress has happened, the ebook has won. Not true. Many bookstores all over the country and all over the world are still thriving. The brick and mortar bookstore isn’t over—but the ones that survive this change in publishing (and this devastating recession) have to get smart, slim down. This campaign IS St. Mark’s getting smart. The fundraising campaign represents a series of business decisions—to use 21st century tools, starting with Lucky Ant (the Kickstarter-like platform hosting the fundraiser), proceeding to a re-vamp of their online presence (bookstores that survive often claim about 25% of sales online), and slimming down by seeking a smaller store with more reasonable rent. Soon their rent will go back up from (current "rent-reduction") $17,500 a month to $20K. Think YOU can move that much merchandise and still support several employees? When St. Mark's opened in 1977, their rent was $375 a month. Today's rent, as they say, is too damned high.

4. A level playing field means the bookstore can become self-sustaining doing what they do best: selling books.

You've heard about how well Strand and Book Court are doing? They own their own buildings. This is relatively rare among bookstores. When the great bookstores of 4th Avenue [once known as Book Row] started to close or move en masse in the 1960s, some booksellers lamented that they wished they had bought their building when given the chance. Translation: All bookstores, even the best ones, need an affordable situation to ride out times of change.

5. Even though Brooklyn is the hottest thing since sliced (artisanal, five-grain) bread, downtown Manhattan, home of St Mark's Bookshop, is still the place where people meet in the middle of surrounding locales (from Hoboken to the Upper West Side to Brooklyn and Queens)—as it has been since the Native Americans used it as a busy trading post.

6. This retail bookstore in the heart of the publishing capitol has done so much for the small presses.

I used to encourage editors of fledgling lit mags—"In the absence of getting a distributor, just get your magazine at St Mark’s Bookshop. If your magazine is quality, it will sell like hotcakes." To name just a few of the small presses and magazines I watched transition from "new and fragile" to "known and thriving" in part due to hefty sales at St Mark’s: Soft Skull Press, Melville House, Ugly Duckling Presse, McSweeney's, Ig Publishing, Akashic Press, and Archipelago Books. Other well-sold presses at the store included Semiotexte and Autonomedia, AK Press, Sun & Moon Press, Alice James Books, Exact Change Press, Wave Books, Calamari Press, Green Integer, Hanuman Press, Hanging Loose Press, Soho Press, Thunder's Mouth, New Directions, Shambala Press, City Lights, Dalkey Archive, Spuyten Duyvil, Seven Stories, Four Walls Eight Windows, Serpent's Tail, Coffeehouse Press, Seal Press, and so many more. Support the bookstore that supports the small press.

7. Don’t lament the passing of a great bookstore when you have a chance to help.

I have heard people "mourn" the bookstore already in that laziest of ways: "Another great New York institution is on its way out." Or, "Another great bookstore that can't stand up to Amazon." Curb the instinct, folks. The bookstore is not gone, it's not over, and there is still time to do something. Put your money behind your hope, not your dread. Donate here, in exchange for gift certificates, discounts, and tickets to the grand re-opening: http://www.luckyant.com/nyc/east-village/index.html

8. St. Mark’s Bookshop is neighborhood bookstore to the world.

I mean this in two directions: One, the world comes through New York and many stop into the store when they're in town, adding to the terrific mix of customers. And two, the East Village is "home" to every artist and bohemian who wants to claim it: The East Village is not just a place but a state of mind. To me, the East Village will always stand for art that takes exciting risks both in form and content; street-smart, nuance-wise, aesthetic-minded intellectualism; and a politics of the people. For 35 years, St Mark's Bookshop has curated a selection of books and materials that is aware of these three components of the neighborhood's proud output and hungry reading and culture needs. Think of them as an import/export service to and from an ever-replenishing source of the avant-garde. Thank them by donating here: http://www.luckyant.com/nyc/east-village/index.html

9. Be (part of) the subsidy that small businesses don't have.

Small businesses like St. Mark's Bookshop are thrown to the sharks of the "free market" while corporations like Amazon and Barnes & Noble receive tax breaks and strong-arm publishers into (unsustainable) massive discounts. "Non-profits" like Cooper Union also get tax breaks and other subsidies. Yet small businesses are the ones who hear, "Well, if you can't sell enough books to survive, then I guess the free market has spoken." Why doesn't anyone say to Amazon, "Awww, poor baby, can't survive selling books at retail price? Can't hack it asking people to work at a human pace and temperature? Can't make enough to pay your taxes? Boo hoo!" Amazon is a market bully. While brick and mortar bookstores gladly coexist with each other (St. Mark's has survived the arrival of indie McNally Jackson, and even two nearby Barnes & Nobles), Amazon is a predatory capitalist who needs its teeth removed before there's a fair fight to be found. As Sherman Alexie puts it, "Amazon is in the 1% and independent bookstores are in the 99%. So who are you going to fight for?” Fight for St Mark's now: http://www.luckyant.com/nyc/east-village/index.html

10. Aren't you sick of eulogies?

I’m still mourning the passing of the great literary humanists George Whitman (Shakespeare and Company, Paris) and Barney Rosset (Grove Press and Evergreen Review). Please don’t let St Mark’s Bookshop die, too. A girl can only take so much crushing news in one year.

*****

Please consider donating to help St Mark's Bookshop HERE [Updated May 15, 2014]: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/st-mark-s-bookshop-on-the-move

And please share this post on your social media sites: Twitter, Facebook, Tumbler, etc.

The Art of the Book Review: Barrett Warner

Today I’m talking about book reviews with poet and reviewer, Barrett Warner. This is the second in an interview series about the art, craft, and challenge of writing book reviews in today’s lit world, and you can read my earlier interview with fiction author and critic, Spencer Dew, here: The Art of the Book Review: Spencer Dew.

Barrett Warner is a writer I had the great pleasure to read with (at the Last Sunday, Last Rites series) when I traveled through Baltimore in late April. I loved what he and poet Jessica Dotson did to tweak the usual line-up of readers. Simply by reading their poems one at a time, alternating (an opaque call and response), they raised the energy level in the room to heights that the normal everyone’s-turn-at-bat would have missed.

Barrett wears a number of hats like most of us: he's a poet who leaves an impression wherever he goes (winner of the 2011 Princemere Poetry Prize and finalist for the 2012 Washington Writers' Publishing House book contest); author of the chapbook Til I’m Blue in the Face (Tropos Press); a horse breeder; and co-publisher with his wife, poet Julia Wendell, of the small press, Galileo Books. As a critic, he’s reviewed books for such publications as jmww, Loch Raven Review, and Rattle; and he has reviews forthcoming at Otis Nebula, Cerise Press, Shenandoah, Fiddleback, and Chattahoochee Review. He lives on a farm in Maryland's Gunpowder Watershed. Without further ado:

Karen: What do you see as the challenges particular to reviewing poetry?

Barrett: The word poetry feels so general. Not all language is verbal. My chargers know six words and a jockey chirp, but lordy, the stories they tell, the poems they sing.

Digging into a book of poems I wanted to be swept away. Falling in love is the easy part. Now it’s more about, OK, where are we going now? Will I need a toothbrush? Most poets are writing from experience rather than particular lyric traditions or “schools” (the Black Mountain School today sounds like the name of a fiddle band). How do you critique someone’s experience?

The biggest challenge is to know who you’re writing to. In the newspaper age you had an idea where the roll-ups were being tossed—houses, newsstands, etc. Online reviews reach an unfixed readership. I’ve got three lines to grab someone I’ve never met and could never describe; three lines to win them over into clicking the “see more” button.

For me, reading poetry is the same great sport it ever was. But talking about it, reviewing it, which is very old school, can be awkward. Having ideas—judging the art of a poem—feels so selfish. My main point in writing a review is that as I get older it’s harder for me to be moved but when I am moved I definitely want the whole world to know about it.

One problem I have—editors want you to discover Mozart’s next Requiem, and to write about it in 500 words. This is Mozart we’re talking about! Try 10,000 words. I mean, it’s online so we’re not offing trees. The cost of paper is not an issue. I need 1,100 to 1,400 words to make a review.

In terms of the poems themselves, I’m troubled by line edits. It’s so much easier and cheaper to lay-out and print a book since it doesn’t have to be off-set anymore. Editors used to do a much better job combing manuscripts, fussing over text. I’ve seen a lot of great poems which still would have benefited from a better word here or there but no one seems to know whose department that is.

Personally, I’m someone who needs aggressive editing. I was forty-eight by the time I learned how to spell bougainvillea, not to mention my affection for confusing rhetoric. Often I’ll write a review and forget to say whether or not I liked a book. I rely strongly on editors who are probably very busy to help me nevertheless, to remind me of the basics. Many of my first drafts of a review need a twenty minute shower. So I couldn’t really work without lots of editing and I sort of wish more poets felt the same way.

Karen: What is it you DO when you review a book?

Barrett: In 1988 my buddy Josh, Christ how he got pissed at me—we were always playing 500 miles. He made up the game or it was in one of his short stories. You know, “500 miles to Georgia tell me what you see.” It was an imaginary contest for who could see the most. We played it out loud, probably to impress someone named Alison. Boys, she’d smirk. She wore contempt like an orchid.

Every book feels like that 500 mile trip only now it’s real. I read a book of poetry as if I’m on a train. That cattle catcher on the engine car is getting bruises. I keep a lively pace when I read so I can hang out on something stirring and still maintain a flow. Michael Collier, let me tell you what I see. Timothy Liu, let me tell you. Kevin Higgins…I’m seeing the country, the stops, the bartender who’s made these rails one too many times.

That stinker Robert Pinsky says good poetry is always going someplace. So maybe reviewers, we’re the travel agents. All aboard still means what it did a hundred years ago. By the way, if you want Slate to continue the Pinsky column you gotta go there and like it or say “Amen.” http://www.slate.com/authors.robert_pinsky.html Slate is always asking the mirror, who’s the fairest of them all?

Karen: How would you describe the art of the book review?

Barrett: Poetry is an art. Book reviewing is a skill. Some of us are just a little more compulsive about it. As a racer and a gambler I was into yearling sales, trying to find a young horse that would grow up and win the Derby. Even today if I drive past a horse auction my foot pumps the brake and I fight the steering wheel to keep moving past.

As a reviewer I’d love to find a snappy sharp young writer, sure, but there are better folks than I doing a great job of that: Alice James Books, Anhinga Press, Lost Horse Press, Autumn House Press, and my favorite, the Pitt Poetry Series. My point is this: let the press find the poet, let the poet find the poem, stay out of the way of this important process. Afterwards, I might tease a little of the art out of the collection. I want to help others connect and maybe give up some coin for the book.

Most of my literary influences are drawn from the Daily Racing Form which has been my Bible for thirty years. When I review a book I’m handicapping a race—where’s the early speed, the power, the late kick, the reach and grab, the pain killers and bandages, the odds, the weather conditions—and I’m partly a tout, but most of all I want to win my bets and witness a kind of enthralling beauty that could never be anticipated.

Karen: Do you approach a review as an encounter with a book you love, or an offering of context for a book that is difficult but deserves a wider audience?

Barrett: Every book deserves a wider audience. Poetry is concerned with what Millay called “that purple edge outside most people’s lives.” So reviewing might be about bringing readers and the poet closer together, close to that edge which for most readers is only a distant horizon. That means connecting a few dots, and sometimes you’re dead wrong on the connection or you find a connection the writer didn’t intend. The night sky is real big. You can see Orion any place you look.

Karen: What do you enjoy or loathe when you read other writers’ reviews of literature?

Barrett: Give me some sugar. Show me something. Make it hurt. Let me laugh. It’s easy for poets to get lost in their own beautiful woods, but readers are blind, trying to find a black hat in a dark room. A reviewer that lets me know when I’m getting warmer, who knows where the hat is but still lets me find it on my own (with some minor coaching), well that’s a review for me.

I don’t mind reviews that give a little more background on the author, reviews by people who personally know the author. I find this helpful at times as long as the reviewer is still making tough demands of the book. The only reviews I don’t like are the short ones. Putting feelings in there is all right too, but it must be clear how those feelings were transformed by the experience of reading.

Karen: Do you see current reviewing tendencies that are pernicious, lazy, exciting, or helpful?

Barrett: Blog posts are everyone’s way of having a Taxi-cab confession. Those reviews should be pernicious, lazy, and exciting all at once. I mean hey, some of us take the bus to work. Others ride a skateboard. It’s important for reviewers to know their poetry, but it’s also important for reviewers to come from whichever culture they’re writing for.

The printing press democratized literacy, but the Internet democratizes art. We reviewers are the clowns at this rodeo. The clowns perform a minor but essential task, distracting the angry bull. What am I going to say? That someone is a bad clown? There’s no such thing as a bad clown because what do you expect, he’s a clown after all.

Karen: Keith Taylor has written a thoughtful, nuanced essay on reviewing poetry in today's media environment, and talks about (among other things) the narrowed audience for poetry reviews because of the downsizing of newspaper reviews, saying: “[T]he chance to review a new collection of poems in a place where several thousand people might read it, and to actually be paid something for our labors, has almost disappeared….In the fairly recent past many people still considered a knowledge of the poetry of the moment—even if that knowledge came only from reviews or the occasional poem appearing in a high brow magazine–as an essential element of the life of the mind, or at least as an important ingredient of contemporary culture. If there ever was a consensus about that, it has been forgotten.” Can you talk a little bit about poetry reviews as potentially adding to "the life of the mind"?

Barrett: Hearts have a beat. Brains don’t. So “life of the mind” has a funny chime to it. The artist and sportsman Frank Stella—he had some great racehorses over the years, I’m thinking Brown Arc for one—in 1982 Frank gave six lectures at Cambridge which dealt with issues like the role of the critic in defining contemporary art. This was a time when almost everyone would hear about a work before they saw that piece. Well it’s a different can of soup today. Now we often see the works, read samples, get some news footage before we’ve gotten the accompanying critical narrative. So it’s an exciting time to be an adorer of fine art and a lover of words.

I’m not sure I buy that we’re worse off than the glory days. When literature used to be a club maybe we needed highbrow reviews to find our way onto the scene. But I believe there’s no such thing as a good club. It’s like saying so and so was a well-meaning and kind dictator. There’s no such thing as a good dictator. Literature isn’t just for angels that haven’t fallen, it’s for the rest of us too.

My advice to Taylor is that he tighten his gauchos and accept that we’re not operating in a bricks and mortar world with bricks and mortar reviews. I mean, if no one is coming to your church on Sunday then take your church to the streets. Stand on a box in the Town Square. One of my deceased pals David Franks used to shout into a megaphone “Poetry!… Swim a river of shit if it’s on the other side! ”

I’m one of the lucky ones so in love with poetry I don’t care about the conditions. I don’t need the perfect bed to make poetry love, the perfect light, the perfect sentimental view. What I got right now has problems, but it’s action and it’s fantastic. Taylor’s right, but he should drive his idea to the cemetery. There are a lot of folks lying there with dirt on their faces who’d give anything for the chance to come back, even if it meant a life of fewer paying gigs and fewer newspapers and only online opportunities.

Karen: How do writing and reviewing coexist in your writing life--do they complement each other in some way?

Barrett: There are two parts to your question. The harder one is how do I incorporate writing into my life? A hard knocker like me is going to take his poetry where he can get it. I sleep like a dragon with one eye open. I listen to the wind.

I work with my hands about sixty hours a week in the growing season so I have to compose most of my poems on the jog. I say the poem over and over out loud until it’s burned into me but not so deep I can’t revise it. When the tractor’s home and the loader down, or the horse is put away dry, then I write down the poem singing in my head.

Reviewing is different. There’s referencing involved. Dog eared pages. Underlinings. Long-handed rants on legal pads. But I’m also thinking about the poems in someone’s collection all the time and somehow from all of this a review emerges. I send my notes via postal to my typist who emails the goods back to me and then I send it out.

Sometimes I’m talking with a literary journal. I’ll say whom I’m reading lately or I’ll mention a book and suggest they assign it to someone and maybe I’ll make some kind of arrangement for a title down the road. Often my review just shows up in an editor’s box. I read six books a month and I’ll review two or three of these. So the writing life gets crowded.

One of the reasons I started reviewing this year after a thirty year break was that I didn’t want to be another poet without a book on his shelf. The idea that you can learn to write without learning to read amazes me. You want to learn how to write a novel? The best writing workshop in the world is in the library, in alphabetical order.

Karen: Is that where you get your books (libraries) or do they come to you directly from presses?

Barrett: I don’t like receiving books from publishers. Advance copies? No, thank you. It puts too much pressure on me and I’m a coward about pressure. Same with dogging the cat. Kissing in the bedroom with nightgowns and candles? Forget it. I need to start my kissing in the kitchen where there isn’t any pressure at all, just a few dishes, some with spaghetti stains.

The kitchen I go back to time and again for authors are the literary reviews. I’ll see a poem I like, scavenge the contributor notes. If the poet has a recent book I put a check in the mail. Sometimes they don’t have a book and I wring my hands. I noticed the author Bethany Schultz Hurst had poems in Gargoyle and Rattle and maybe Cimarron Review. My notes say, Great poems, but still no collection. So I’m keeping my eye on her. She’s one to watch.

I like to review books that have been out at least a year, and at least four times I’ve gone back six years. Adam Robinson of Publishing Genius Press calls what I do “keeping the conversation going.” I also like pairing my reviews. In September Loch Raven Review will publish my review of Jessica Fenlon’s Spiritual Side Effects alongside Nikia Leopold’s Simple Pleasures (the 2012 Blue Lights Press winner). Both poets are also well known as artists and both designed their own covers. The hint of a controlling nature in this behavior is contradicted by how each author is so willing to lose herself in a poem without losing control of her lines.

I also look for authors at poetry readings. I read two months ago in the West Village with Becca J. R. Lachman. No way I was letting her get in a cab without palming her The Apple Speaks. The nice thing about hearing an author read is that you get a sense of which poems are favorites. I love finding new favorites in the same book. But it’s nice to make a personal connection with an author. I’m reading Kevin Young’s Ardency right now with the aim of reviewing it but the book is so strong and woven and deep I’m anxious to talk with him about it but I don’t really know him except that he teaches outside of Atlanta. I may just have to take Josh’s train to Georgia after all.

***** 

The next interview in this series is expected to appear next week.

Interview with a Micro-Press: Tiny TOE Press

Today I’m interviewing Michael Davidson about his very small press, Tiny TOE Press. Davidson is a writer, a blogger, and a publisher. He is the author (under the nom de plume, herocious) of the novel Austin Nights (2011), the debut title on Tiny TOE. This micro press has a short but intriguing (and growing) list of titles, which you can find here: http://theopenend.com/

I have a special affection for Tiny TOE, as they handpress their books in a similar way to how I self-published/self-produced my first novel which started my own micro press, Words Like Kudzu. When I finished writing my novel, I wanted to put it out in the world immediately, so I took my bookmaking skills and my love of the Xerox machine and made my own books. Tiny TOE does this, only better. They use rulers, box cutters, and a homemade book-pressing machine they call a jig. Me, I just used my hands and my back and a stapler, and frankly, my back is still paying for it 12 years later.

Karen: How did Tiny TOE get started as a press? 

Michael: Tiny TOE Press got started because of TheOpenEnd.com [TOE]. After ~2 years of building content for TOE, commenting on blogs, and emailing with like-minded people, I managed to meet some publishers/writers who were putting together some good books, but none of them, at least none that I knew, even considered the idea of handpressing their own paperbacks. Tiny TOE Press realized the modest potential of this niche market and made it an option.

Once I made the first copy of my book I felt like this was what I was supposed to be doing: making and writing books. But for this adventure in self-publishing to turn into an adventure in publishing it took the jig. That's really what started Tiny TOE, the jig that was built in a shed.

The jig is made out of wood and bolts. It functions as both a square and a clamp. The jig is crucial for making the spines of our books. We started out with a jig that presses one book at a time. Now we've progressed to a jig that presses four at a time. 

Karen: What place do you think the micro press holds in the publishing world? In the literature world? 

Michael: To use metaphor, the publishing world is a vast bucket with micro presses being occasional droplets into this bucket. Micro presses can and do ripple and splash with some of their titles, but it's rarely anything tidal.

Now in the literature world micro presses are vital because they democratize the written word. So many people can't escape the draw of writing literature, but it is a meteoric event indeed for this breed of writing to break out into the publishing world. I think it's because most of the publishing world can only take so many risks each year, and this number is less than the number of manuscripts in the literature world worth taking a risk on. Micro presses noticed this imbalance and made it their mission to discover these manuscripts that deserved a readership and turn them into consumable books.

Karen: How are you finding authors--do you seek them or do they find you? 

Michael: From the start our jig has been responsible for getting submissions from some talented writers. Our jig put us on the map. It made us discoverable, and writers love discovering new independent presses.

ML Kennedy, the author of The Mosquito Song, is one of the first contributors to TheOpenEnd. After he bought and read our first book, and after he read the post roughly going over how this book was made, he emailed me about the possibility of Tiny TOE Press representing his novella, which TheOpenEnd had published in serial format the year before. We were very proud to collaborate on this sardonic vampire narrative. It's New Pulp.

Mitchell Hagerstrom, the author of Miss Gone-overseas, is a similar kind of story. She contributed some of her prose to TheOpenEnd before the existence of Tiny TOE Press. Once she learned of my book she emailed me a manuscript she had worked on over the span of several years. Her novella read then as it reads now, like a timeless piece of prose from the viewpoint of a nearly unrepresented voice in WWII history.

Joseph Avski and Mark McGraw, author and translator (respectively) of Heart of Scorpio, had no affiliation with TheOpenEnd. They got in touch with me after they watched the time-lapse video of me handpressing a book. I read their multi-voiced novella about a famous Colombian boxer and immediately saw how the story of this boxer mirrors the history of his country. Being Colombian, I knew this would be our next book. It was written in the stars.

Writers have been finding us, and new ones are finding us always, but now that we've been around a little longer and have a better idea of the small press world, we have our eyes on a few writers that we'd love to work with.

Karen: I love the particular variety of formats you are offering--you sell each title as both handmade book and e-book. How did you arrive at that model and how is it working for you? 

Michael: While writers care a lot about distribution and reach when it comes to their work, and this requires a more industrial approach to bookmaking, they also value the way their book is produced.

Handpressing their book gives each copy an energy that the industrial approach--with its offset or POD printers--cannot imitate. When handpressed, their book is not only a work of literature, but also a piece of craftsmanship.

The ebook does what the handpressed book cannot, namely, reach thousands of people wanting to read good books on their ereader in an instant.

I like the model. It has gotten our books some interesting press and their share of readerly activity.

Karen: What other micro presses do you admire and why? 

Michael: Several come to mind immediately. In no specific order, Publishing Genius and Mudluscious Press. They put together clever bundle packages and experiment with marketing strategies to move their stock. Lazy Fascist Press has released some notable titles and seems to leave a lot of control in the writer's hands re: overall design. Calamari Press and Dzanc Books for their painstaking care in designing book objects. O/R Books for their incredible website and progressive ebook business model. Featherproof for their Free Mini-Books. Tyrant Books for their hype. Civil Coping Mechanism for their roster. Melville House and Spuyten Duyvil for their novella series.

*****

You can find interviews with Michael Davidson on further topics here and here.

Don't miss recent interviews with Spencer Dew, on book reviewing, and Mike DeCapite, on writing. And stay tuned for more interviews about The Art of the Book Review.

The Art of the Book Review: Spencer Dew

Today I'm posting the first in a series of interviews with small press writers and reviewers about the art of book reviewing, and the state of book reviews. In the process of getting reviews for my own books and for books I published by other writers, I've been paying closer attention than ever to reviews. I have noticed a wide range of quality: There is quite a wide variety of writings that call themselves reviews in this new media world. But the word "quality" doesn't even get at the variety I'm talking about--that sounds like I like one person's writing better than another's. But there is the quality of the writing, the quality of the critical thought, the quality of the reviewer's idea of what a book review should be, and more. Has new media itself degraded (or evolved) the idea of a book review? To some writers, the blog format seems like a good excuse to write a casual review that may be even less thoughtful than a blurb. To other writers, a Goodreads account is a fine platform to write intelligent responses to steady reading. And there are plenty of writers, young and old, who are writing well-considered book reviews and getting paid much less than they were a decade ago, or not getting paid at all.

Today I'm interviewing Spencer Dew, who writes fiction short and long, teaches Religious Studies, and is the author of a critical study of Kathy Acker. Spencer is a staff reviewer at the online litmag decomP magazinE and a regular reviewer at the long-running small press review, Rain Taxi Review of Books. You can find his reviews at those respective sites, and his writings and interviews here: http://www.spencerdew.com/

Karen: Paul Theroux has said (in an introduction to his book, Sunrise with Seamonsters) that writing book reviews is a "much greater necessity for a writer than teaching how to write at a university, or leading seminars on literary culture." What do you think?


Spencer: What a strange quote!  Collecting marbles is a greater necessity for a writer than hoarding scraps of yarn, but, of course, neither of those things is actually necessary.

Now, since “writing book reviews” requires reading, and, ideally, requires critical reading, reading that attempts to analyze the technique employed, to figure out the mechanics of how the text works, how it was put together, and since it’s an act not just of engagement or experience or feeling but also concerted second-order stuff, contemplation and then the articulation of the results of that contemplation, “writing book reviews” is one practice that hones skills necessary for a writer, to be sure.  But that doesn’t mean a writer needs to write book reviews, per se.

Karen: What do you believe a book review should DO? What's its job? Is it an opinion piece, an educated bit of contextualizing, an encounter between one peculiar reader and one particular book, or is the reviewer supposed to take the book on its own terms—after determining and naming those terms? Is it the book's job to reach the reviewer or is it the reviewer's job to find the pulse of the book?

Spencer: I think the job of the review—and the reviewer—depends on the publication, but I can give you a handful of examples from my work for Rain Taxi.

When I reviewed Julia Scheeres’s book on Jonestown, A Thousand Lives, I located this book within the scholarly and popular literature on Jonestown, showed what was new and effective in this treatment, and debunked some of her inflated claims about being, as her subtitle unsubtly and incorrectly states, the “untold story.”  I assumed that readers of my review might have heard of this book and had certainly heard of Jonestown but probably hadn’t read anything on it before; I wanted to give some sense of what was out there and how this book stacked up against those other sources (including Stanley Nelson’s 2007 documentary for PBS, a source which casts a heavy shadow on Scheeres’s work).  If you’re going to read more than one book on Jonestown, Scheeres provides something useful; but if you’re only going to read one book on the topic, this isn’t the one you should read.  That is an informed opinion, drawing on the fact that I routinely teach about and teach books and articles on Peoples Temple and Jonestown, as well as the fact that I spend a great deal of time critically evaluating books.

When, to offer another valence, I wrote my review essays of the collected work of Michael Muhammad Knight for the comic book series Hellblazer, I began with the strong desire to draw attention to these pieces and, in my reviews, to analyze them in new ways.  I offered an overview of Knight’s oeuvre, some thoughts on why he is an important voice in the contemporary scene, and advances a criticism of misogynistic tendencies and the tricky way he presents such tendencies in his works.  On Hellblazer I argued for a central tension throughout the series between oppressive forms of authority and the temporary liberations provided by friendship.  Parliament versus the pub, or something like that—but, again, what I was doing was saying, look, these are neat books, rewarding in many ways, and one thing that’s going on here, that is important and fascinating, is this.  That is also a function of the review, a task of the reviewer.

Writing on Jarett Kobek’s novella Atta, a book about the 9/11 hijacker and including scenes describing the hijacking, I tried, foremost, to show what and how Kobek was doing what he was doing and raise a series of questions about both underlying claims about a certain mode of Islamic education—recitation and memorization, with its solid Quranic roots, which is played up here as central to Atta’s fanatical mindset—and about why an artist might engage in such an exercise of entering into the mind of a historical figure like this.  I hope I provide, in the end, some tools for wrestling with a book that, I believe, was designed to be wrestled with.

One final example: the linked stories in Maleficium, by Martine Desjardins, were seductively creepy, and reading them—-with, sure, the knowledge that I was going to write a review of the book—-I got lost in the decadence, the texture.  My review was largely an appreciation of what I took to be the most compelling qualities of the storyline and the prose, with ample samples of the latter for the reader to experience as a kind of preview.

This is by no means an exhaustive typology of how book reviews function, but these examples do address your question.

Karen: There's all these levels of reviews out there. It's no longer just the New York Times Book Review, literary journals, and your hometown newspaper. Now it's also blog reviews, online litmag reviews, Amazon and Goodreads reviews, and all the places that Amazon and Goodreads reviews "show up," too—like Worldcat or Google searches. Likewise, one reviewer might cross-post their reviews in several spots online—LibraryThing, Goodreads, Amazon, etc. In your view, what has this expansion done for the standards of book reviews? Do you think that today's online readers are simply "savvy enough" to process the different expectations of different venues? Or do you see more poorly-written, poorly-thought-out reviews being generated overall?

Spencer: There is a real distinction between thoughtful criticism and the simple “reviewing” that occurs when someone gives stars or thumbs or offers a few words in praise of a recent Panini on Yelp.  Putting thumbs and stars on things can be very useful in some situations—I don’t want to go to a bad dentist, for instance, and I like living in a world where feedback can be provided on such services—but this isn’t the same as the work of a critic, which needs to be broadly informed and involve serious engagement and consideration.  My experience with Amazon reviews has not found them useful; my experience with Goodreads, which is quite slight, has mainly been to offer me a list of books that folks I know have or want to read, which is like walking into someone’s house and looking at their bookshelves, which is nice.  There are some great bloggers and great online literary magazines.

This might be a tangent, but a few days ago I was meeting with a friend who brought up the fact that a major independent bookstore here in Chicago has been fighting bankruptcy for years and only continues to exist due to some rather miraculous subsidies.  My first impulse was to say, well, it would be a shame if that store closed, but when I really thought about it, what I value about the existence of that store is that I can walk in and see some well curated tables offering me a sampling of new books I wouldn’t otherwise know about.  I don’t buy books there, because books are very expensive.  I read almost entirely via the great public library system of the city of Chicago, when I’m in Chicago, and via Interlibrary Loan when I am elsewhere.  So—without delving more into this issue of bookstores and their functions, one you have written on with eloquence elsewhere—I think that lists of books, with or without stars, on Goodreads or Amazon or blogs or lit magazines can be profoundly useful for precisely this sense of discovery.  But what the bookstore has is one guy who, like an editor of a literary review, carefully curates what motley assortment of books will be on display, vetting them, vouching for them.  His is a kind of discernment that can be, as you say in your next question, “trusted.” And that is a valuable thing.

Karen: What do you read a book review to find out? Where do you like to read book reviews? Do you trust certain journals or certain reviewers?  Do readers of book reviews think in terms of "trust"?

Spencer: I read Rain Taxi every quarter in print and follow all of their on-line updates, I read the New York Times book review section every week, I read most of the stuff that the New York Review of Books posts on-line, and I follow links from Arts and Letters Daily to assorted reviews.  I at least flip through and read around in the reviews in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (because I’m a religion professor), and I visit sites like Spiked Review of Books, and The Guardian’s book section every few months.  When I’m at a good bookstore and feeling flush I’ll buy a Bookforum and London Review of Books.

As for “trust,” I trust the editorial staff of these places to attempt to pair talented reviewers with interesting, worthwhile books.  One of the reasons I started writing for Rain Taxi is that I read Rain Taxi and knew lots folks (first out in Boulder, the Naropa crowd, etc.; then in Chicago) who read Rain Taxi and respected what it was doing in terms of covering small presses, poetry, stuff you most folks wouldn’t otherwise know about.  So I read Rain Taxi to get a sense for new books out there in the world; I probably put in an Interlibrary Loan request for four books out of every issue, on average.

Karen: Do you think all books assigned should be reviewed, or can you imagine a situation where a reviewer just doesn't have an interesting enough engagement with the book to produce a worthwhile review essay?  Or is there, in fact, a science to reviewing which can produce (with some consistency) a thoughtful essay?

Spencer: One can produce a “thoughtful essay” on even a rancid piece of writing, but the question would be why.  If a non-fiction book makes an argument that needs to be debunked, say, or a book of poems expresses a fascist sensibility that needs to be challenged—those are solid reasons for a necessary and useful review of a “bad” book.

There’s another situation that is a more common occurrence for me:  with decomP, I try to review as many of the books that come in as possible, as a kind of service.  I feel a responsibility to seriously engage with these works, a responsibility to the authors.  So, for instance, I reviewed a few years back a book that was really quite awful—just bad writing, sloppy, boring, self-important, etc.  But I wrote a lengthy essay on it, and I gave lengthy quotes from it.  I wanted anyone reading the review to see that I was giving the book a fair shake, letting the book speak for itself, but I also wanted the author to know that I had not tossed out the book halfway through but mucked through it and given it a compassionate and critical reading, flagging what I took to be serious problems in a way that would be practically useful for the author.  Here I’m afraid I sound like a teacher, which is also what I am: you don’t just stamp a paper with a D, you have a responsibility to clearly explain why the paper earned that grade and how it could be improved, etc., etc.  For a publication like decomP, which is rooted, as I understand it, in a notion of literary community, the function of book reviews must also reflect that ideal—and there is, then, a pedagogical function; the book review isn’t just a blurb about a book worth reading, it also is a chance to talk about what makes good writing and about how writing works.



Karen: This particular blog (Karen the Small Press Librarian) has a policy of running largely positive reviews, because I don't think that small- and micro-press books should be buried before they have a chance to live. Not that I ask anyone to lie about their true feelings for a book, but I have declined to run some negative reviews. Thanks for telling us a bit about the delicate art of writing critical reviews of little-known authors.

Spencer: Thanks so much for including me in this discussion, and thanks, even more, for your support of and investment in, via things like this excellent blog, the ideal of artistic community.

***** 

I want to thank Atticus Books for their discussion series, Six Degrees Left, which was an inspiration for this forthcoming series of interviews. While Atticus publishes the interviews in panel discussion style, I enjoy their intelligent questions and relevant topics.

I'd also like to thank writer Tim Hall for pointing out that "More people are indeed reading more these days; but what they're actually reading is online product reviews." Thus, the Amazon book review may not be so easily dismissed.