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

nor is joan didion

also they spelled jonathan freedland's name wrong lol

In all honesty I could see this go Kavanaugh and a bunch of them go 'He did what? Ok, I did not know that...'

Freedland beginning to write for it -- which I think is quite recent -- was a really bad move

agreed, tho since the 80s new york media has a bit of a history of hiring unsufferably glib london-media lightweights for its entire UK coverage (here we briefly mourn the passing of the great mollie panter-downes, a briton of another age)

The letter, I have to say, reads like a pro forma loyalty round robin: “we deplore this turn of events”. I think it fairly likely that a significant proportion of the signers aren’t aware of all the details — the Slate interview, perhaps even the publisher’s account (which took way too long to come out, ideally it should have preceded and certainly should have been put out within an hour of the resignation announcements). They will have signed for a variety of reasons, including:
1: friendship and personal loyalty (e.g. Margalit co-wrote a book with Buruma)*
2: a p much knee-jerk (and in most circs entirely correct) sense that in a dispute they have deeper craft ties to the editor than the publisher, and shd back the one they work with against the big bad boss…
3: I hope not but some may be straightforwardly onside with the piece ghomeshi wrote!
4: some will feel that Buruma was brought in (as per the letter) to bring some new energy to NYRB’s contribution to public debates, so shouldn’t be sanctioned at the first whiff of cordite
5: harsh to come down after just one mistake

But it’s not one mistake, it’s three.

A: commissioning the piece
B: denying it the routine editorial procedure
C: that interview

In my opinion it’s B and C that sunk him. A by itself was bad judgment but salvageable. This is what I wrote a week ago and I stick by it (not least bcz I called some the facts abt the editing based just on reading the piece):

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 -- minimally -- 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.

Re A:
Buruma wasn’t hired for his years of editorial experience (he had none); nor to radically and experimentally shake up the world’s ideas of good editorial process (inasmuch as I understand “polder model”, it’s what an editorial process at a mag like NYRB will normally be, with Buruma declaring at that pre-appointment point that he will happily take advice from his experienced team).

No, he was hired as a celebrity intellectual and storied author, who the contributors can trust even as he re-injects some pizazz back to the coverage of the more controversial elements in present-day politics (predecessors Silver and Epstein’s first decade had been notably controversial: they put a grenade on the cover at some point in I think 1968, to flag a piece by Andrew Kopkind abt the student revolt). Buruma was I believe heavily involved in Dutch debates abt free speech (the Dutch-knowledgeable ilxors can correct me here? — my main source of info has been Wilders-fantype crackpots on twitter cheering IB’s current plight…)

So, as a commission, this matches up with the reasons he was brought in. His error isn’t toying with the idea, or looking some way into it — “let’s see the piece” — it’s what he did next.

Re B:
There are two reasons you put a piece into the usual process of your magazine editorial. One is to make it better — you make use of the varied thoughts and expertises of a number of people at a number of levels, from the spellcheck and fact-check desks on up. It turns it from “any old piece” to “a piece this magazine is publishing”: it becomes a collective work and in that work, much value is added. The second is — frankly — covering your arse: if you make a mistake, and everyone else on the team has signed off on it also, then it’s not purely yours to own. They can’t sack the whole staff (well, obviously they can and sadly we’ve seen just this on dozens of other titles in recent years, but the NYRB has surely set its institutional face against that culture).

Again, setting aside issues of content, this act was just so reckless! What did IB think was going to happen — he was publishing a highly controversial piece and shut out most of the staff to do so. Did he think no one would notice or voice displeasure? Why would the staff still have his back in this most arrogantly dismissive od circumstance? Who was the one other man who saw it? Was he literally just the spellcheck desk? (It slightly makes me wonder if there hadn’t already been run-ins and ructions with the support staff he was supposed to be polder-modelling with…)

Re C:
OK, in “YOU HAD ONE JOB” terms, IB’s job was NOT GIVING THAT FUCKING SLATE INTERVIEW. He is the public face of the magazine: he should not be so utterly easily first-time ambushable (I know Chotiner is a master at this; all the more reason to dodge the call until you have yr ducks in a row and — ifs — have the contents and the background of the piece at issue AT YOUR FINGERTIPS).

It’s such a stupid and bad interview that I actually have some sympathy for O.Nate’s point. There’s no good reason to assume anything said in it is well said: in other words, that he gets across what he actually meant, courtesy the various ridiculously damning pull-quotes people have made. Again though: his job is knowing what he makes in that situation and getting it across. He couldn’t; he’s out. True it’s not quite fair in the blurred portrait of the process he gives to argue that he deliberately lied: more accurate say he misled by omission — by failing to state that the usual editorial process had not taken place. (Repeating: why he thought the staff wd back him here is baffling to me: it’s their professionalism he’s basically allowing to be impugned, for his blunders.)

*Re signing these types of letter our of collegiate loyalty: it kind of happens A LOT and ppl get caught out when the person organising them is a fool or not entirely on there up-and-up (we don’t now who organised this, but IB himself will have said all their emails!) (which is why I’m interested who didn’t sign). In the Avitall Ronell case, a bunch of ppl who really should have known better signed a substantially more problematic letter in which they extended their knowledge of her public behaviour (which they approved) into assumptions about her behaviour in an private intimate context (which by definition they knew nothing of). This case isn’t that case (the public vs private dynamic is there but it’s very different): still, as we are repeated learning in this dismal time, this extension of indulgence is a fatally easy move to make in respect of those you have a lot of time for (with good reason) in other circumstances. “Their prose is persuasive and intelligent, they can’t be this much of a dick; I like our phone chats abt my work, he can’t have taken leave of his moral senses” and so on.

And all in the high-speed world of email (which as noted is not the world many of these writers grew up with).

I HAVE OPINIONS

(which i have filled full of typos for yr decoding pleasure)

Yeah, I can't help but think of the Avitall Ronell case.

This is really good: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/24/male-cultural-elite-blind-me-too-nyrb-ian-buruma

shorter me above, this multipart jeet heer thread lol (which i hadn't read when i posted):

1. So, this letter on behalf of Ian Buruma raises an interesting question but doesn't persuade because it fails to grapple with why Buruma was actually fired (or perhaps forced to quit). https://t.co/4c0ymp9BLu

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) September 26, 2018

here's the silvers/epstein "grenade" cover i mentioned (ie not a grenade but a molotov cocktail, and 1967 not 1968):
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DoBlT9WX0AA6T28.jpg

good issue! (i have not read it as an issue)

alfred brendel and marina warner are the names on there that cut me the most in case anyone's keeping score

did brendel say something other than signing the letter?

the only independent comment i've spotted so far from a signer -- not that i've been looking very hard -- was joyce carol oates on twitter going in HARD abt how bad the JG essay is

(in fact, having done that, she also goes on to say this will blow over -- like remnick/bannon -- bcz no lasting harm done and later, when proved wrong, to lament that it's too harsh sacking IB for just a single blunder)

i did not previously have a fully formed opinion of joyce carol oates -- prolific! enjoys boxing! -- but her twitter has convinced me that she is Bad

It is not too harsh firing someone for a single blunder when that blunder completely undermines a leader’s ability to lead their staff, as I’m certain happened here. I think that’s what the letter’s signatories might not be sensitive to. That trust won’t come back and the organization would sink slowly if Buruma didn’t exit quickly.

Enraging dipshit thread from NYRB signatory Harry Shearer below this tweet

If you're designated a "sexually violent predator", does that mean you can't hang around kids and feed them Jell-O any more? #AskingForAFriend

— Harry Shearer (@theharryshearer) September 25, 2018

the only independent comment i've spotted so far from a signer -- not that i've been looking very hard -- was joyce carol oates on twitter going in HARD abt how bad the JG essay is

Fintan O'Toole had a piece in The Irish TImes last week with his take

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-metoo-cannot-win-in-a-climate-of-fear-1.3639666

(tl, dr: The article was bad and Buruma "made mistakes' but he's a mate and we need editors who are willing to take risks)

I agree with a lot in that article, but nobody needs a man to explain how much leeway should be given to men before women are allowed to lose faith in them.

Many many XPs, but yes we need a Mollie Panter-Downes in the world again

I know this joke has been made approx 50 million times but: Fintan O'Tool

I guess its whether you think Buruma was taking a risk or trying to burn down the building.

I think it fairly likely that a significant proportion of the signers aren’t aware of all the details

Which, if true, is something given a lot of them aren't some rent-a-penny journo crying over getting yelled at on twitter but are able to churn out often considered thoughts of around 2-5K on a book, often covering a subject they've spent years thinking about. Maybe they'd take a pause and think about what they are actually signing.

this piece isn't quite as good as it could be -- it needed also to grapple with ballard tbh -- but the kicking that remnick gets pleases me, he is bad not good

lol i mean THIS PIECE: https://hmmdaily.com/2018/10/02/man-writer-against-nature/

(xp why do I keep typing "ponder" when I mean "polder") Do you think Remnick is a bad editor? Never read him much, but a lot of good writing (maybe mostly nonfiction) has been published during his time on top, whatever he actually had to do with it.

i'm no judge of the fiction as i barely read it: the cartoons seems trapped in a loop of sameness (the make-up-yr-own captions are almost always better): some of the arts is OK tho i HAAAAAAATE anthony lane: the long-read non-fiction reporting has highs (ronan farrow is so far a p good hire!) but i think the long-read non-fiction political commentary is patchy at best: jeffrey goldberg, george packer, jeffrey toobin, jon lee anderson -- an inadequate poor gaggle going back to the early 00s and iraq (toobin inadequate all the way back to the OJ trial tbh).

a friend on twitter who hadn't read a full copy for a few years picked a recent one up to read on a train and said it was entirely nervously obsessed with trump without being remotely insightful. which, ok, join the club in US media terms (on and off ilx haha) but i remember* when it stood well away from the lack and made something of that.

*bcz lol i am old, shawn 4evah

s/b pack but i've been wrestling with lacan half the day sorry

Anthony Lane is a miserable old lech who never met a turn of phrase he couldn't belabor into several painful paragraphs

Lane genuinely used to be good

not for a long time though

when, in the 70s?

…when he was apparently an adolescent? wow.

no he was bad from the get-go tho not as bad

Reportage, yeah: taking me deep or at least far into Yemen, Brazil, American Halls of Justice ( & related, incl. detention camps), for instance. Also Superfund sites, dark money, other related.

i like some of its younger crew of short commenters also: jia tolentino, osita nwanevu

(and to be fair to remnick tina brown hired anthony lane)

Sanneh still a bright spot. The Xtian rock piece was fun.

Yes. Also, the leftfield, for inst:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/08/the-comforting-fictions-of-dementia-care

...or else seemed to have reached a point at which the question of where they were was no longer important. GOAL.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/10/25/responses-to-reflections-from-a-hashtag/

no mark s. letter, no cred

it'll be the cover i'm sure of it

he's baaaaack

Buruma or Ghomeshi?

buruma, in the FT

i am reading this for some reason

it sucks and he sucks

without at all being aware of it "i am entirely incompetent and very out of my depth" still seems to be his line

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

― mark s, Thursday, September 20, 2018 10:39 PM (six months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my line is also unchanged

The picture of him in that piece is amazing.

"the age of outrage" -- better known as "the age of the unending self-own"

as you'd expect, this is good: https://hmmdaily.com/2019/04/01/ian-buruma-still-cant-talk-about-metoo/

I bought a copy of LITERARY REVIEW for the first time this week: an indulgence taking me away from LRB territory and into something easier and in some ways more wide-ranging.