Still more on the demise of the newspaper book review

Former L.A. Times Book Review editor, Steve Wasserman, was interviewed on Monday's NewsHour segment about the demise of print book reviews.



As GalleyCat on mediabistro.com comments, "Now that there are only four papers with separate book sections including the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, does online book coverage have the authority, nay, gravitas that book sections lend?"


According to Wasserman, they don't. He said:


I have no problem with the vast democracy wall that the Internet provides on which everyone, every crank and every sage can post his or her pronunciamento.


But what's lost here is the discriminatory filter provided by people who have embraced journalism as a craft. What has been lost here is the authority, such as it ever was, of newspaper people trying to do a job well done.


I do not see foreign coverage being replaced by the activity of individuals on the Internet bloviating about this or that.


And despite the robust nature or at least the very excited nature of the conversation on the Internet, the best criticism still being written today is being published, say, in magazines, James Wood in the New Yorker, or Leon Wieseltier in the pages of the New Republic, or Christopher Hitchens in the pages of the Atlantic.



And it will be a long time before the Internet gives us a forum in which such people unsupported by institutions can deliver us that kind of literary criticism. At their best, the newspapers were an exercise in delivering to us that kind of informed criticism, which was the work of professionals who had devoted a lifetime to the consideration of literature.



I say, Granted. Excellent point. But do these people review the books a lot of people read, or is there a literary filter? My impression, too, is that papers like the Boston Globe are publishing commentary on the books that are exciting a lot of discussion out there, which people do read.


http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/web_tech/wasserman_on_internet_book_coverage_90440.asp

John Boyne's Mutiny on the Bounty

MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, by John Boyne. (Random House/Doubleday, trade paper, NZ$36.99).

The mutiny led by Fletcher Christian, who seized the breadfruit-laden Bounty after leaving Tahiti in April 1789, and set the captain, William Bligh, adrift in a boat, ranks up there with the Titanic as one of the iconic stories of the sea. The combination of sadism, violent confrontation, a sexy Polynesian paradise, and an epic small boat voyage has an enduringly irresistible appeal.
Ever since March 1790, when Bligh arrived in London to report what he called a "close-planned act of villainy", people haven't been able to stop memorialising the event. Poets, including Lord Byron, have penned poems; artworks have been painted; scholarly articles written; and conferences held. Two replica ships have been built, and five films made, one―the 1935 Oscar-winner―managing to convince the world that Bligh was a brute who looked just like Charles Laughton, and Christian, portrayed by Clark Gable, was a romantic hero. Marlon Brando, who played an equally dashing Christian in a 1962 version, was so seduced by the story he married his Boraboran co-star, and bought his own Polynesian island. The mutiny now has several websites.

Nonfiction accounts abound, starting with Bligh's own book, A narrative of the mutiny … (1790). The latest is Caroline Alexander's fine study, The Bounty (2003), which treats Bligh much more charitably than most of the earlier versions, and greatly influenced the book under review. Novelists―starting with Nordhoff and Hall in 1932―have given the sensational story fictionalised treatment, too, and of these John Boyne is the most recent.

For his novel, Boyne has taken a real-life person, John Smith, Captain Bligh's steward, and replaced him with a fourteen-year-old pickpocket. This is John Jacob Turnstile, a lively character with a racy turn of phrase, strengthened rather than corrupted by his dark past as a child prostitute in Portsmouth. Given the choice of a year in jail or a trip to Tahiti, Turnstile chooses the Bounty, but finds adjusting to sea-life quite a challenge.

For the first two days he is most horribly seasick, an ordeal eased only by the lucky fact that he has a kindly captain who tucks his blankets and wipes his fevered brow. When he wakes to his surroundings, it is to find that most of his companions are distinctly unpleasant, being "scuts" and "weasels" who force him to endure a particularly brutal crossing-the-line ceremony. Then, when young "Turnip" arrives in Tahiti, it is to fall in love with a dusky maiden, who betrays him for another.

Surprisingly, the author does not give this as the reason why Turnstile chose loyalty to his captain on the fateful day of the mutiny, rather than take the chance to return to the seductive island. Instead, like much of what has gone before, his decision is not quite credible. It is not until now, at the moment that Turnstile joins Bligh and the other loyal crewmen in the boat, at the start of a 48-day ordeal―"Eighteen men in twenty feet of wood and glue and nails, fighting for their very lives"―that the story becomes convincing. Then it is compellingly so. Of all the accounts of epic small boat voyages I have ever read, Boyne's would be one of the most gripping.

This, along with the memorable protagonist, makes the book a recommended choice. And while it is hard to believe that any naval commander would stoop to mop his servant's brow, it is a refreshing change that Bligh should be the hero, for once, and Fletcher Christian the villain.

Review by Joan Druett, originally published in the Dominion Post of Wellington, New Zealand, 26 July 2008.

More on the demise of the newspaper book review

Kassia Krozser of booksquare.com has posted her meditations about the closure of the book review section of the Los Angeles Times.

"Yesterday was the last day for the dedicated book review, and it makes me sad to know it’s gone," she says; "but if you didn’t see it coming, you weren’t paying attention."

So who should the book world blame? The internet? The newspaper publisher? Certainly the latter, she vigorously goes on -- "Sam Zell has no business owning a newspaper," particularly one that has a sterling record as a Pulitzer-winner. And the former can be blamed only because Zell et al saw it as a competitor, not a complementary facet.

However, she goes on, one has to contrast the fuss created by the loss of the book review pages with the absolute outcry if the sports section was erased. It's not that the sports section creates advertising -- it's that the sports section serves the whole community. Were there 300,000 avid and dedicated readers of the books section, as some have claimed? Absolutely not, she believes, and the reason she gives is that books sections are elitist.

"As we all know, smart women read romance. And literary fiction. And mystery. And science fiction. And a whole lot of other stuff. And women buy more books than men. The LATBR often felt like a gentleman’s club — the books reviewed, the reviewers, the subject matter. This is largely reflective of it top editorial staff, but it’s also a reflection of the value placed on “women’s” fiction and issues. Some weeks it was if there was a “No Girls Allowed” sign on the LATBR."

Intrigued? For more of this very pertinent and thought-provoking commentary, go to:

http://booksquare.com/once-more-with-feeling-the-latbr-publishes-its-last/

Yet another marketing ploy for The Lace Reader

Salem enters into the spirit of promoting Lace Reader

With William Morrow's edition of Brunonia Barry's The Lace Reader publishing today, the folks in Salem, MA are enjoying the attention.

"Morrow is working with Salem's tourism agency, local merchants, and historic sites to promote the book, which is set here, and the city at the same time. While Salem hopes The Lace Reader will draw tourists to town, author and publisher hope the city's attractions will bolster the book." Director of the tourism bureau Kate Fox says, "It has been the greatest thing to fall into Salem's lap, for promotion and marketing."

Barry is the latest marketing sensation. Reluctant to approach publishers with her first novel, she entered the self-publishing game, with such spectacular results that she negotiated a two-million-dollar deal for The Lace Reader plus another book to come with William Morrow of HarperCollins Publishers. Go to her website to see the trailer. http://www.lacereader.com/

This marketing partnership with the town of Salem was -- guess what -- suggested by the author. As successful as all her other ploys, it led to a long Boston Globe feature. The paper notes: "Locating a novel in a relatively more intimate, colorful, and historic community like Salem, which everyone has heard of but relatively few have visited, can draw people who want to see the real places they read about. While that's good short-term publicity for a new book, it can benefit a city for years."

I love Salem; have spent many absorbing hours in the Phillips Library at the Peabody-Essex Museum. The flamboyant shipmasters of the early Salem trading vessels played a big part in early colonial New Zealand. And in the Wiki Coffin novels his father, the colorful and reprehensible Captain William Coffin, was a citizen of the place.

Note to myself: Read the Book!

Rushdie even makes the "Not-Quite-Yet List."

Half of the books on the following list won't even be finalists for the Booker Prize, but "Publishers Lunch" picks the contenders:

The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga
Girl in a Blue Dress, by Gaynor Arnold
The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry
From A to X, by John Berger
The Lost Dog, by Michelle de Kretser
Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh
The Clothes on Their Backs, by Linda Grant
A Case of Exploding Mangoes, by Mohammed Hanif
The Northern Clemency, by Philip Hensher
Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill
The Enchantress of Florence, by Salman Rushdie
Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith
A Fraction of the Whole, by Steve Toltz

The shortlist will be announced on September 9.

Internet Review of Books

Carter Jefferson,Texan of Boston, has posted a comment on the item about that great little magazine for readers, Good Reading, asking me to have a look at his blog of reviews, http://internetreviewofbooks.blogspot.com/

Well, I have done so, and it is amazing! The content is great, and I am in love with the design. An example to emulate. If possible.

Good Reading

I notice that Caron Dann has posted a very interesting comment to my item about the possible demise of newspaper book reviews. (Scan down . . . and down.)

I "met" Caron Dann when she interviewed me for a story for a marvellous Australian magazine devoted entirely to good books and called (of course) Good Reading. It produces a great internet issue which is complementary to the printed periodical, and which is searchable for past stories and reviews. Have a look at it at:
http://www.goodreadingmagazine.com.au/index.cfm?page=80

You need to register, though this is free. You will be issued with a six- or seven-digit number, and the numbers of your post code (zip code) serve as your password. Just in case your program does not allow pop-ups, it is a good idea to press "CTL" as you log on. Then the magazine comes up as a full-page thumbnail, with tabs on either side for easy turning of pages. In order to make a chosen page readable, position your cursor anywhere on the page, and click your mouse. Hold the mouse button down to "grab" the page and scan up, down, and from side to side. It's easy once you get the hang of it, and the content is very highly recommended.

Caron asks about other book review internet sites. I enjoy the online versions of book review pages from regular papers and magazines, including the New York Times, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, and The Guardian. A personal favorite for reviews of mystery books is The Mystery Reader, which is one of the many listed on AcqWeb (see link below), which has a very comprehensive list of book review sites, including those of many American, Canadian, and British newspapers.

http://www.acqweb.org/bookrev.html

I am not sure how recent this list is, though, as a few URLs come up with a "page unavailable" sign. Some of those that do work ask for a paid subscription, though they offer a free trial period lasting as long as 30 days, while reference-type sites like Gale want their money upfront.

However, most are free. Many of these ask you to register with a username (which, like Good Reading, they might provide) and a password, but there is no cost attached.

Your local library might post reviews online, often written by the librarians themselves, so it is worth checking its site. And there are some fine and perceptive reviewers writing thoughtful assessments for the sheer love (or in some cases, loathing) of the books they have read on amazon.com Don't underrate this as a resource.

I'll add more as I think of them. But thanks, Caron!

"Come on shore and we will kill and eat you all"

My vote for the most attention-gripping title to come out this season is Christina Thompson's Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story," published by Bloomsbury USA this month, and due to be launched in New Zealand within the next couple of months or so.

Back in the eighties, Christina was a graduate student in Melbourne, and on the way back to Australia after a vacation with her folks in Boston, Mass., she decided to spend a few days in the Bay of Islands. There, in a reprise of what happened to Captain James Cook and Captain Dumont de Surville about a couple of centuries earlier, she had her first contact with the Maori people. The difference is that while they were both killed by Polynesians, she married one she met in a pub.


It was quite a contrast in cultures. He was a tradesman from a background of rural poverty, she was an upper-middle-class intellectual: He was a “native,” while she descended from European colonizers. She was a 90-pound blonde, and he was a 200-lb Maori. For a candid and revealing Q&A session with Christina, see:

http://www.comeonshore.com/qanda.php

While the book is about those aggressive first contacts between European and Maori warriors (according to Darwin's journal on the Beagle, he was informed that they shouted out something like the words of the title in ritual challenge), Thompson draws the reader in to the story by intertwining New Zealand’s history with an anecdotal account of her own relationship with her husband and his family, describing how the two met and married, had three sons, traveled together, and lived in several different parts of the world, including Australia and Hawaii, before settling in Boston.



Thompson began Come on Shore in 1999, after moving back from the Pacific to the U.S. After putting it aside for several years, she wrote most of it over the course of two years. Apparently her husband had no input, and has not even read it, which demonstrates a great deal of trust in her good taste and judgement, but is also a pity, as it would have been very interesting to learn something about his cultural memories of those first contacts -- not to mention his feelings and being transported to Boston.


Christina Thompson is already planning her next book, which will explore Maori language and culture, in which she hopes to call attention to disappearing languages by documenting the process of learning one. Luckily, she is good with languages, but because her husband is not a fluent speaker of Maori, she says she may have to travel as far as Hawaii to find a teacher.


As far as Hawaii? How odd. Why not New Zealand? While Polynesian dialects have a common root, Hawaiians and speakers of te reo Maori have quite a lot of trouble understanding each other -- or so I have been assured by experts. Hopefully, we will see her here. And it would be great to hear a few words from her husband, too.


Christina Thompson has strong links with New Zealand, quite apart from her very interesting souvenir. She is now the editor of the prestigious Harvard Review, and in the fall issue will include a special section dedicated to that country’s literature. Well, Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand, said so, in a speech given at the country’s literary awards ceremony last fall.

For last weekend's New York Times review in the book review section, see:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/18/arts/idbriefs19A.php

Those Montana Awards

Bookman Beattie asks WHAT CAN BE DONE TO REVITALISE THE MONTANAS? (The Montana being New Zealand's premier book awards.)


Then he goes on to say: "This is the very timely question posed by Listener Arts & Books Editor Guy Somerset in a page long thoughtful piece in the NZ Listener dated August 2-8."


Timely indeed. As discussed earlier (scan through the older posts), there was a bit of controversy here about only four fiction works being shortlisted, when five is the norm. Was this because the rest of the entries were not up to scratch? This, it was claimed, was the inevitable impression given. (No one mentioned another alternative, that the offering as a whole might be such an even standard that there were very few stand-outs, which could account for the other unusual fact, that two books of short stories were included in the short list.)

****
For further background (and also because a good friend who is just back from Aus. asked me to do it), here is the complete list of the 2008 Montana New Zealand Book Awards:
Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry winner and Fiction category winner: Opportunity by Charlotte Grimshaw (Random House)
Fiction runner-up: Edwin & Matilda by Laurence Fearnley (Penguin Group (NZ))
Poetry winner: Cold Snack by Janet Charman (Auckland University Press)
Montana Medal for Non-Fiction winner and Environment category winner: Wetlands of New Zealand – A bitter-sweet story by Janet Hunt (Random House NZ)
Biography winner: The Life and Times of James Walter Chapman-Taylor by Judy Siers (Millwood Heritage Productions Ltd)
History winner: Te Tau Ihu O Te Waka Volume II: Te Ara Hou – The New Society by Hilary and John Mitchell (Huia Publishers)
Reference and Anthology winner: A Nest of Singing Birds: 100 years of the New Zealand School Journal by Gregory O’Brien (Learning Media Ltd)
Lifestyle & Contemporary Culture winner: Mau Moko: The World of Māori Tattoo by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku with Linda Waimarie Nikora, Mohi Rua and Rolinda Karapu (Penguin Group (NZ))
Illustrative winner: Bill Hammond: Jingle Jangle Morning by Jennifer Hay, with Ron Brownson, Chris Knox and Laurence Aberhart, designed by Aaron Beehre (Christchurch Art Gallery)
Each category winner was presented with a prize of $5,000. The winners of the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry (formerly called the Deutz prize) and the Montana Medal for Non fiction were each presented with an additional prize of $10,000. The runner-up in the Fiction category received $2,500. The Readers’ Choice Award carries a monetary prize worth $1,000.

The prize for the Best First Book of Prose was won by Mary McCullum's book The Blue.

*****

As Bookman Beattie goes on to say, "Somerset makes a number of valid points about the need for a fresh look to be taken at the whole structure of the awards." A fresh look? I wonder if a backward look might be a good idea, too. In "the old days," that much maligned era, there was THE Montana award. I stand to be corrected, but my vague memory is that one book was chosen, because I remember the year that Harry Morton's wonderful The Wind Commands was the winner. Was it split between a fiction winner and a non-fiction winner? Or did that come later? Whatever, somehow, sometime, in the interval, a whole lot of categories have been born. Is this a good thing? Is there any guarantee the winner of one sub-category will be as great, in its way, as the winner of another sub-set? I don't think so.

I vote we go back to two awards, one for a truly outstanding work of fiction -- something folk will still be reading in 200 years' time -- and one for a non-fiction book that extends our knowledge of New Zealand in a fashion so remarkable that it is absolutely essential reading.

Bookman Beattie goes on to quote another interesting observation -- a commentary sent to him by bookseller and former publisher Tom Beran.

Beran says: "My concern regarding the Montana awards has been bugging me for years i.e. the Peoples Choice award which carries a monetary prize of $1000. I have never been able to understand the purpose of this award as the winning author in any year may have encouraged friends, family etc to vote for him/her and due to a small response for such awards (unlike the Children’s one) we may get a strange result."

Beran continues: "Surely the best process is to look at the sales of major selling titles over the calendar year to create a shortlist of say 5 titles, and then the Booksellers NZ/Montana Awards management committee who are unbiased towards any book, author or publisher can chose the appropriate winner by popularity and discussion. This would give the award some parity with the Nielsen BookData Booksellers Choice Award which I don’t think carries any monetary prize, just the prestige of being the booksellers’ favourite title to . . . "

And there, I think, he has an excellent point (Beran, that is). Why is money attached to any of these awards? Isn't the prestige of having won it enough?

To go back to my own experience: back in the dim mists of time, David Ling, then with the now defunct firm Heinemann, published my first book, Exotic Intruders. I was so chuffed I left my teaching job, and changed my registration with the Inland Revenue to "writer." Lo and behold, Exotic Intruders won the Best First Book of Prose Prize.

In those days, you didn't arrive at some grand function, wait with your heart going pit-a-pat, and then stumble to the stage when your name was announced. Instead, you received a letter from PEN (now under the umbrella of the New Zealand Society of Authors) graciously informing you that you had won the prize, and a cheque for one thousand dollars (New Zealand) arrived in due course. Totally chuffed, I instantly joined PEN (NZSA) and have been a member since, through thick and thin, even thought most of my books have been published outside of New Zealand. Then I got a less welcome letter from the Inland Revenue, informing me that as my declared source of revenue was writing, the award was taxable. I eventually wrote a cheque. And basic tax rates were high, back then. So the eventual remuneration was very small.

That is one argument against monetary awards -- unlike winning a lottery like lotto, here in New Zealand awards won in the course of your declared occupation are taxable.

My solution is to remove the monetary component entirely. The three American awards I have received came without money attached, but have been hugely valuable in other respects. In a word, they look great on the curriculum vitae. What more could anyone want?

So, I would reduce the number of Montana awards to lend credibility to the authors and books that win. And I would remove any monetary component, so that the rewards were purely professional.

In a word, call me "Scrooge."

Comments welcomed.

http://beattiesbookblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-can-be-done-to-revitalise-montanas.html


(Photo of Bookman Beattie by Harvey Benge)

The demise of the newspaper book review?

There has been a lot of comment lately on both GalleyCat at mediabistro.com and on Bookman Beattie's blog about the possible impending demise of the newspaper book review. The latest, from Graham Beattie, is that there is a rumour flying around that three of New Zealand's major newspapers -- the Dominion Post of Wellington, the Christchurch Press, and the Waikato Times -- will be shifting their book review pages to a single supplement with "an international flavour", composed in Auckland.

He asks, "What can we do to express our anger and disappointment?" As of the latest count, he has had fifteen replies, all very interesting.

My own instant reaction was a very suspicious: "International flavour"? What the devil does that mean? This is echoed by one commenter, who hopes that this won't involve recycled overseas reviews of overseas publications.

Others nod wisely, saying, So that is why so many editors and subbies have been fired lately. (I didn't know that!)

Sue Green, the Dom's weekend magazine editor, assures everyone that the supplement won't necessarily replace the local review pages, as that will be up to the individual newspapers -- welcome news indeed.

However, what I really like is the fellow who prophesied that the printed review pages will be largely replaced by internet sites like Beattie's, where chosen books are reviewed at leisure.

As a reviewer myself, I have thoughts of my own on that. I was going to demonstrate my credentials by giving a link to my review of John Boyne's Mutiny on the Bounty, which was published prominently and grandly in today's Dominion Post, but when I went to the newspaper's website the review wasn't there! Do they (the Dom and other NZ newspapers) ever put book reviews onto the internet? I don't know, because I have never looked before. But there are none in the stuff.co.nz archives, so I strongly suspect they do not. This makes blogs like Beattie's all the more valuable. Another thing -- I don't believe that in over twenty years of newspaper book reviewing, anyone has ever stepped up to me, and said, "Hey, I read your review of such-and-such" -- not even offended authors. Yet, I've had a lot of comments on what I have penned on this site, young as this site may be. Another plus for internet reviewing.

So maybe the slow demise of the newspaper book review is not all bad news.

And if anyone asks me (and the Dom allows it), I'll post that review on this blog.

http://beattiesbookblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/stop-press-bad-news-on-book-review.html