Book Reviews? LRB vs the failing New York Review of Books vs ... ?

*Darryl *Pinckney

also: i liked it more when i didn't live in new york. when i lived in mitteleuropa it felt like they might know lots of things i didn't, but it seemed more obviously out of touch when i moved to NYC and had more direct knowledge of the culture/institutions it covers.

Well, look at that...

This is certainly an opportunity for them to re-think the mag and have a more considered approach to who takes over the editorship (I think in large part Buruma was named because he was there and regularly contributing for so long).

I think it would be swell if they went back to two editors and perhaps opted to not continue only under the helm of an older white guy. I don't know if I'm optimistic this will be the case, but you never know...I think they are self-aware enough, like the Paris Review was, not to do it but, you never know.

Note: the Brixton Review of Books doesn't seem to have any content online?

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 19 September 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I know its very small, only 2/3 issues and I've only seen it sold in our local 2nd hand bookshop lol.

I pretty much read the NYROB for Elizabeth Drew.

i was always a month or three behind reading them. the ability of their US politics writers to make predictions that, in the time it took me to get around to reading the article, turned out to be laughably wrong was notable. i'm sure i'd feel the same way about other politics writing if i read it on a 3 month delay. but the tone was so above the fray that i kind of felt/feel they should do a better job than the news.

Can believe that although iirc Michael Tomasky was dispassionately assessing Trump's chances and wasn't discounting him.

I think these two papers are not much better than the general media in terms of analysis and prediction (trying to think of Adam Shatz (writing for the LRB) on Egypt but I'm too exhausted to check and assess).

This is all happening while two new magazines have launched this week in this island of ours. Centre-right Drugstore Culture and democratic socialist Tribune.

It seems puzzling to me that someone should publish an essay, presumably after lots of discussion, copy-editing, official agreement

i don't know the set-up at the nyrb but i think it unlikely -- and have never imagined -- that there were people senior to IB that he generally had to clear content with: even given his plan to "democratise" that mookieproof cites, he would have been the moral, intellectual and aesthetic conscience and the buck would stop with him

(at least this is what i'd guess: not all publications work like this but it is normally what "editor in chief" means)

in the slate piece he said it had been discussed with his editorial staff and some had said no: but then it was decided and everyone went along -- i forget the exact words but this could well have meant that his staff, or anyway some of them, strongly demurred, and he put his foot down and they acknowledged force majeure and went off to do their jobs muttering to themselves "on yr head be it"

it hadn't -- in my judgment -- been edited, beyond routine proofing for spelling and grammar: to be publishable at all in the context buruma claimed for it in the slate interview it need two or three more serious rewrites and rethinks, with tough editorial notes requiring a whole bunch of stuff (like -- minmally -- accurate descriptions from ghomeshi of what he'd been a accused of!) but clearly none of that had been done

who can say -- there would have been a furore either way -- but i suspect what truly sunk him was the interview, which was jaw-dropping to the point of being weird. (this is what i wrote on the other thread, to save retyping it all):

it's one thing a good editor defending running a strong piece of writing that argues a very bad political line (perhaps even an evil one?): but here we have a self-confessedly* bad editor NOT really defending an eye-stretchingly BAD piece of writing arguing nothing more than he jian ghomeshi is the real victim here.

*buruma stating in public that the facts in the case are "not my concern" undermines all his staff and all his writers, and (obviously) spits in the face of his readers, who have the absolutely right to expect otherwise. he might as well have said "i am entirely incompetent and very out of my depth." if he doesn't resign pretty quickly it will destroy the magazine i think.

my guess is the revolt -- and the demand for his resignation -- came from below not above: editorial staff maybe (tho they had -- so he said -- signed off on it) but much more than that, other contributors threatening to walk, and of course readers

this is the first time i've ever actually posted an angry letter or email demanding someone resign, so this is a gratifyingly quick result! maybe i should write more! (obviously i choose to believe mine is the one that did the trick, it was 🔥 🔥 🔥

The NYRB is for people who think Colm Toibin is a good critic.
er..the people at the LRB think so:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/colm-toibin

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, September 18, 2018 1:06 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha i was gonna say

i also wrote an email, as did at least a couple other ilxors. i suspect they got a lot more reader feedback than they're used to

I’m looking forward to the Apology Issue

they will run my email on the cover i expect

i wanna read everyone's angry emails tbh

Colm Toibin is a poor critic? News to me!

nyrb ppl think he's good, lrb ppl think he's bad: it's like melody maker versus nme in the late 80s, and grebo

i wanna read everyone's angry emails tbh

― macropuente (map), Wednesday, September 19, 2018 6:04 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would buy this issue

I'm reading Toibin's review of the Gunn collection and so far it's not bad. I've liked several of his novels and have never minded his criticism.

nyrb ppl think he's good, lrb ppl think he's bad: it's like melody maker versus nme in the late 80s, and grebo

― mark s, Wednesday, September 19, 2018 6:08 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in what way do lrb people think he’s bad? he’s in like every other issue

I don't like the Grenfell piece, but I don't think it represents the political stance of the whole LRB (certainly not all of its contributors) -- more the political stance of its author.

O'Hagan is one of the LRB's 17 million contributing editors, who as far as I can see can publish whatever they like.

That NYRB issue hasn't even been published yet: I wonder if they'll actually run the article that blew up in their faces.

Interview with Buruma:

‘I am embroiled in a big scandal, in the middle of storm on social media,’ said Ian Buruma on the phone from New York. ‘It is rather ironic: as editor of The New York Review of Books I published a theme issue about #MeToo-offenders who had not been convicted in a court of law but by social media. And now I myself am publicly pilloried.’

really makes you think

it's a pity he was a man

Twitter runs the NYRB now.

new editors: shanley and the helldude

Flopson: yes, I know that Colm Toibin writes a lot in the LRB. I have said this twice on this thread. That is one reason that I said that my original comment was deliberately glib. The fact that he writes in the LRB is also the reason I have read loads of his essays, and think he is a quite bad and extremely overrated essayist.

Nonetheless, I think that Mark S's joke also has something to it -- I think that CT *is* more respected in the US than the UK. He works there, and anecdotally I have met American scholars who think he is wonderful and couldn't believe I didn't think the same.

The question re whether he is actually good or bad, in any individual's view here, should probably better be discussed on another thread. I think I have probably already said what I thought about it somewhere on this board.

Despite my typical great frustration with his essays I did read his book on Bishop. I'm not sure now if I thought it was better than the essays.

I have read two of his novels - I think they would need separate judgement.

It would be a pretty amazing own of Buruma by the disgruntled members of his former staff if the next issue was indeed composed entirely of the angry letters/emails and, of course, tweets of the last few days.

As a reward for making them see sense on this NYRB should commission mark s to review the dril book.

Update, September 20 at 9:36 a.m.: Buruma spoke briefly about his departure to the Dutch outlet Vrij Nederland, saying that he has “been convicted on Twitter, without any due process.” He also claims that he resigned from the position and that university presses, who advertise in the NYRB, were threatening a boycott because they feared adverse campus reactions to the Ghomeshi article.

It’s not a trial, dipshit!

The blaming of the college kids is such a giveaway.

oh noes i was convicted on twitter just for being a shithead

(also the magazine would have lost a fuckton of revenue had i stayed on but waaaah social media)

idk how many college kids are aware of the NYRB enough to pressure university presses -- i'd guess the presses were more scared of a faculty response

(if any of that part is even true)

this thread is interesting but buruma doesn't seem like a dutch guy through and through.

his behavior is more simply explained by the fact that he is an old man and the apparent cultural consequences of polder model sound a lot like what you see everywhere else.

you remember my writings, discussions, rants, and other assorted peeves I got with Dutch media's mechanism of "debate"? Buruma, a Dutch guy through and through, tried to polder model sexual abuse and now has to contend with the fact that it is not an acceptable approach https://t.co/d6O4WOdgy6

— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) September 19, 2018

how would "campus kids" even stage a boycott of university presses?

(lol except by not doing the reading i guess, a boycott without a discernible effect in many cases amirite?)

(sidebar: i love the word "polder" and the various dutch concepts that supposedly arise from it)

w/Flavia there are no simple explanations (one of the best things about her).

I was quite interested recently to find POLDER as a term within SF criticism.

Link please, if possible

if "polder" does not appear somewhere in a Fall song I will eat someone's hat

A Polder Lover etc.

James Redd:

http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=polder

doomed like the flying dutchman forever to sail the world's media, on his forehead a post-it note reading "dick" which everyone can see but him: the ian buruma story

his behavior is more simply explained by the fact that he is an old man and the apparent cultural consequences of polder model sound a lot like what you see everywhere else.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, September 20, 2018 5:16 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^ this.

See a lot of Dutch13s trying to appropriate what happened to try and explain this happened because he is Dutch. There's a black hole at the heart of the polder model, it has been used for eternity to cover things up or smooth things (hello racism) over. This particular case though seems reaching... He's an old white man, that's p much it in this instance imo.

very enterprisingly the NYRB, now that it has my email -- thx to me sending the message that toppled IB -- has begun spamming me with trailers for pieces not by jian ghomeshi

(i don't really mind this, i do think it's funny)

A publisher who once threatened me with legal action also simultaneously added me to their mailing list

Just got my digital copy of the NYRB: it has the offending article, no angry letters, and lists Buruma as editor, so no last-minute changes to this edition.

Posted in the LRB thread, but figured I'd also share here - one of the nice things the LRB does which I don't think the NYRB does (?) are publish 10K+ word essays/reviews.

I haven't finished this one from the new issue, but so far this is very moving and powerful.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n18/tom-crewe/here-was-a-plague

nyrb/buruma update, posted in the weinstein thread here (in case anyone missed it): Weinsteins step down as Miramax CEOs

"The article was shown to only one male editor. Most members of the staff (including six female members of staff...) were excluded from the substantial editorial process”
^^^so much for the polder model!!

1/ Just received email of letter from 110 NYRB contributors protesting firing of Ian Buruma “His dismissal in these circumstances strikes us as an abandonment of the central mission of the Review, which is the free exploration of ideas.” pic.twitter.com/XI84Fkwrob

— Cara Buckley (@caraNYT) September 25, 2018

Even as a long-term fan, I was beginning to find Patricia Lockwood insufferable in the LRB, but her piece on Nabokov in the new issue is simply delightful.

I ended up sorta logging boring reactions to my read of the Charles Rosen archive (with links to the relevant pieces)

Terrific piece on Burton and 17th century prose, time to chase protestants:https://t.co/tMURjGOVXR

— non consumiamo marx (@xyzzzz__) October 26, 2020

Are you still able to read NYRB pieces? For some reason I can't log on..

Is it really the “New York Review of Each Other’s Books”?

short answer: yes

Oh my God? https://t.co/cMhQTen7ne pic.twitter.com/7b8yYqnz7p

— Brandon (@blgtylr) May 20, 2023

🙃🙃🙃