Books, Arts & Manners: A Little Help for Their Friends

IN HIS new book about the New York Times called Behind the Times (Random House), Edwin Diamond quotes Gore Vidal’s observation that in the paper’s Sunday Book Review section “the air is alive with the sound of axes grinding.” But if this is true, why is it that the Review is so bland? Axes don’t come much duller than those we see fecklessly chopping away in its pages every Sunday. Perhaps they save all the sharp ones to plant between each other’s shoulder blades out of the public view? Mr. Diamond outlines a few cases in which personal animosities have found their way into print, but clearly, for every author who can make a case that an enemy has been given his book to review, there are a hundred who have grounds for passing out cigars over the choice of their reviewers. Behind the Times chronicles the sweetheart reviews given to New York Times insiders since Rebecca Sinkler took over as editor of the Book Review in 1989, but it misses the sweetheart reviews given to non-insiders. John Ellis, writing in Heterodoxy last November, did a splendid job of documenting cases in which conservatives have seen their books, when they are reviewed at all, airily dismissed by obvious ideological opposites while feminist and other PC books are routinely sent for review to the ideological twins of their authors (see box, next page). But he does not descend far enough into this sinkler of intellectual corruption.

Even a cursory look at its contents in recent years reveals that the New York Times Book Review has for the most part ceased to function as a critical organ. It is typically a cheerleader, an adjunct of the publishing industry, a blurb-writer’s paradise. Miss Sinkler seems to have adopted as her guiding principle the rule that says: Don’t make waves. Mr. Diamond quotes her as claiming that the editors invariably ask prospective reviewers, “Will the author have any grounds for objecting to you as a reviewer?”—a question designed to screen out the interesting and the challenging along with the unfair.

About the Author

James Bowman

Featured Tags

IN HIS new book about the New York Times called Behind the Times (Random House), Edwin Diamond quotes Gore Vidal’s observation that in the paper’s Sunday Book Review section “the air is alive with the sound of axes grinding.” But if this is true, why is it that the Review is so bland? Axes don’t come much duller than those we see fecklessly chopping away in its pages every Sunday. Perhaps they save all the sharp ones to plant between each other’s shoulder blades out of the public view? Mr. Diamond outlines a few cases in which personal animosities have found their way into print, but clearly, for every author who can make a case that an enemy has been given his book to review, there are a hundred who have grounds for passing out cigars over the choice of their reviewers. Behind the Times chronicles the sweetheart reviews given to New York Times insiders since Rebecca Sinkler took over as editor of the Book Review in 1989, but it misses the sweetheart reviews given to non-insiders. John Ellis, writing in Heterodoxy last November, did a splendid job of documenting cases in which conservatives have seen their books, when they are reviewed at all, airily dismissed by obvious ideological opposites while feminist and other PC books are routinely sent for review to the ideological twins of their authors (see box, next page). But he does not descend far enough into this sinkler of intellectual corruption.

Even a cursory look at its contents in recent years reveals that the New York Times Book Review has for the most part ceased to function as a critical organ. It is typically a cheerleader, an adjunct of the publishing industry, a blurb-writer’s paradise. Miss Sinkler seems to have adopted as her guiding principle the rule that says: Don’t make waves. Mr. Diamond quotes her as claiming that the editors invariably ask prospective reviewers, “Will the author have any grounds for objecting to you as a reviewer?”—a question designed to screen out the interesting and the challenging along with the unfair.