The problem with contemporary book reviewing

Does the book reviewer have just one job — to review the work at hand honestly and fairly? No, dear reader, she does not. Like most every other literary endeavours, from writing, to editing, to teaching in MFAs, book reviewing is not part of a capitalist machine that sucks in intellect and sweat equity from people who need to pay the rent and spits out a sort of saccharine bee-barf-honey of digestible content (or a painful sting). There’s no space, no editorial drive, and no requirement to do anything other than firehose spray hyperbole (positive or negative) into the world to see what catches people’s attention, then do more of that. Check it out at N+1.

The main problem with the book review today is not that its practitioners live in New York, as some contend. It is not that the critics are in cahoots with the authors under review, embroiled in a shadow economy of social obligation and quid pro quo favor trading. The problem is not that book reviews are too mean or too nice, too long or too short, though they may be those things, too. The main problem is that the contemporary American book review is first and foremost an audition — for another job, another opportunity, another day in the content mine, hopefully with better lighting and tools, but at the very least with better pay. What kind of job or opportunity for the reviewer depends on her ambitions.

Reader, behold your gatekeeper, standing by a broken fence in the middle of an open plain.

On books and sleep

Are you a bedtime reader? Did it used to be books but now it’s your phone? Stop it. Get back to books and get better sleep, according to this article. I used to read before bed, but have become an easy and deep sleeper the over the last 10 years or so. Ms. Ninja sits up and reads still. But neither of us are supposed to look at our phones. In fact, unless the kids are still out, we put them on airplane mode to charge overnight so we’re not taking EM showers with the faucet right by our brains all night. Personally, I miss that reading time, but on the other hand I–zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

For a long time, I have known that phones interfere with sleep. Phones release shots of pleasure. As a person with ADHD, I am especially short on dopamine, and if I train my body to expect a spoonful then I’ll stay alert to receive it. When that happens in bed, I’ll get less sleep. Until recently, I chose to ignore this theory because I feared it would be proven correct and I’d wish I’d done something sooner. The longer I put off trying a no-phone regime, the more regret I would feel, which meant I procrastinated further – and so on. Such is the miracle of cognitive loops. Whoever gifted me with rationality should have enclosed a receipt, because I would happily exchange it for the ability to fly.

But this year my insomnia got so bad that I snapped. I marshalled bedside resources: alarm clock, sudoku, pens, notebooks, British Vogue, Penguin Classics too antiquated for me to feel any compulsion to text the group chat. (“Unbelievable scenes in Rochester’s attic!”) And I made one simple rule: phone goes into a kitchen drawer before bed, and does not come out until morning.

Thursday news update

Tuesday newsday

It’s summer and I’m frankly having a hard time justifying reading internet articles while the sun shines (I live in one of the foggier places on Earth), so if there are still people out there reading this, please excuse my erratic posting until the end of the good weather. Should only be a few hours.

Wednewsday

Monday news dump

On blurbing

As an author, I am not a big fan of the blurb — I generally find them superfluous and likely to say a whole lot of nothing very eloquently. There’s a blurb “style” that sort of makes my eyes roll back — they’re almost a literary genre in and of themselves. So, I seldom give them out (I had a terrible experience with a poet who I gave a measured blurb to who turned around and edited that blurb to sound more enthusiastic and put it on his book…yeesh), and even less seldom use them on my own work.

That said, I was very pleased to have three blurbs on the back cover of Glimpse, my first book of aphorisms back in 2010 (two poets I greatly admire and a third I also admire but who was an old friend). We sought out blurbs for that book for a couple reasons, one of which was that no one was really doing aphorisms here in Canada at that time (not even sure anyone else is now, frankly), and a few recommendations from some heavyweights went a distance towards getting people to actually pick up the book and give the form a chance, I think. It was something different, so it called for a different tactic.

My new book coming in September, Problematica, has a couple blurbs as well, both from writers I admire, along with some review quotes accumulated over the years, as well as a hearty introduction from a contemporary and pal (basically a more in-depth blurb). The reason we went with all this extra stuff is because a selected edition draws mostly from previous books, and it’s not something my generation here in Canada has done very often. As one of a handful of Gen X poets suddenly finding themselves middle-aged and trying to take stock of what they’ve accomplished, blurbs and intros seem a useful way to provide some context to browsers for why this book might be a) enjoyable, b) important to me and my work, c) necessary in an already saturated market of poetry.

So blurbs CAN be useful, but I think they have to be judiciously applied. I couldn’t have two better blurbers for this book, and I’m trilled to know these poets’ eyes have passed over my work. And if either of their opinions holds weight with someone who might like them but be skeptical about me, well, that’s a nice bonus.

It’s cliche, but books are judged by their covers. For one thing, often the cover lets the reader know what kind of book they are buying. White woman in a gown or a shirtless muscle-bound man: romance. Bright cartoon picture superimposed with san serif: young adult. Dark with silhouetted figure in the mist: mystery. Dripping font titles: probably horror. So, let’s say you’re a genre reader, have found your section in the bookstore, and are trying to find something new. The next thing to examine are the blurbs. If Neil Gaiman stans see he’s read and endorsed a book, they will be more likely to give it a try. Haruki Murakami says this book is a must read? Then read you must.

Wednewsday

Monday Monday news

Thursday news catchup

Summer, my dudes. Hard to concentrate on anything but outside. Here are some news bits.