Goodreports News Archive 6

July - December 2002

December 14/02: The Israel Rules

A new book written by a 15-year-old girl living in Italy is drawing sharp criticism from Jewish leaders worldwide.

According to the New York Times, Dream of Palestine "dwells on the experiences of Palestinian young men caught up in the intifada against Israel, describes the mounting frustration and angry reaction of Palestinians to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and to Israeli military reprisals against Palestinian rebels and communities." Jewish organizations claim that it promotes anti-Semitism and glorifies Palestinian suicide bombers. Consideration is being given to banning the book in France.

In Canada, however, the book has already been withdrawn. As reported this week, the publisher's branch office in Montreal is "so far the only company in the world to respond" to the demands of the book's critics.

As I have had occasion to remark many times over the years, Canada's commitment to free speech is probably the weakest of any Western nation. The haste with which this decision was made is just one more indication of how very chilly the climate is up here. I am appalled.

I have also already made it clear that, in my opinion, books like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion should not be banned (see here), and that Heather Reisman's decision to remove Mein Kampf from Chapters/Indigo stores is indefensible (see here). I suppose this will brand me in some circles as an anti-Semite, but I think these books have a significance that outweighs any harm they may do. I also think the notion of hate speech is hard to apply to what are historical artifacts. On the same principle I can still buy Birth of a Nation on DVD at any Chapters store. Free speech doesn't even come into it.

Now we have this book. Is it hate speech that "extols and promotes suicide bombings and other acts of mayhem" (a quote from Leo Adler of the Toronto-based Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies)? Well, first off, it's a novel. As a spokesman for the Italian publisher of Dream of Palestine puts it, "She [the author, Randa Ghazy] always says that it's a story, a point of view, not a right one, not a wrong one." In other words, it's a fictional presentation of a particular perspective. Is attempting to give expression to that perspective wrong in itself? One can only assume it is, and that some subjects are simply taboo. Example: Apparently critics are upset because one character in the book refers to Jews as a "cursed people." Of course that's wrong, but are the same critics saying that no Palestinians feel that way? And if such feelings are a reality, why can't a writer express them? How would you write a book about Palestinian suicide bombers? Would you describe them sitting around a table strapping explosives to their bodies saying things like "I really respect and admire the Jewish people, which only makes this heinous act more regrettable"?

No, I don't think you would. You'd be more likely to consider them to be generic Arab terrorists stuck in the Dark Ages worshipping a backward and "stupid" religion. And, if you were Michel Houellebecq, you would be properly cleared of promoting hate by a French court. Why the double standard? Is censorship part of the new War on Terrorism? Are these the Israel Rules, where any criticism of Israeli policy or attempt to express other points of view is interpreted as anti-Semitism and subject to immediate state and corporate censorship? Such rules are totally irrational and reject the very values that a healthy literary culture should promote. If we can put up with Thomas Friedman we should be able to handle Randa Ghazy. I'm just afraid we're losing the middle ground.

December 7/02: Where Is the Love?

In a column titled "Canada takes the prize at squashing exellence," Sandra Martin argues that "Canada is still so neurotic about its identity that its authors have to win awards abroad before they are recognized at home."

This "tallest poppy" syndrome is a tried-and-true Canadian complaint. Of course the fact that many Canadian artists make it big somewhere else simply reflects the reality of the entertainment industry. But Martin has a specific axe to grind when it comes to Canadian authors who win big international literary prizes but don't do as well at home. There are a few things I would say in response.

First of all, Martin overstates her case. It is not true that Canadian authors aren't appreciated in Canada. As this country's biggest CanLit cheerleader, Ms. Martin might be expected to know this. We did not trip "over ourselves to point out that none of the three alleged Canadians [nominated for the Man Booker Prize this year] had actually been born here." The media picked up on this because it was an interesting side angle on a story that was otherwise non-stop chest-thumping (it was the Globe and Mail that called this CanLit's new "golden age"). The books themselves were all well reviewed. I don't remember anyone picking on Rohinton Mistry, Yann Martel, or Carol Shields. So since when have any of these writers failed to receive "a semblance of the respect they are due"? What does Martin want? A mountain named after Carol Shields? Yann Martel's face on a 48¢ stamp? I suppose it can still be arranged.

Next we have this interesting observation:

"We parade our multiculturalism - but our posturing cannot camouflage our grudging embrace of the best our culture produces. In fact, we actually build in administrative biases to encourage mediocrity in the Governor-General's literary awards, supposedly Canada's highest national honours."

This is quite an accusation. Systemic discrimination! Why, just look at all those people who didn't like The Polished Hoe!

But wait a second, that was Sandra Martin . . .

Then there's the mediocrity. It's terrible. In fact, it's so bad Martin can't name a single book that made the G-G shortlist that she thought was mediocre.

Please. Anyone can complain about all of the books that didn't make the shortlist for a literary prize. So what? Unless you're going to come out and say what should not have been on the shortlist, you don't have a point. As a cheerleader, Ms. Martin is obviously trying hard to work the crowd. But while it would be nice if everyone could get the respect they are due (or at least a semblance thereof), there is only so much love to go around.

Literary prizes are basically a form of advertising. But studies done in recent years have shown that they don't work the same for everyone. While winning a big prize can give instant visibility to a relatively unknown author from a small press, it doesn't do anything to help established names. Authors like Carol Shields and Margaret Atwood are going to be bestsellers anyway. Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Last Crossing is doing well despite not even making the shortlist for the G-G or the Giller Prize. So should we be upset that the system is helping authors like Austin Clarke and the very-nearly-squashed Gloria Sawai?

Apparently we should. In her elliptical, non-specific way Martin hints that this was a dismal year and that the jury choices didn't make sense. Improvements must be made "if we are to stop pandering to the masses at the expense of the excellence we are supposedly rewarding."

This is pure humbug. How does ignoring the bestseller list and trying to promote lesser known Canadian authors constitute "pandering to the masses"? Limiting the number of submissions and using "recognized experts" to vet the "pile" isn't going to help those authors who are genuinely not getting the respect and attention they are due.

November 30/02: The Short-Attention-Span List

A literary tempest has arisen over comments made by editor and columnist Michael Kinsley regarding his duties as a member of this year's jury for the National Book Awards (non-fiction).

In an essay entitled "Curse You, Robert Caro," Kinsey took a tongue-in-cheek ("don't expect total honesty" he warns) attitude to the whole business. Confessing his "ignoble" motives for getting involved with the prize in the first place (vanity and wanting some free books), he realizes the mess he has gotten into when the books begin to arrive. Apparently there were 402 entries. Since was too much for a busy man like Kinsley to get through, he claims to have winnowed the list down to 50 titles "without cracking a spine." This involved putting aside "any fuddy-duddy notion of not judging a book by its cover, or at least by its title." Did he even read all of the eventual winner, Robert Caro's 1,200-page bio of Lyndon Johnson, Master of the Senate? Said Kinsley, "I'll never tell."

It's hard to tell just how serious Kinsley was in all of this. One of his fellow jury-members, however, wasn't laughing. Christopher Merrill promptly responded with his own column, saying that Kinsley had "demeaned not only the hard work of his fellow judges, but also the winner." But Merrill, who chaired the non-fiction panel, also went on to remark that he had not read every page of every book, but only "enough of each book to know whether it merited further consideration." And how much would that be? For Kinsley, "Sometimes . . . none at all." He also adds, "Just to be clear, I did read the five finalists, including at least turning every page of the Caro."

Kinsley's initial column was refreshingly honest. No reasonable person has time to read 402 books on a deadline. Unfortunately, for him, the joke is pushed a little too far. Exactly how did he narrow the field, and how many of the 402 entries did he give a chance? Even Merrill admits that he didn't read all of the books, but only "enough" of each. What on earth does that mean? Are literary prize juries to treat books like agents handling screenplays, prepared to only read the first ten pages (at most)? What if it gets better? And what does Kinsley mean when he says that sometimes he didn't have to read any of a book to know it didn't merit further consideration? And does "turning every page" of a book mean that he did or didn't read every page of the winner?

Several years ago an American legal scholar suggested that instead of pretending to be objective administrators of the law, judges should write decisions involving lengthy self-analyses that would explain how they really felt about the cases before them. That idea never got off the ground, but I've always wondered if something similar might work for literary prizes. I recently found out about a new Canadian literary prize sponsored by a local bookstore. Words Worth Books in Kitchener has announced the Words Worthy Award "to highlight what the other lists missed." In the press release we find the following: "The politics of who sits on the judges’ panels and how they choose the winners leaves the whole process 'under a cloud'." I like the idea of clearing up the mystery of how winners are chosen. If the rumours I've been hearing about the Giller Prize deliberations this year are any indication, this could be interesting! Let's find out who really liked The Polished Hoe!

But I wonder how far the Words Worthy jury will go. Will we find out if someone was constantly being interrupted by telemarketers while trying to read Unless? Or that they got a speeding ticket the day they cracked open The Last Crossing? And what about weightier considerations? The fact is, every reader comes to a book with different levels and directions of bias. As a guy, I don't give "chick-lit" a chance. I know I'll never be tempted by Bridget Jones's Diary or any of its offspring. I guess this is being unfair, but it's also being realistic. By the time you reach a certain age you can be pretty sure you know what you like. I can't count the number of people who have e-mailed me in the past year recommending Life of Pi, but while I'll bet it's a great book (it has tremendous word of mouth), it just doesn't sound like anything I'd be interested in. There, I said it.

But if I was on the jury I'd have to say . . .

November 24/02: Toronto on Toronto, Again

Philip Marchand, literary columnist for the Toronto Star, has uncovered an interesting fact about Canada's big literary awards for fiction. None of the books shortlisted this year for the Giller Prize or Governor General's Awards was set in Toronto, Canada's largest city. In fact, "None of the 10 Giller Prize-winning novels has ever been set in Toronto. As far as the Governor General's Awards are concerned, you have to go back to 1963, when the prize went to Hugh Garner's Best Stories to find a winning book of fiction set in Toronto."

Marchand provides the obvious reason for this: "Everybody hates Toronto." He then enters into a spirited defence of his town.

The debate over whether Canadian culture suffers from too much Toronto or not enough is an old one. Marchand - who is, after all, writing for a Toronto newspaper - is a booster. For him Toronto is "a great city, a fascinating city, and the best city in Canada for anyone who likes the arts to live in." There are others who would disagree. I must say that I lived in Toronto for six years and this was never my impression. I found it, in brief, to be unbearably depressing, and was very happy to get out.

But Marchand does have a point. Where are our great Toronto novels? And why aren't the Toronto novels that are being written being recognized? Is it because the city itself lacks character?

The question of a city's literary "character" is complex. It's usually assumed that a city has to have a distinctive character of its own in order for that character to be expressed in its art. But this may be putting the cart before the horse. In Joyce's manuscript Stephen Hero the young artist Stephen Dedalus has this to say of the Catholic church: "The Church is made by me and my like - her services, legends, practices, paintings, music, traditions. These her artists gave her. They made her what she is." In much the same way, a city's character is made by its artists. This is true even beyond what is meant when we speak, as Marchand does, of Dickens's London or Balzac's Paris.

When we complain that Toronto has no character, we are thus referring, at least in part, to a failure of its art. (Marchand goes on to say that Toronto's lack of character may be a plus - "We have no great 'identity' as a city, it is true, but identities are straitjackets as well as supports" - but this sounds like a fudge.) Artists haven't made Toronto. Its character remains vulgar wannabe-ism, a magnification of our national anxiety over appearing "world class" in American eyes. It desperately wants to be Canada's New York (to complement Vancouver, a city that desperately wants to be Canada's L.A.). What real artist would be interested in such a terminally second-rate and imitative (Marchand: alertly adaptable) cultural identity?

In the rest of his column, Marchand suggests two things that make Toronto "a place of extraordinary sophistication and energy." The first is "the density of its information and media environment":

"We have complete access to American media and sources of information - but we also have, on top of that, our own networks of imagery and information, our own perspectives, our own commentary in both print and broadcast media. The extent and depth of that commentary is remarkable - the existence of four daily newspapers is just one indication of it."

I have to wonder if Marchand is being serious. In a wired world, with satellite dishes sprouting from every suburban rooftop, the density of the information and media environment is something that can be experienced, and sometimes has to be endured, by everyone, no matter where they live. Who doesn't have complete access to American media? Furthermore, I would argue that the "perspectives" Marchand refers to are not even Toronto perspectives, but simply media perspectives. And what the media talk about is not a geographical place, but that same information and media environment - the only constituency they can be said to represent or have any interest in.

"The second thing is our multicultural diversity, our patchwork of different ethnic groups. No other city, as we are often reminded, has quite such a patchwork, or mosaic, in relation to our population."

The argument that Toronto's multiculturalism should be a stimulus to civic self-expression is pretty flimsy. Basically it's the politically-correct inverse of the now disreputable notion that a national or local culture expresses the values of a coherent community with a unified belief system. They are both interesting theories.

Defenders of Toronto as Canada's capital of culture fail to convince. Toronto is where the money is, where the national media are headquartered, and where the entertainment-industrial complex does its deals. In this sense it is at the centre of things. People go there to make it: to promote themselves and/or be promoted. And while, creatively, it has a lot going on, there is really nothing very different in kind or even degree than many Canadian cities, including my own, can boast of.

And this is what really gets me about what can only be described as Toronto's provincialism. As already noted, Marchand thinks Toronto is "the best city in Canada for anyone [anyone!] who likes the arts to live in." Mainly this is because of the "culturally charged atmosphere and [the] degree of mental stimulation that I think exceeds American cities" (note: not other Canadian cities; they obviously don't measure up). This culturally charged atmosphere and mental stimulation even takes precedence over cultural institutions like museums and opera houses, so what we are talking about is very much a bare intellectual milieu:

"I lived in Vancouver during the '80s and I have fond memories of the sea wall around Stanley Park and the ferry to Salt Spring Island and some splendid people, but when I returned to Toronto I felt I was going, culturally speaking, from a high school to a university. It was as if there were, in Toronto, an infinite number of lounges and cafés and darkened rooms where people with interesting things to say could mill about and talk."

Not cultural institutions. Not a rich tradition of creative accomplishment. Not a character or an identity. Not an appealing natural environment or even an attractive downtown. Simply this: A place where people with interesting things to say can mill about and talk. Marchand is far from the first Toronto writer to make this his city's great claim to cultural and intellectual pre-eminence. I have heard it repeated many times. There are variations, but the bottom line is always the same:

Toronto is the only place in Canada where people have anything interesting to say.

Torontonians are baffled. They are so much smarter, more talented, more creative, more refined, than anyone else in Canada - why doesn't the rest of the country just accept it? Resistance is futile and absurd. Obviously the only really cultivated, free-wheeling intellectual discussions going on at any time, all across Canada, are being held in Toronto cafes! At least, that's the only place they're reported as occurring. And after all, where else would such conversations be possible?

A great Toronto novel may come into being some day, but I doubt it. Not only is the novel in decline, so is the city itself. And the fact is, most people today don't live in cities. They live in suburbs. The idea of a downtown centre the cultural life of which means something to people is passé. What we have instead is a virtual city, which is a metaphor made real for the Toronto-centric national media. Can Toronto writers be blamed for not writing books about life in their faux-metropolis? They'll have to find it first.

November 8/02: Political Pot-pourri

BookWorld can be political.

On Tuesday night Austin Clarke won the Giller Prize for his novel The Polished Hoe. I haven't read it (in fact, I hadn't read any of the nominees), in part because I had been warned that it was unreadable. This was a feeling shared by many. In a panel appearing in the Globe and Mail the day of the Giller it was the one novel nominated that nobody seemed to care for, and was quickly dismissed as a possible winner. On a similar panel presented by BookTelevision last month host Daniel Richler recalls that not one of his four panelists liked the book. Indeed, "they disliked it." When even Bronwyn Drainie is against you, and when one of the only voices in your favour is that of T. J. Rigelhof, an insensible crank whose critical opinions seem to be growing more perverse every week, you know you're in trouble.

None of this would matter if the specter of political correctness hadn't been haunting the Giller festivities. Austin Clarke is a black man and The Polished Hoe a novel dealing with slavery. Were the Giller judges just trying to do the right thing? Perish the thought! Daniel Richler, quoted in the Globe is "concerned that Giller observers not look at its win as the politically correct decision." "Fuelling the 'p.-c.-ness' aspect," he says, "is really an insult to Clarke, I think."

Well, I think so too - but in the odds-making for both the Booker and Giller nobody hesitated to call Carol Shields a "sentimental" favourite because she is dying of breast cancer and not expected to write another book. Is this any less cynical, or insulting, than suggesting Clarke won because he is black?

Another story with a political angle this week has allegations of plagiarism being leveled at Yann Martel. A 1981 novella entitled Max and the Cats by Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar features a young man adrift in a lifeboat with a panther. Martel's Life of Pi, which just won the Booker Prize, has a young man adrift in a lifeboat with a tiger.

Martel has never made any secret of having used Scliar's story as the germ of his own novel, though he also says his only acquaintance with Max and the Cats came through the form of a now hard-to-locate book review. In an interview with the New York Times, however, Scliar objects to Martel's having used the idea without informing him, and goes on to say that "an idea is intellectual property." In Brazil, where Scliar is a prominent literary figure, outrage is also being expressed over what is perceived to be "just one more example of their culture's being expropriated by outsiders without proper credit given." Such cultural plundering has been suggested in cases ranging from Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca to Rod Stewart's Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?

While I accept Martel's explanation of his innocent borrowing, and don't put much stock in Scliar's claim to intellectual property rights, I can understand the nativist sentiment. The point is, nobody who reads the New York Times or the Globe and Mail cares whether Scliar's book was any good for the simple reason that it wasn't first published in English. Martel's Canadian editor says that no one would have noticed the resemblance between the two books if Martel hadn't acknowledged it himself. Isn't this a rather extreme expression of cultural arrogance? It's the same process we see endlessly repeated as Hollywood re-makes great foreign films into shallow imitations that are praised for their boldness while the originals are scarcely mentioned (the American re-make of the Norwegian film Insomnia being the most recent example). There is nothing wrong with borrowing or, better yet in Eliot's famous quip, stealing from other writers. There is something unseemly about the blindness that accompanies our cultural imperialism.

Our final segment in this literary-political pot-pourri comes courtesy of Rohinton Mistry. Earlier this week Mistry cut his American book tour short after complaining of being harassed in U.S. airports by officials who were "profiling" him as a terrorist.

I applaud Mistry for taking this step. And I fear what it has to say about what is happening to our friends to the south.

I will avoid a political rant. I will, however, offer the opinion that the enthusiasm for radicalism in the U.S. today is almost entirely the product of mythology gone mad for blood. The so-called "liberal" media is mostly to blame for the current climate of extremism: presenting war, terror and criminality as mere entertainment, without moral or social context. "America fights back" became the catchy tag-line for the inexplicable, and ultimately pointless, invasion of Afghanistan, while the improbable title of "wartime president" was bestowed upon George W. Bush. Was there no one outside of the alternative media fringe who found all of this to be dangerous and absurd? Where was the debate?

Books are a big part of this media onslaught. And it is only the popular success of such anti-establishment authors as Michael Moore and Gore Vidal (as careless as they can sometimes be) that gives some hope for an eventual return to sanity. Give them credit: At least they are a critical, questioning voice! There is certainly little to be expected now from the embarrassing efforts of former comrades Amis and Hitchens to outdo each other in embracing Big Brother.

Why can't Mistry get on a plane in the United States without being publicly humiliated? Perhaps our long run of peace and prosperity finally became just a little too dull. Ideological extremism must come as an intoxicating rush to citizens bombarded by celebrations of the "greatest generation" (and thanks to Stephen Ambrose for that mythology). The Apocalypse is eagerly anticipated by a public whose bestselling novels are Christian thrillers of the Rapture. Before things go any further, we should heed the warning of historian Michael Burleigh:

"Our lives may be more boring than those who lived in apocalyptic times, but being bored is greatly preferable to being dead because of some ideological fantasy."

October 19/02: Booker Betting Suspended

Betting on Britain's Man Booker Prize has been suspended in the wake of what may have been an accidental disclosure that Yann Martel's Life of Pi had already been picked as the winner. The Booker people claim the mystery announcement, which appeared on the Booker Web-site, was a mistake.

Betting on the Booker has always been part and parcel of its hype. As a recent Guardian column praising its founder, Martyn Goff, has it, the prize was originally conceived as a "literary Derby." One suspects, however, that this latest headline is only another publicity stunt (didn't something like this happen with Survivor?). As far as Yann Martel is concerned, it all must seem confusing. I would have thought he was a front runner given the tip of the hat made in the last rumblings to come from the Booker judges (see below), regarding "pompous, portentous, and pretentious fiction." Now a Booker spokeswoman has this to say about the "leak": "The judges haven't met yet. I can guarantee that this isn't the actual result. There are six draft press releases for each of the shortlisted books and this is one of them."

She can guarantee that this isn't the actual result? How is that possible? And doesn't it mean that Martel didn't/won't win?

At least all the publicity will be doing him some good. It always helps an author to get his or her name out there. In a news story posted on the BBC Web-site earlier this month the Booker short list was said to contain one "Ann Martel."

September 27/02: Booker Goes Canadian

Three of the six books shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize are by Canadian authors.

While I take a dim view of literary prizes, this is still happy news. As Philip Marchand notes, none of the authors (Carol Shields, Rohinton Mistry, Yann Martel) was actually born in Canada, but who's checking passports? Slightly more troubling, however, is the fact that the two previous Canadian Booker winners - Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood - won for two truly terrible books (The English Patient and The Blind Assassin). There is something a little deflating in this. But . . . times may be changing!

With the announcement of this year's shortlist the Booker committee also passed a "fatwa" on "pompous, portentous, and pretentious fiction." Booker chairwoman Lisa Jardine's declares that this is "the beginning of a new era." Booker judges even appealed to publishers to start sending them some "funny" books for a change.

Attacks on the pretentiousness of today's literary fiction are becoming increasingly popular. And, in my opinion, they are well deserved. Still, it is hard to tell just what the Booker's "radical departure from convention" means. For one thing, this is the same Lisa Jardine who earlier this year made the remark that Commonwealth fiction couldn't stand up to the best American writing. This was in response to threats from the Booker's new ownership that the prize needed to heighten its visibility. Is this also what's behind the drive for "funnier" books? Is funny the opposite of pretentious? I wouldn't have thought so. I'm all for less pretentious books, but serious novels dealing with important themes can be gripping reads too.

Finally, something should be said about the Globe and Mail's response to the announcement. Here it is:

"Yesterday's announcement that three of the six finalists for the Booker Prize are Canadian was just the latest instalment in the stunning apotheosis of Canadian writing that has occurred in the past two decades. For some, all that's needed now is a Nobel victory to put the country inarguably in the pantheon of the world's great literatures."

For some? Is the author of this piece (one James Adams) referring to the gang in the newsroom at the Globe and Mail? Does anyone really think that a Nobel victory is going to have this magical effect? Such public nattering only highlights the old Canadian insecurity over what others think of us, and what it takes to be considered (by others) "world class." It is embarrassing and should stop. Meanwhile, Mr. Adams might ask whether Canadian writing is really that much better than it was twenty or thirty years ago. Is Margaret Atwood a better writer now than she was then? Alistair MacLeod? Is Rohinton Mistry a stunning improvement over Mordecai Richler? Does Anne Michaels put Robertson Davies to shame? These are points that could at least be argued. After all, "apotheosis" usually occurs after something is dead.

September 24/02: It's Time for Academic Publishing to Go

Academic publishing has been hit hard in the past year. A report in the Chronicle of Higher Education suggests that some major American university publishers are planning significant cuts.

We should be so lucky. I have always been mystified by the curious blend of arrogance and blindness that characterizes academic publishing. Mainstream publishing may be like a lottery or crapshoot, but most of the books published by university presses, even given their ridiculously inflated prices, are guaranteed losers. Why not pull the plug on such waste?

I anticipate some objections to such a radical step. Universities aren't businesses; they have no bottom line. As the director of Stanford University Press puts it, "Our purpose is primarily to create and disseminate new knowledge." To which I say: Fine. But why does this have to be done by publishing books?

According to the Chronicle report one of the hardest hit "scholarly species" is the literary-critical monograph focusing on the work of one author. "Nobody's buying them," says the editor-in-chief at the State University of New York Press, "Academic libraries aren't, and even specialists don't feel the need to keep up with them."

Certainly in the Humanities there is too much being published now for anyone to think of keeping up. The only response is to tune it out. There was a lot of this going on when I was a graduate student in the 1990s. Indeed, I can't think of a single faculty member who had the slightest interest in what any of their colleagues in the same department was working on. I even remember one acquaintance of mine threatened with being put on the tenure review committee for a young professor working in the same field. Unfortunately, this meant having to read all of the candidate's published work. This was too much to ask her to do, even for someone she considered a good friend. "I'm not going to waste my weekend reading that shit," was her angry response.

All academic publishing is vanity publishing. It is work without any dream of attracting an audience. For most of it, the only interest being served is the self interest of the author. The Chronicle story concludes with the implicit suggestion that assistant professors whose books won't be published may not be getting a job. But if the whole purpose of the exercise is to notch another line on your resume and hopefully get a promotion, then why shouldn't the authors themselves be footing the bill? Nobody else is making money on the deal. Are the universities - in Canada the government - supposed to subsidize this? Does the public have a duty to advance the careers of academics?

The solution is simple. All of this knowledge should be disseminated as widely and inexpensively as possible. It should be made available, for a fee if necessary, on the Internet. Academics may feel miffed at not having a prestige publication, the "tenure-track hardback," to their name, but so what? The work will be out there for anyone interested in accessing it. If enough demand becomes apparent, a book may come of it. If not, it will be a cheap oblivion.

September 19/02: The Worst For Less

In the latest move in the battle between online booksellers Chapters/Indigo.ca and Amazon.ca, Amazon has announced that it is slashing prices on bestsellers by 40%.

Of course a heavily discounted bestseller is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. If a new book is discounted 30 or 40%, that will often be enough to get people to buy it. This leads to the vexed question of just what makes a bestseller anyway. Over a year after the story first broke, Sandra Martin at the Globe and Mail weighed in this week on the question of what sales figures based on the BookScan model might mean for Canadian bestseller lists. (For those interested in a somewhat earlier comment on the same story, you can check out the goodreports.net News column for July 5, 2001(!) here.) Apparently, what is currently slowing things down is the keen interest the government takes in such matters, and not without reason:

"'Taxpayers invest about $50-million a year into this industry,' says a senior official in the Department of Canadian Heritage. 'Depending on whom you ask, returns are running at 30 to 40 per cent, and 80 per cent of all returns are pulped,' he said. With figures like that, it doesn't take a task force, even in a country like Canada, to conclude that taxpayers' money is not being used efficiently. 'We would rather be spending money creating new books,' agreed the official 'and promoting new writers than on books that are going to be pulped.'"

Unfortunately, Ms. Martin doesn't explain how such an industry as publishing can be made to use taxpayers' money more "efficiently." (By promoting new writers? That's a great idea, but not exactly a sure-fire money-maker.). In addition, she doesn't explain why, if the current system is so inadequate, and if Globe and Mail books editor Martin Levin thinks current bestseller rankings are mere "BS lists," the Globe and Mail isn't the the one leading the call for change. Isn't that what the biggest, richest Canadian media powerhouse is supposed to do, instead of just publishing bullshit? (In Levin's own words: "Like every other BS list in existence, it [the Globe and Mail bestseller list] is partial and only functionally accurate.")

The big discounts at Amazon.ca are discouraging for other reasons. If booksellers can offer 40% off a title like Tom Clancy's Red Rabbit, why can't they offer discounts on less popular titles? It's not like any of the books I've bought from online booksellers in the past few months are flying off the shelves. I suspect many of my recent purchases were just as close to being pulped or remaindered as The Lovely Bones will be in another month. And what effect does such pricing have on smaller publishers? Will they be able to compete with corporate giants who are only too happy to offer the worst for less?

September 12/02: What Not to Read in September

Salon.com has chosen its list of books to read in September.

When Salon was first launched I thought it might establish itself as an alternative voice on the book scene. Breaking from the gate with its Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors, an irreverent and refreshing survey that tossed names like Toni Morrison in the pot with Stephen King, it promised to be smart, anti-establishment, and cutting edge. More recently, however, they have been in decline. After reading one essay by a young man who only wanted to say that he hated Faulkner and Henry James but hadn't read either of them I was even moved to write a letter to the editor.

If "What to read in September" is any indication, the bottom is closer than I thought.

This isn't to say the picks themselves are bad. I've only read one, so I can't tell. But you have to shake your head at the way they are presented. In the first place, they are all "name" authors. It would be nice if the "critics" (and I insist on putting that word in quotation marks) had discovered something exciting and new to guide us to, but no such luck. These are the books that are supposed to be good because of their authors' reputations. The column proudly proclaims itself as announcing "this month's star-studded fiction."

Yes, that's right: "star-studded." As in "Ohmygawd! Donchajustluvit?" And it gets worse.

The introduction sets the tone: "September is to book reviewers what Christmas is to little kids, and even though the economy is idling, publishers have stuffed our stockings with more delights than we can handle." Hoo boy. I actually winced while reading that. And I hadn't even made it to the reviews yet!

When I did, I found them mostly written in the kind of puff prose that seems designed to make it on to dustjackets. Here we have a blurb for Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions: "The strange magic of Paul Auster's writing lies in the easy way he weaves inconsolable sadness and waste into an effervescent picaresque." Yes! Then we have Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex: a "wondrous epic," "a big, affectionate and often hilarious book." Along with The Corrections, it is said to be a "stirring reclamation of the full-scale realistic novel as both a popular and literary form." (According to the review, this full-scale realistic novel is the story of a Greek hermaphrodite named Calliope, whose "changeling status is the result of a genetic mutation kept alive by incestuous marriages in a tiny village high on Mt. Olympus." It doesn't get any more realistic than that.)

Blaming the editor is an easy way out, but in the case of Salon's steady decline it's only fair. The rot is spreading from the top. Here is general editor Laura Miller on Haruki Murakami's After the Quake:

"This is breathtakingly close to a flawless book, but in a very modest way. Like Mr. Katagiri's heroism, its perfection is there to be savored by those who know how to look."

Those who know. Hmmm. Now who could that be referring to? I mean, I consider myself to be a big fan of Murakami, but After the Quake is not only not his best work, it isn't even a very good book in its own right. Am I just hanging with the wrong crowd?

Murakami, however, is just Miller's warm-up to the catch of the season, the biggest star in this circus of stars, that darling of the glitterati: Ms. Zadie Smith! Take it away, Laura:

"A new novel from her feels like an occasion to open up another chamber in your heart and another lobe in your brain to take it all in; some books are expansive, hers are expanding, but never in a dreary, good-for-you way. Even in a year of strong books, The Autograph Man is cause to celebrate: To pick it up is to follow Dorothy as she steps out of her marooned, black-and-white Kansas farmhouse into the Technicolor splendor of Oz."

My jaw dropped as I read this. To put it bluntly: I wouldn't say as much for Shakespeare. If there were an award for excessive critical praise to go along with The Puffies, then this would have already won. And there's more! Here's Miller describing the protagonist of The Autograph Man:

"a bit like an early Philip Roth character as remodeled by Nick Hornby, with Smith's signature ethnic wild card thrown in for good measure."

These double-barreled compliments are cheap displays of superficial reading. What an early Roth character remodeled by Nick Hornby might be like is anybody's guess. The description is showy, but without meaning. Then there is the revelation that in her second book Smith has already developed a "signature ethnic wild card." Can you guess what that's referring to? No time to explain for those who don't know, here's the grand finale:

"Most novelists as smart as Smith tend not to like people that much, while the ones with big hearts tend to have soft heads; even among the cream of the crop you choose between Dickens and DeLillo. Whatever barrier keeps writers from fully inhabiting both territories seems to be as irrelevant to Smith as all the others. What did we do to deserve a young novelist this brilliant, this generous, this alive, here among what often look like the dying embers of the form? Nothing, really. Like Adam, we're just lucky - even if half the time we're too thick to know it."

Did I say Shakespeare? These are terms I wouldn't use to describe the Second Coming. How could you parody this? Miller is telling us that we don't deserve such riches! We're not worthy!

B. R. Myers concludes his Reader's Manifesto by remarking that at the very least critics need to start toning down their hyperbole. Praise as extreme as that handed out for Salon's September picks is a poison to our culture. It leads to a form of critical "grade inflation" which has a perversely leveling effect. Parnassus is getting crowded these days, and once you've conquered its heights then there's nowhere left to go. Miller is groveling before Zadie Smith as though she were some form of deity (can the exclusive Salon.com interview be far behind?). I often use the word obsequious to describe the critical response to celebrity authors, but even that seems too mild a term for such a degrading performance. We should consider ourselves lucky just to be living at the same time as . . . Zadie Smith?

Chalk me up as someone who's just too damn thick to know it.

August 31/02: Pre-Ordained

Following the announcement of the long list, bookies have made the early front runner for the 2002 Man Booker Prize Howard Jacobson's Who's Sorry Now?, at 5-1 odds. In second place are William Boyd's Any Human Heart and Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man, both at 6-1.

But wait! Smith's The Autograph Man isn't even available yet, in North America or in Britain. There have been no reviews because it has been placed under "embargo" by its publishers until its mid-September publication date (which will coincide, not-so-coincidentally, with the airing of a BBC miniseries of White Teeth). How then did it make the long list?

How indeed? This is how the Guardian explains it:

"The fact that a proof reached the judges only a few days before their deadline for releasing the long list suggests that it was well liked. It also confirms the remarkable talent displayed in White Teeth which, according to the judging panel in 2000, only narrowly missed out on being included in the shortlist."

Oh, really? While the fact that the judges could only have been faintly acquainted with the book before selecting it for the long list may "suggest" it was well liked - though I rather think it suggests something else entirely - how can its making the list possibly be said to "confirm" Ms. Smith's "remarkable talent"? Was "a few days" with a "proof" (that is, not even an advance copy) enough for the judges to come to a considered opinion of the 432-page novel's merits, relative to the rest of the fiction published this past year? A silly question. More to the point: Did any of the judges read the manuscript? Skim the first chapter? Look at it?

Whether The Autograph Man turns out to be any good is not the issue. Obviously this is one literary contest that isn't about to be decided on the merits. While literary awards have become more and more just an adjunct to the advertising and promotional departments of publishing houses, it's not often they reveal themselves to be such willing stooges and tools. I am reminded of Noah Richler's odds-making column last year conferring the Governor-General's Award for Fiction on The Ash Garden, but in that case the book had at least been published (when it failed to be nominated Richler made an unseemly public retreat from his earlier praise). You have to wonder what else the media can do to become more like a giant coin-operated publicity machine. Huge advances are paid to unknown authors for unfinished (and unread) manuscripts simply to buy coverage and ensure the immediate respect of reviewers (their job done, they may repent at leisure.) Books appear on bestseller lists before they are published (I'm not making this up!), based on the buzz manufactured by expensive advertising campaigns and huge advance orders from chains. And now we have novels that don't even exist yet making the long list for a "prestigious" literary award.

The fix is in, and the only thing it can be taken as confirming is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

August 2/02: Bad Reviews

On July 1 author Rick Moody's memoir The Black Veil received a scathing 6,000-word review in the New Republic. The review, by Dale Peck, began by calling Moody "the worst writer of his generation."

There is nothing at all newsworthy about this - Moody received other negative reviews and Peck has a reputation as a bad boy - but the story has received a surprising amount of media attention. In particular, Salon.com surveyed responses from other American reviewers to see what they thought of Peck's practice of "attack reviews." While some found the review "invigorating" and a healthy response to the game of "patty-cake" so much reviewing has become, others found it foolish and degrading to the profession.

Writing a negative review is easier than trying to explain what it is about a book that works. As a general rule I avoid bad reviews simply because I don't finish many of the bad books I read, and those I do finish I usually don't want to waste the time reviewing. As a form of entertainment, however, negative reviews are far more popular than gushing accolades. This may have something to do with the way we look at any critical praise as just another form of advertising, the "grade inflation" that sees every season's big new release as the arrival of the Second Coming, or just the fact that bitchy reviews are more fun. Twenty years ago the Medved brothers - in the introduction to their Golden Turkey Awards for bad movies - made "a fundamental observation about numerous social situations":

"it's more enjoyable for people to laugh together over absurdities and disasters than it is for them to praise the all-time movie greats. When fine films are discussed, most people will sit quietly, nodding in agreement or scratching their heads. When the subject turns to the immortal turkeys, however, nearly everyone has a strong opinion and will come forward to express it with eloquent enthusiasm."

Perhaps we are just more passionate about what we dislike.

Having said all this, I think it's necessary to register a note of caution. I say this with regard to a recent column that comes courtesy of Sandra Martin at the Globe and Mail. In her musings on the Peck-Moody spat she complains that there aren't enough venues for criticism of Canadian literature, and that the tone of what does get published is "so reverential you can sniff the incense swirling about both the 'work' and the 'artists' under discussion." What Ms. Martin claims to want is "more depth, analysis, controversy and length." "Readers and writers," she declares, "deserve a change of pace." Where to find it?

One place to look might be the newly resurrected Books in Canada, which is now mailed out as a supplement with any order from Amazon.ca. If the June/July 2002 edition is any indication, however, the quality of reviewing is decidedly hit and miss. Here, for example, is T. J. Rigelhof in full flower:

"Atwood is enormously talented in diverse ways. She's at least as many-sided and multi-angled as a hexagon but she's never been a plane, two-dimensional writer. More Chinese hexagram than geometrical hexagon, there's something in the nature of her multifarious responses to the natural order that is both as wonderfully transparent in its rationality and as maddeningly opaque in its conceptual leaps as, say, the I Ching."

Is there anyone who can explain what these geometrical analogies mean? One suspects Rigelhof has no idea what he is talking about.

In response to Ms. Martin's plea for a more lively literary debate in this country, I would suggest the following:

(1) Instead of wasting her time complaining about moribund (if not defunct) old-guard venues like the Queen's Quarterly, Literary Review of Canada, and Brick, she might consider other sources. (I note in passing that this site has more readers than the Queen's Quarterly, Literary Review of Canada, and Brick combined.) I realize there are none with the same corporate media support enjoyed by the Globe and Mail, but the rest of us are still a part of the national literary debate.

(2) There are a number of Canadian critics who write in-depth, anti-establishment criticism. Philip Marchand and Stephen Henighan, for example, have both published collections of essays inveighing against the status quo. And in the same issue of Books in Canada that Rigelhof's hopeless drivel appears in, there is an excellent contrarian review of Christian Bok's Eunoia by Carmine Starnino. Some people try to stay up on these things.

(3) As an example of what Ms. Martin thinks CanLit criticism should be like she offers an account of a conversation between Nino Ricci and Carol Shields (as part of a tribute Ricci was writing). Now I like cocktail party celebrity chit-chat as much as anyone, but I don't mistake it for informed analysis.

(4) We need to watch out for reviewers who are just venting ignorance. An extreme example of this appeared in Salon just a month ago, when the author of a column complaining about Virginia Woolf, Henry James and William Faulkner admitted to never having read any of them! The value of such opinions - if we can even call them opinions - is exactly zero.

As a corollary, it is important that the critics of such critics actually read the reviews carefully. Ms. Martin falls into the trap of repeating all of the nasty things that have been said about Peck being a superficial, ill-informed hit-man without checking to see if his rant was actually grounded in a thorough reading of Moody's work. It was.

(5) From her perch at the Globe and Mail, Ms. Martin is in no position to throw stones. To quote myself: "Despite its long history, high profile and deep pockets, the fact is the Globe and Mail has never produced a single literary critic of any prominence whatsoever." This is a really stunning (lack of) achievement. How do they do it? Well, if you're looking for a review source where the tone is so reverential you can sniff the incense I would say the very first place to visit is the Globe. Ms. Martin, instead of indulging in her own regularly fawning portraits of "artists" and their "work" and imagining pop-academic essays with zingy titles like "The Idea of Gay in the Writing of Timothy Findley" and "Ritual as Structural Device in Carol Shields's Fiction" (her examples!), might consider getting off her ass and pushing the envelope a little harder herself.

But of course that is not what she is being paid to do.

July 3/02: Shopping Online

American online bookseller Amazon has entered the Canadian market with the launch of their Web-site Amazon.ca.

Critics of the Amazon invasion fall into two camps. The first are the cultural nationalists. In order to circumvent federal foreign investment laws requiring that Canadians hold a majority interest in book retailers, Amazon has contracted out all of its warehouse and delivery operations. Canada's biggest online bookseller - and Amazon is already Canada's biggest online bookseller, with over 250,000 customers last year alone - is, therefore, not really a Canadian bookseller at all.

Whatever the Heritage Department has to say about this arrangement, I have to admit I find the connection between protectionism and cultural matters a little tenuous. Stephen Henighan may complain about "NAFTA-novels", but my guess is that he's using free trade as a metaphor for other things. I suspect whatever damage can be done to our culture has already been wrought over the airwaves. And who do we expect to come to the rescue anyway? The other big critic of the Amazon invasion: Heather Reisman's retail giant Chapters/Indigo?

Forget it. I say this not because Indigo is dead in the water - they are still a powerful force - but because they have no special interest in promoting Canadian culture. It's likely the real reason Ms. Reisman is upset is because back in 1996 her attempt to form a Canadian partnership with a giant American book retailer (Borders Canada) was stymied by the same foreign ownership rules Amazon is trying to skirt.

Indigo has also been slow out of the online gate, which may mean they are now too late to get back in the race. When I made a recent visit to both Web-sites to do some comparison shopping I found the same basic layouts, with the same Canadian-content window dressing and the same offers of 30% off books costing over $30 and free shipping on orders over $75. The prices were a mixed bag. Of the three books I was interested in ordering, one was two dollars cheaper at Indigo, the other four dollars cheaper at Amazon. The big difference, however, was that the third book wasn't even available at Indigo. This problem with stock, which has always been an issue with Chapters and Indigo, is fatal in the world of online commerce. I think most people buying books online are ordering specific titles, not browsing the cyber-shelves to see what's in.

Some other brief observations from my little shopping spree: In the first place, while I continue to get upset at the high cost of books these days - I spent $76.00 (thus qualifying for the free shipping) on three books! - it seems that something has to give pretty soon. I say this because with the " 30% off books over $30" deal, a price which includes almost all hardcovers but few trade paperbacks (at least so far), these two formats are now almost equivalent in price. Often there is only a difference of a couple of dollars. Could this mean the death of the ridiculously overpriced trade paperback? Will we now be able to enjoy more quality paperback books at reasonable prices? Or will publishers simply give up on non-specialty hardcover books entirely? I predict the latter.

Something else that struck me as I prepared to do my shopping was that I could only get one of the three books I wanted out of any of the local libraries - and this includes three university libraries! This struck me as especially strange given that all three were fairly well-known, mainstream, non-fiction titles. I've been reading a lot lately about how students are treating the big box bookstores as alternatives to their libraries, presumably because they offer such amenities as comfy couches and in-store coffee shops. I hadn't thought the libraries were falling so far behind in terms of their collections. The landscape is certainly changing out there.