![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Publicists and self-publicists seem to be appropriating the reviewing agenda. Prompted by a Jacob Silverman piece in Slate on the ‘epidemic of niceness’ that suffuses online literary communities, Garner wondered whether sparring sensibilities can any longer really ‘let fly’ at one another in the uncertain transition from print to digital media. What we need more of, now that newspaper book sections are shrinking and vanishing like glaciers, are excellent and authoritative and punishing critics – perceptive enough to single out the voices that matter for legitimate praise, abusive enough to remind us that not everyone gets, or deserves, a gold star. ![]() The sad truth about the book world is that it doesn’t need more yes-saying novelists and certainly no more yes-saying critics. In a New York Times article last year, Dwight Garner made ‘A Critic’s Case for Critics Who Are Actually Critical’: The question of book reviewing has recently flared up, again. Instead of being able by reading the criticism to judge of the book, it is now necessary to read the book in order to judge the criticism. I proclaim to all the inhabitants of the land that they cannot trust to what the periodicals say of new books. ![]()
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