THE DECLINEOF BOOK REVIEWING

There used to be the notion that Keats waskilled by a bad review, that in despair andhopelessness he turned his back to the

wall and gave up the struggle against tuberculo-sis. Later evidence has shown that Keats took hishostile reviews with a considerably more manlycalm than we were taught in school, and 'yet theimage of the young, rare talent cut down byvenomous reviewers remains firmly fixed in thepublic mind.

The reviewer and critic are still thought of aspersons of dangerous acerbity, fickle demons,cruel to youth and blind to new work, bent uponturning the literate public away from freshnessand importance out of jealousy, mean conserva-tism, or whatever. Poor Keats were he living to-day might suffer a literary death, but it wouldnot be from attack; instead he might choke onwhat Emerson called a "mush of concession." InAmerica, now, oblivion, literary failure, ob-scurity, neglect-c-a ll the great moments of artistictragedy and misunderstanding-still occur, butthe natural conditions for the occurrence are ina curious state of camouflage, like those deco-rating ideas in which wood is painted to looklike paper and paper to look like wood. Agenius may indeed go to his grave unread, but hewill hardly have gone to it unpraised. Sweet,bland commendations fall everywhere upon thescene; a universal, if somewhat lobotomized, ac-commodation reigns. A. book is born into apuddle of treacle; the brine of hostile criticismis only a memory. Everyone is found to have"filled a need," and is to be "thanked" for some-

ELIZABETH HARDWICKThe fates 0/ authors and publishers

-not to mention the reading public-

depend on book reviews-but who reviews

the reviewers? Miss Hardwick undertakes

one 0/ the lew thorough critiques of theleading popular reviews to appear in

recent years and explains why "a Sunday

morning with the book reviews is often adismal experience." A distinguished novelist

and book reviewer herself, Miss Hardwick isthe wife of the poet Robert Lowell.

thing and to be excused [or "minor faults in anotherwise excellent work." "A thoroughly ma-ture artist" appears many times a week and oftendaily; many are the bringers of those "messagesthe Free World will ignore at its peril."

The condition of popular reviewing has becomeso listless, the effect of its agreeable judg-ments so enervating to the general reading pub-lic that the sly publishers of Lolita have tried tostimulate sales by quoting bad reviews alongwith, to be sure, the usual, repetitive good ones.(Orville Prescott: "Lolita is undeniably newsin the world of books. Unfortunately it is badnews." And Gilbert Highet: "I am sorry thatLolita was ever published. I am sorry it wasever written.")

It is not merely the praise of everything insight-a special problem in itself-that vexes andconfounds those who look closely at the literaryscene, but there is also the unaccountable slug-gishness of the New YOTk Times and HeraldTribune Sunday book-review sections. Thevalue and importance of individual books aredizzily inflated, in keeping with the Americanmood at the moment, but the book-review sec-tions as a cultural enterprise are, like a pocketof unemployment, in a state of baneful depres-sion insofar as liveliness and interest are con-cerned. One had not thought they could godownward, since they have always been modest,

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rather conventional journals. Still, there hadbeen room for a decline in the last few years andthe opportunity has been taken. A Sundaymorning with the book reviews is often a dismalexperience. It is best to be in a state of dis-tracted tolerance when one takes up, particularly,the Herald Tribune Book Review. This publica-tion is not just somewhat mediocre; it has alsoa strange, perplexing inadequacy as it dimlycomes forth week after week.

For the world of books, for readers and writ-ers, the torpor of the New York Times BookReview is more affecting. There come to mindall those high-school English teachers, 'those faith-ful librarians and booksellers, those trusting sub-urbanites, those bright young men and women inthe provinces, all those who believe in the judg-ment of the Times and who need its direction.The worst result of its decline is that it acts as asort of hidden dissuader, gently, blandly, respect-fully denying whatever vivacious interest theremight be in books or in literary matters gener-ally. The flat praise and the faint dissension, theminimal style and the light little article, theabsence of involvement, passion, character, eccen-tricity-the lack, at last, of the literary tone itself-have made the New Y01'k Times into a pro-vincial literary journal, longer and thicker, butnot much different in the end from all thosesmall-town Sunday "Book Pages." (The NewYorker, Harper's, the Atlantic, the news andopinion weeklies, the' literary magazines all de-vote a good deal of space and thought to the re-viewing of books. The often awkward and thealways variable results should not go unrernarked,However, in these magazines the reviews areonly a part of the claim upon the reader's at-tention, and the peculiar disappointments ofthe manner in which books are sometimes treatedcannot be understood without a close study ofeach magazine as a whole.)

"COVERAGE" THAT KILLS

Itis with dismay that one decides the malaiseof the popular reviewing publications-theTimes and Tribune and the Saturda» Review

-is not always to be laid at the door of com-merce. It had been simple and reassuring tobelieve the pressure of book publishers and book-sellers accounted for the hospitable reception oftrashy novels, commonplace "think" books, andso on. The publishers needed favorable reviewsto use for the display of their product, as anEaster basket needs shredded green paper underthe eggs. No one thought the pressure was simple

and direct; it was imagined to be subtle, prac-tical, basic, that is, having to do with the factthat the advertisements of the publishing busi-ness keep the book-review sections going finan-cially. This explanation has, naturally, had anexaggerated acceptance.

The truth is, one imagines, that the publishers-seeing' their best and their least products re-ceived with a uniform equanimity-must beaware that the drama of the book world is beingslowly, painlessly killed. Everything is somehowalike, whether it be a routine work of history bya respectable academic, a group of platitudesfrom the Pentagon, a volume of verse, a work ofradical ideas, a work of conservative ideas. Sim-ple "coverage" seems to have won out over thedrama of opinion; "readability," a cozy littleword, has taken the place of the old-fashioned re-quirement of a good, clear prose style, which issomething else. All differences of excellence, ofposition, of form are blurred by the slumberousacceptance. The blur erases good and bad alike,the conventional and the odd, so that it finallyappears that the author like the reviewer reallydoes not have a position. The reviewer's gracefalls upon the rich and the poor alike; a workwhich is going to be a best seller, in which thepublishers have sunk their fortune, is com-mended only at greater length than the bookfrom which the publishers hardly expect to breakeven. In this fashion there is a sort of democraticeuphoria that may do the light book a servicebut will hardly meet the needs of a serious work.When a book is rebuked, the rebuke is usuallv

r nothing more than a quick little jab with th~needle, administered in the midst of therapeuticcompliments. "--- --- is sometimes self-con-sciously arch," said one review. "But it containsenough of --- ---'s famous wit and style tomake American publication worthwhile .... "

The editors of the reviewing publications nolonger seem to be engaged in literature. Bookspile up, out they go, and in comes the review.Many distinguished minds give their names tovarious long and short articles in the Times,Tribune, and Saturday Review. The waresoffered by the better writers are apt, frequently,to be something less than their best. Havingawakened to so many gloomy Sundays, they ac-cept their assignments in a co-operative spiritand return a "readable" piece, nothing much, ofcourse. (Alice James wrote in her diary that herbrother, Henry, was asked to write for the pop-ular press and assured he could do anything hepleased "so long as there's nothing literary init.")

The retention of certain disgruntled, repetitivecommentators is alone enough to dispute notionsof crude commercialism on the part of the re-viewing publications. A businesslike editor, a"growing" organization-such as we are alwaysreading about in the press-would have assessedthe protests, if any, and put these fumblingminds out to pasture. For instance, what couldbe more tiresome than J. Donald Adams's attackson poor Lionel Trilling for trying to be interest-ing on Robert Frost? Only another attack onAdams, perhaps-who is, like the pressure ofcommerce, hardly the real trouble with theTimes. Adams is like one of those public monu-ments only a stranger or someone who has beenaway for a while takes notice of. What is trulydismaying about the Times and Tribune is thequality of the editing.

Recently a small magazine called the Fiftiespublished an interview with the editor-in-chief of the Ncto York Timcs Book Revietu, Mr.Francis Brown. Mr. Brown appears in this ex-change as a man with considerable editorial ex-perience in general and very little "feel" for theparticular work to which he has been appointed,that is editor of the powerfully important weeklyBook Review. He, sadly, nowhere in the inter-view shows a vivid interest or even a sophistica-tion about literary matters, the world of booksand writers-the very least necessary for his posi-tion. His approach is modest, naive, and curi-ously spiritless. In college, he tells us in theinterview, he majored in history and subse-quently became general editor of Current His-tory. Later he. went to Time, where he had"nothing to do with books," and at last he waschosen to "take a crack at the Book Review."The interviewer, hinting at some of the defectsof the Book Review, wondered if there wasn'ttoo much reliance on specialists, a too frequentpractice of giving a book to a reviewer who hadwritten a book Iike it, or about the same countryor the same period. Mr. Brown felt that "a fieldwas a field." When asked to compare our TimesBook Review with the Times Literar» Supple-ment in London, Brown opined, "They have anarrow audience and we have a wide one. Ithink in fiction they are doing the worst of anyreputable publication."

This is an astonishing opinion to anyone whohas followed the reviews in the London Timesand the other English reviewing papers,' such asthe Sunday Times and the Observer. Thesepapers consistently set a standard intrinsicallyso much higher than ours that detailed compari-son is almost impossible. It is not simply what

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may turn up in an individual review; It IS pro-foundly a matter of the tone, the seriousness, theindependence of mind and temperament. Rich-ard Blackrnur in a recent article tells of a con-versation with the editor of the Times LiterarySupplement who felt that the trouble with theAmerican book reviews was just this lack of astrong, independent editorial direction and whoventured that very few publishers would with-draw their advertising because of the disappear-ance of the bland product being put out at themoment. A description of the Times LiterarvSupplement, the London publication, by DwightMacdonald finds that the English paper "seemsto be eclited and read by people who know whothey are and what interests them. That the vastmajority of their fellow citizens do not sharetheir interest in the development of Englishprose, the bibliography of Byelorussia, AndreGide's treatment of his wife, the precise relationof folksong and plainsong, and 'the large blot' ina letter of Dr. Johnson's which has given muchtrouble to several of his editors ... this seemsnot in any way to trouble them."

REVIEWING AS WRITING

Invariablyright opinion is not the only judgeof a critic's powers, although a taste thatgoes wrong frequently is only allowed to the

greatest minds! In any case, it all depends uponwho is right and who is wrong. The communica-tion of the delight and importance of books,ideas, culture itself, is the very least one wouldexpect from a journal devoted to reviewing ofnew and old works. Beyond that beginning, theinterest of the mind of the individual revieweris everything. Book reviewing is a form of writ-ing. We don't pick up the Sunday Times to findout what Mr. Smith thinks of, for instance,Dr. Zhivago. (It would very likely be Mrs. Smithin the Herald Tribune.) As the saying goes.What do you have when you find out what Mr.Smith thinks of D1". Zhivago? It does matter whatan unusual mind, capable of presenting freshideas in a vivid and original and interestingmanner, thinks of books as they appear. Forsheer information, a somewhat expanded pub-lisher's list would do just as well as a good manyof the reviews that appear weekly.

In a study of book reviewing dune at WayneUniversity, we find that our old faithful, theeternally "favorable review," holds his own withall the stamina we have learned to expect. Fifty-one per cent of the reviews summarized in BookReview Digest in 1956 were favorable. A much

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more interesting figure is that 44.3 per cent werenon-committal! The bare meaning of "review"would strongly incline most people to the pro-duction of an opinion of some sort and so thereluctance of the non-committal reviewers to per-form is a fact of great perplexity. The unfavor-able reviews number 4.7 per cent.

ONE SUNDAY

ASunday some months ago in the HeraldTribune. The following are excerptsfrom five reviews of current novels, re-

views that sadly call to mind a teen-age theme.

(1) "The real value of the novel lies in its aware-ness of churacter, the essential personalit», and thesubtle effect of time."

(2) "Occasionally some of the workings of the storyseem contrived, but this is only a first impression, for[oremost of all is the re-creation of an atmospherewhich is so strong that it dictates a destiny."

(3) "Miss --- writes well, telling the story with amatter-oi-iactness and vividness that help to carry thestrangeness of her central theme, For a reader whorelishes a toucli of the macab1'e, it is an intriguingexploration of the imagination."

(4)"--- -- --, however, is an interesting andswifl!)' moving book; more complicated than most ofits kind, and with subtler shading to its characters. Itmakes good reading."

(5) "It is also, within the framework --- --- hasset [or himself, a uiarm, continuously interesting storyof what can haf}pen to a grout} of ordinary people ina perilous situation, a situation, incidentally, at leastas likely as the one Nevil Shute postulates in 'On theBeach.' "

("The one Nevil Shute postulates in 'On theBeach' "-the assurance of this phrase would givemany a reader a pause, reminding us, as it does,that there are all kinds of examples of what iscalled "obscurity of reference.")

About the Saturday Review, one feels moreand more that it is not happy in its job. It ismoody, like an actress looking for the right rolein order to hit the big time. "Of Literature" hasbeen dropped from the title, an excision the mis-cellaneous contents of the magazine soundly jus-tifies. The search for feature ideas is as energeticas that of any national magazine; the editors arefrantically trying to keep up with the times.With the huge increase in phonograph-recordsales, the music departments have absorbed moreand more space in the journal. Travel, in allits manifestations, has become an important con-cern-travel books, travel advice, guides to nearlyas many events as Cue tries to handle. Even this

is not enough. There are Racing Car issues andSR Goes to the Kitchen. Extraordinary promo-tion ideas occur to the staff, such as the Satur-day Review Annual Advertising Award. Linesfrom an article on this topic read:

Because Saturday Review is continually concernedwith the communications pattern in the UnitedStates, it has observed with deep interest the p-rogres-siue development of advertising as a medium of idea.communication, a much more subtle skill even thanthe communication of news.

The cover may "feature" a photograph ofJoanne Woodward and recently in an issue thatfeatured Max Eastman's written ideas on Hem-ingway, not Eastman, but Hemingway, wearing aturtle-neck sweater, gazed from the cover in a"photo-portrait." The book reviews, the longand the short articles, in Saturday Review areneither better nor worse than those of the Times;they are marked by the same lack of strenuouseffort. They obviously have their audience inmind-one, it is believed, that will take only somuch.

EDITORS' WISHES

Literary journalism reaches, in the case of agood many writers, such levels of vitalityand importance and delight (hat the ex-

cuse of the fleeting moment, the pressure of time,the needs of a large public cannot be accepted,as the editors would have us do. Orville Prescottof the daily Times-is he to be accounted acasualty of speed? Is what is wanting in thiscritic simply time to write, a month rather thana few days? Time would no doubt produce alonger Orville Prescott review, but that it wouldproduce a more constant inspiration is open todoubt. Richard Revere mentioned somewhererecently the fact that he could find, today, greatfascination in reading some casual article doneby Edmund Wilson in J 924 for Vanity Fair orthe New Republic. The longer essaysWilson hasdone in recent years on whatever topic engageshis mind are literary works one could hardlyexpecL regularly or even rarely in the Times,Tvibune, or SatuTdoy Reuieui. Still, his earlierreviews are the sort of high possibility an editorwould, or so one imagines, have in mind. Noth-ing matters more than the kind of thing theeditor would like if he could have his wish.Editorial wishes always partly come true. Doesthe editor of the Times Book Review reallyyearn for a superb writer like V. S. Pritchett,who does write almost weekly short pieces in theNew Sta.tesman with a week after week brilliance

that astonishes everyone? Pritchett is just asgood on "The James Dean Myth" OF Ring Lard-ner as he is on the Russian novel. Is this thekind of thing our journals hope for, or is it alight little piece by, say, Elizabeth Janeway on"Caught between books"? It is typical of theeditorial mind of the Times that it most fre-quently assigns Pritchett to write a casual, lightLondon letter, work of insignificant journalism,which makes little use of his unique talents forwriting book reviews.

In the end it is publicity that sells books andbook reviews are only, at their most, the great toeof the giant. For some recurrent best sellers likeFrances Parkinson Keyes and Frank Yerby thereaders would no more ask for a good review be-fore giving their approval and their money thana parent would insist upon public acceptancebefore giving his new baby a kiss. The bookpublishing and selling business is a very compli-cated one. Think of those publishers in business-like pursuit of the erotic novel who would, wecan be sure, have turned down Lolita as not theright kind of sex. It is easy enough, once thecommercial success of a book is an establishedfact, to work out a convincing reason for thepublic's enthusiasm. But, before the fact hashappened, the business is mysterious, chancy,unpredictable.

For instance, it has been estimated that the re-views in Time magazine have the largest numberof readers, possibly nearly five million each week,

The Writer's TaskBY BERNARD MALAMUD

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and it has also been suggested that many pub-lishers feel that the reviews in Time do not affectthe sales of a book one way or another! In theface of this mystery, some publishers have con-cluded that Time readers, having learned Time'sopinion of a book, feel that they have somehowalready read the book, or if not quite that, if notread, at least taken it in, experienced it as a"fact of our time." They feel no more need tobuy the thing itself than to go to 'Washington fora firsthand look at the latest works of the Repub-lican Administration.

In a world like that of books where all is angu-lar and unmanageable, there hardly seems to beany true need [or these busy hands working toshape it all into a small, fat ball of weekly but-ter. The adaptable reviewer, the placid, super-ficial commentator might reasonably survive inlocal newspapers. But, for the great metropoli-tan publications, the unusual, the difficult, thelengthy, the intransigent, and above all, theinteresting, should expect to find their audience.

The views expressed by Miss Hardwick appar-ently arc shared by a considerable number ofserious writers. They would be sharply chal-lenged, hotueuer, by other writers, book-revieweditors, and publishers. Letters presenting adifferent evaluation ot book reviewing in Amer-ica-and in England-will be published in thenext issue of Harper's. -The Editors

LT SEEMS TO ME that L the writer's] most important task, no matter whatthe current theory of man, or his prevailing mood, is to recapture his imageas human being as each of us in his secret heart knows it to be,and as history and literature have from the beginning revealed it. At the sametime the writer must imagine a better world for men the while he shows us,in all its ugliness and beauty, the possibilities of this. In recreatingthe humanity of man, in reaiity his greatness, he will, among other things, holdup the mirror to the mystery of him, in which poetry and possibility live,though he has endlessly betrayed them. In a sense, the writer in his art,without directly stating it-though he may preach, his work must not-must remindman that he has, in his human striving, invented nothing less than freedom;and if he will devoutly remember this, he will understand the best way topreserve it, and his own highest value.

I've had something such as this in mind, as I wrote, however imperfectly,my sad and comic tales.

-Address by the Fiction Winner, National Book Awards, New York City, March 1959.

Harper's Magazine, October 1959