American Pastoral? New TBR Goes For Cleaner, Funnier
A press release on our desktop this morning cemented some of the
NY Times Book Review changes discussed in recent
PW coverage and elsewhere. The new review will cover more "intellectual and historical titles" and yet also pay "more attention to commercial fiction, mysteries and romance novels." It also plans to increase the activity on its letters page and run an expanded bestseller list, which at the moment is only available on the Web. To make room for all of this, it will beef up editorial by 25% and cut the In Brief review section--all in the name of making
TBR more "magazine-like."
Just a few minutes after we saw this, the first issue featuring the section's new design landed on our desk, an issue which advanced some of these changes even if it hadn’t yet incorporated all of them.
For all the ballyhoo regarding layout, the section wastes little time in demanding judgment on its words. The first review begins, Eggers-like, on the front page. It's for the new Roth, which Paul Berman calls a "terrific political novel." (As a counter-factual history, the book is written "in a style his readers might never have predicted," while still maintaining Roth's stomping-ground dialogue. " 'You pulla the trig,' a kindly neighbor explains" to the Jewish working-class family in Newark trying to learn how to use a gun to defend itself.) The In Brief is gone. And 'New and Noteworthy Paperbacks' is replaced by something called Paperback Row, which appears to be basically the same thing with a new name. Ditto for Editors' choice (nee 'And Bear in Mind').
Everyone will no doubt have their own review of the
Review in the coming days, but the most accurate thing we think we could say about it is that it manages to be a lot more well-rounded and relevant while still not losing its essential quality of, well,
Times-ishness. There's a quippy, witty listing of book blogs that would not be out of place in the Mossified
New York, but also a strange dip into the archives of the
TBR List that tells of such things as the top fiction book on its first bestseller list many scores ago (it's Ellen Glasgow's
Vein of Iron, should you be wondering).
Back on the first count, the
Review refreshingly gives a two-page treatment to
America (The Book) , something that even a Stewart-esque imagination would have had trouble conceiving of under some of the section's previous editors. In the review, Tom Carson suggests, only half-jokingly, that the book be nominated for the history Pultizer. But as a result of the
Review's newfound topicality (patterned, one presumes, after the
New York Review of Books), the piece spends the first seven of its thirteen paragraphs discussing the Stewart phenomenon at large, and the review dissolves before it gets started with its contemplation of the show's "collegiate gallows humor" and that "the basic idea of Jewish comedy is toughness." (Humor is a theme here; in addition to Stewart and more wit in the reviews generally, there's a humor-book roundup that serves as a kind of taxonomy of funny.)
One note on the magazine-like format: It basically means an interspersal of bookish features amid the reviews, an undeniably consumer-friendly tweak. It's even the kind of change likely to make a longer list of publishers happy, since it means that on balance more books are getting mentioned. But in the long-run it will likely not be such cheerful news for publishers (or authors) accustomed to longer, single-title reviews or to those who connect sales or prestige to such dedicated coverage.
One change for which the re-design may draw unqualified celebration is, well, the design itself: Gone are the many of the outdated, simultaneously too-cute yet somehow too-boring illustrations, replaced by cleaner, larger and more colorful author photos. The entire section has a more spare look. You may even feel like you're not reading the
TBR. (Of course many of these changes, from the photos to the group reviews, have been initiated over the last several months; they just come across more starkly in the relaunch.)
For its most striking bit of color, though, you'll need to read Joe Queenan's deliciously evil review of A.J. Jacobs'
Know-It-All, in which Queenan calls Jacobs a "pedigreed simpleton" and says his "biggest problem isn't that he doesn't know much; it's that he doesn't realize how much educated people do know." Queenan calls one Jacobs mistake "criminally stupid, even for someone who has written for
Entertainment Weekly." If this is indicative of the section's new direction--stylish, informed, just a tiny bit over the top--we say, pulla the trig.
|
This article originally appeared in the September 28, 2004 issue of PW NewsLine. For more information about NewsLine, including a sample and subscription information, click here » |
