Topic 3: Under-reported Story of the Year

Michael: I don't know that that much has been overlooked this year: from Orhan Pamuk's bizarre legal troubles (for allegedly insulting his nation) to Google's scanning efforts to the many literary prize-winners, coverage has been decent, for the most part (a greater focus on Man Booker International Prize winner Ismail Kadare's work, rather than his person is among the few things I can complain about). It's the smaller stories that remain unreported - and the 'smaller' books, especially: too much review attention on the books with the big marketing budgets, too little on the obscurer stuff (inevitably including a good deal what little literature in translation gets published). The herd mentality (review the same books) is all the more surprising given the apparent explosion in the number of titles published. (I am somewhat surprised the Internet hasn't helped more in this regard, but only in the genre-niches do websites seem to really cover more than one finds in the print media.)

Robert: Given the attention Americans (must) pay to the escalating fluctuations of automobile fuel I am astounded that only one major American newspaper saw fit to review James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century (see here). What this book is not are the ravings  of a crackpot zealot - which might explain the deafening silence (the one exception noted above) with which Kunstler’s tome has been greeted. The New York Times Magazine did however have a cover feature on oil for which I will be happy to save you some money (access to it requires Times Select membership) by quoting Jim Kunstler’s remarks at his weblog Clusterfuck Nation (link):

Maass’s article is full of howling omissions and delusions. For one thing, Maass omits any serious reflection of the consequences of a global energy crisis, any specters of geopolitical blowback, or potential problems for America’s non-negotiable easy-motoring way of life. That omission grows out of the delusional assumption that some magical market mechanism will conjure up a menu of just-in-time replacements for the vanishing oil. These are referred to as "alternative technologies," a term that points to a more fundamental delusion now rampant among the public, namely the mistaken belief that technology and energy are the same thing, that they are interchangeable, that you can substitute one for the other. Out of oil? Get new technology .

Note to public: technology and energy are not the same things, and continuing to think that they are may place our civilization in jeopardy.

The bottom line of the Times Magazine article is that they are still not convinced that global peak oil is for real, or that we necessarily ought to be worried about it, with all that "alternative technology" banging around out there in the innovational ethers of the magical market. They bring a magisterial cluelessness to the issue - while the back pages of the magazine are devoted to hawking the glitziest high-end products of the suburban housing bubble.

Anyone interested in a longer peek at James Kunstler’s thesis and prose style may look at the article adapted for and published by Rolling Stone. By the way, I sent queries to a number of major city newspaper book editors, with whom I had cordial relations, asking why there were no reviews of The Long Emergency. Apparently I overestimated the cordiality of those relations, as none deigned to respond.

Alex: I have a paradoxical pick here. I could have put the whole Foetry controversy in the "Enough Already!" category, but I think part of it actually belongs here because, despite all of the coverage it got, there didn't seem to be a whole lot of interest in what, at heart, it was all about. I still think there's a lot to be uncovered with regard to literary networking and the politics of prizes and publishing. But it's a subject that, for some reason, most people close to the Beast want to avoid.