THE YEAR IN REVIEW - 2004
By Alex Good
January 4, 2005
The date says it all. I've been preparing a "Year in Review"
statement to run on December 31 for the last four years. But this year I
couldn't do it. Couldn't make the deadline. And that missed deadline is just the
beginning . . .
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
BookWorld was a quiet place in 2004. What happened to all the buzz? Oprah
came back, but only to push the classics. No blow-ups with the next Jonathan
Franzen. No new Harry Potter. No Lord of the Rings. No huge advances to
first-time novelists (at least none that received a lot of press, which is a
hopeful sign). No stirrings from the McSweeney's crowd. Winning the Man Booker
did nothing for Hollinghurt's The Line of Beauty, probably because of its
labeling as a "gay novel" (I think I was one of the first to rail
against this, here).
The fuss over the "five women from New York City" nominated for the
National Book Award fiction prize played out quickly, with scarcely anyone I
know now being able to remember who won. There were some interesting,
potentially significant, news stories - Google putting books online, Amazon
making more money from its electronics division than selling books - but these
had little to do with what people were actually writing.
It seems that a lot of the writing that was getting noticed was happening
online. Apparently this was the "Year of the Blog", so-called largely
because of the interest in American political blogs during the run-up to the
presidential election. Literary blogs were in the news a lot. (This recognition
by the mainstream media was - perversely, it seems to me - a point of pride to
many bloggers.) I'm still not sure what I think of the whole thing. On the one
hand, blogs are, by definition, parasitic. Their life blood is the stream of
news provided by the sources they link to and comment on. So there's really no
way for them to be truly alternative or independent. But they do provide a
valuable service, are sometimes very well written, and can be a lot of fun.
Goodreports.net is not a blog and never will be. I don't have the
time. Most of the blogs I read appear to be full-time jobs. I started writing
odd comments on the book industry several years ago, but didn't put much time
into it this year. This is mainly because I have a full-time day job that
doesn't include access to a computer, but it is also because of burn-out. If
anything, I think I despise the book industry more today than when I began six
years ago. So I'd like to spend more time just reviewing and less time
commenting on the cretins who run the show.
At the end of the day, this site is little more than a personal homepage. I
don't have any advertising. I'm just running it as a hobby. And I have to
prioritize. There's only so much I can get done. I think the best blogs/book
sites in the future will be the ones that evolve into general online literary
magazines. But that won't be happening here.
So while I think there were some really good things happening with the site
this year, like the Runaway Jury,
and especially the new Anthology
of readings, there were also some casualties. First among these has to be the Puffies,
which I just couldn't manage to get together this year. It will be back next
year (fingers crossed). In the meantime, out of the many worthy entries in 2004,
I think this little gem from Quentin Tarentino (appearing on Peter Biskind's Gods
and Monsters) pleased me the most:
Your book was so goddamn well written, I was like, I don't
want to know these things about these people, my heroes, but then I made the
mistake of leaving it by my bedside table, and it was like a bag of pot, with me
saying I'm not gonna smoke. But I was insatiable.
How many books in 2004 made you feel that way? I don't know if
anything could have topped it. Though David Quammen's declaration that Tree
was "as big as all life" might have come close.
Despite staggering through most of this year, traffic continued to go up.
Some things about the Internet remain a mystery. But I do find all the attention
flattering. And since I still enjoy reading, and writing about reading, I'm sure
I'll continue the game for at least another year (though I may take a lengthy
sabbatical at some point).
Now, with reference to the December Trivia Challenge, please note: Vera
Claythorne was not the last person to die on Indian Island. Where did so
many of you get such an idea? Did you read it somewhere on the Internet . . .
Best wishes for a safe and happy New Year,
Alex Good
