Novelist Richard Ford has never met a literary blog he's liked.
Then again, he's never read a literary blog. Not Maud Newton's, not Mark Sarvas', not Beatrice, not a one.
But he knows he wouldn't like one if he read one. He's like Clarence Darrow who didn't like peas and was glad he didn't like them, "because if I liked them, I'd eat 'em, and I just hate 'em."
Ford prefers newspapers. He'd rather read book reviews---and I presume have his own books reviewed---in the papers.
Newspaper book reviews are edited, you see. Ford "wants the judgment and fliter a newspaper book editor could provide," says the New York Times.
Now, I've reviewed books for newspapers---really. People have paid me actual cash money to blather on in print the way I do here for free.---and I can tell you the way the filter and judgment of my editors would come into play if I wanted to review a novel by Richard Ford.
Me: I'd like to review The Lay of the Land
.
Editor: When did you get interested in geography?
Me: It's a novel by Richard Ford.
Editor: Who's Richard Ford?
Me: He's a famous novelist. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Independence Day
Editor: I thought that was a movie.
Me: It is. But it's also a novel.
Editor: Aliens attack earth and blow up the White House?
Me: In the movie. The book's different.
Editor: That movie came out years ago, why are they just putting out a novelization?
Me: They're not. It's not.
Editor: What's not what?
Me: Independence Day the novel by Richard Ford isn't a novelization of the movie about aliens attacking.
Editor: Then why do you want to review it?
Me: I don't.
Editor: But you said---
Me: I said I wanted to review The Lay of the Land.
Editor: Which isn't about geography, right?
Me: Right. It's a novel. By Richard Ford.
Editor: Who also wrote Independence Day.
Me: Yes.
Editor: So he's a screenwriter too.
Me: No.
Editor: But---
Me: Forget Independence Day.
Editor: It was a good movie.
Me: I'm talking about Ford's new novel, The Lay of the Land. I want to review it.
Editor: And who's Ford again?
Me: Famous novelist. Pulitizer Prize winner. His most famous book's The Sportswriter
Editor: So he writes about sports?
Me: He used to. He was a sportswriter once.
Editor: So this new one, The Lay of the Land, it's about sports?
Me: No.
Editor: I thought it might be about golf. You know, "Play it as it lays," Lay of the Land?
Me: Play it as it lies.
Editor: What?
Me: Nevermind.
Editor: So this book isn't about golf?
Me: Nope.
Editor: Do you like golf?
Me: Um---
Editor: I love golf. You ever read The Greatest Game Ever Played
Me: It's not a novel.
Editor: Did you see the movie?
Me: Yes.
Editor: Is Lay of the Land going to be made into a movie?
Me: Not that I know of.
Editor: Hard to make a good movie about golf.
Me: It's not about golf.
Editor: What isn't?
Me: Ford's novel.
Editor: Oh.
Me: It's about the sportswriter from his first book---
Editor: I thought you said it isn't about sports.
Me: It's not. It's about the sportswriter's family.
Editor: And the sportswriter's Ford, right?
Me: Not in the novel.
Editor: What's he in the novel?
Me: Ford?
Editor: Yeah.
Me: He's not in the novel.
Editor: I thought he was the sportswriter.
Me: He used to be a sportswriter. Then he wrote a novel about a sportswriter called The Sportswriter. But the sportswriter wasn't him. Just somebody a lot like him.
Editor: And this new novel's about another sportswriter?
Me: The same sportswriter.
Editor: It's a sequel?
Me: Kind of. It's part of a series. Independence Day was about the same guy too.
Editor: I thought it was about ali---
Me: The book!
Editor: Oh, right. So he's written three books about this sportswriter? It's a trilogy? Like Lord of the Rings?
Me (sighing): Sure. Like Lord of the Rings.
Editor: But it's not a fantasy?
Me: No. It's a realistic novel.
Editor: So what's the local angle?
Me: Local angle?
Editor: Ford. He a local author?
Me: No.
Editor: He grow up around here?
Me: He grew up in Mississippi.
Editor: He live in our circulation area?
Me: Maine, I think.
Editor: The book, is it set around here? The land we're getting the lay of, it's this area?
Me: New Jersey.
Editor: The writer coming to read at Barnes and Noble?
Me: No.
Editor: So there's no local connection?
Me: Not really.
Editor: Forget it.
Me: But---
Editor: If there's no local angle, why would we review it?
Me: Well, Ford's considered an important writer and I thought our readers who like to read novels would---
Editor: Which readers?
Me: The ones interested in books.
Editor (smirking): Oh, right. All five of them.
Me: Whatever.
Editor: Listen. This guy Ford's a famous novelist, right?
Me: Yeah.
Editor: So he's been reviewed by the New York Times?
Me: Definitely.
Editor: Good. When the Times reviews this golf book, we'll run their wire copy. If we have room. Meantime, you want a book to review? Here's a memoir by a guy who lives in a town just south of here, spent his whole life growing award-winning orchids. Give me, what? Two, three hundred words?
For the record, the editors I wrote for weren't stupid. They were just clueless about contemporary literature. Novels weren't their thing. They weren't book editors. They were features editors or arts and entertainment editors or "Style" editors. The papers my reviews ran in didn't have book editors. They didn't have book sections. At most they had two pages in the Sunday arts and leisure section. Very few newspapers have book editors or book sections. And many of the papers that do are cutting back---on editors, on pages devoted to books, on reviews written by local reviewers. When and where they have space, they're running more wire copy.
Ford knows this and he regrets it. But he doesn't see literary blogs as an alternative.
He has no respect for bloggers. To him a literary blogger is just "some guy sitting in his basement in Terre Haute".
Meanwhile, Richard Schickel, long-(long, long, long)-time film critic for TIME has expressed his disgust for bloggers who presume to review movies.
Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity....French critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, a name not much bruited in the blogosphere, I'll warrant....We have to find in the work of reviewers something more than idle opinion-mongering....They need to prove, not merely assert, their right to an opinion. ....At the recent Los Angeles Times Festival of Books [] blogging was presented as an attractive alternative — it doesn't take much time, and it is a method of publicly expressing oneself (like finger-painting, I thought to myself, but never mind).
Ok. This fondness for credentialism that's become a hallmark of members of the traditional media when sneering at bloggers is very strange coming from people who work in jobs that up until just a few generations ago were done and done well by people who hadn't finished high school. There was a time when having a college degree in journalism was an obstacle to getting hired by a daily newspaper.
But as for credentials, a random sampling of my blog roll would turn up doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, scientists, lawyers, college professors, best-selling novelists, poets, and working journalists, actors, filmmakers, television writers, and film and drama critics.
It flatters their own vanity to think that the bloggers challenging them are pajama-wearing agoraphobes who'd spend their days muttering to themselves if they didn't have computers, but these blogophobes only prove their own ignorance by missing the fact that a whole lot of highly accomplished people blog, people who have credentials and resumes that make holders of simple BAs in journalism look like a pitiful pack of underachieving goof-offs.
And they doubly prove their ignorance by proving it to the very people they need to think them smart and savvy---bloggers and blog readers are their audience. We're the readers of their newspapers and magazines and the buyers of their books.
On top of which, Schickel's proudly admitted undemocratic views are very strange coming from a citizen of the country that produced Abe Lincoln, Tom Edison, Booker T. Washington, and the Wright Brothers. We are a nation of autodidacts and self-made men and women and it's ludicrous to think that of all the many jobs there are to be done film criticism is one of the ones that require special and esoteric training.
A college degree is a good thing and nothing except genius beats years of experience on the job, but the fact is that neither the degree nor the experience is a guarantee that the person doing the job knows how to do it.
Ford's some guy sitting in his basement in Terre Haute and his cousin, Brian Williams' Vinny who hasn't left his apartment in two years, very easily could have taught themselves more about literature or politics than most Workshop trained MFA's or Ivy League poli sci professors know, nevermind what their own courses of study and personal experience and native intelligence could give them on your average journalistic hack of a film critic toiling away on the back pages of a decidedly middle-brow news magazine notorious for rewriting its own reporters' and critics' copy to dumb it down.
But besides being creepily un-American---in fact, almost a parody of a French academician's---Schickel's attitude towards criticism is hilariously packed with unintended, self-caricaturing irony.
A commenter at Kevin Drum's place---and thanks to Kevin for this stuff on Ford and Schickel---left this quote from playwright Brendan Behan about critics:
Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.
The definition of critic might as well be "somebody who has no business telling other people how to do their jobs."
In the traditional media, every day, movies are reviewed by people who've never held a camera, novels are reviewed by people who have never written a chapter of a book, rock bands are reviewed by people who've never played an instrument except air guitar, and plays are reviewed by people who were onstage once in their lives, in sixth grade, when they played a Pilgrim and forgot their lines and were so sick with stage fright they threw up on Myles Standish.
Most reviewers of classical music are trained musicians, and most art critics have some training as painters. But the rest of us---and I get to include myself because, like I said, there are newspapers who've paid for my blather---got the job despite our credentials, or lack of them, not because of them. We were able to convince some editor desperate for copy that we could fill the space with words that would come together in a fairly intelligent fashion without getting the rag we're writing for sued in the process.
Critics don't have to be able to do the work they critique. They have to be able to appreciate the best of the work and be able to explain why and how what they're writing about at the moment measures up or doesn't measure up. In other words, they have to be a good audience and they have to be able to write well. They have to have good eyes, good ears, some experience using them, and a clear and snappy prose style, qualities that you don't have to be taught, even if they can be taught, which is debatable. You don't have to go to a special school, you just have to school yourself.
Critics---Americans---don't have to prove their right to an opinion, as Schickel insists they do. They have to prove they know what they're talking about by what they say. Their degrees and resumes don't matter if what they write is stupid and unreadable. Critics prove themselves by being right. I don't mean right in that their opinion is unquestionable and definitive. I mean that readers who read their reviews and see whatever work's being reviewed say, Yep, the critic and I were looking at the same thing and I can see what he saw and I understand why he liked or didn't like what he saw but...
The but is always a part of any assessment of a critic's work.
I'll bet Schickel hates that but.
The but means that readers are free to reject the critic's judgment, even if they think it was honestly and fairly and intelligently reached.
The but means that everybody is entitled to an opinion, a notion Schickel sneeringly rejects.
Clearly, Schickel believes that artists produce and critics pronounce and the rest of us rabble fall in line. Bloggers are just people with opinions and to make it worse they have comment sections where other people with opinions can come along to say, But!
Epilogue: Ford's dismissive sniff towards that guy in his basement in Terre Haute puzzles me.
For one thing, why Terre Haute? Does Ford think he has no readers in Terre Haute? Does he think folks in Terre Haute are on the whole illiterate? There's a big state university in Terre Haute, one that besides having a large English department, employs one of the best biographers of the last generation, Gale E. Christianson, whose lives of Isaac Newton and poet and naturalist Loren Eisley
The other thing that puzzles me is what does Ford think that guy is doing in his basement in Terre Haute?
My guess is he's writing a novel.
And this is something Ford's got to know. Most great novelists started out as some guy or gal sitting in a basement, or an attic or a cheap rented room, in some place as obscure and far away from literary glamor and greatness as Terre Haute---some of those obscure and far away places were in Paris and New York, the distance and obscurity are spiritual and metaphorical but very real to that guy or gal.
A few years from now Richard Ford will be blurbing that guy from Terre Haute's new novel.
Or...because an awful lot of the reviewers for the Sunday Times Book Review are writers themselves who once upon a time were just some guy or gal sitting in their basements in their own spiritual Terre Hautes...a few years from now he'll be reviewing Ford's new novel in the Times.
Of course, he'll post a link to his review on his blog.
Recommended: Of course I always think that a long explore of my blog roll is a good and profitable way to spend some time, but today I'm pushing the two subsections called Film Majors and Literary and Artistic Types. Take a look when you get a chance.
I recently watched F for Fake, Orson Welles' disjointed movie on Clifford Irving, Elmyr de Hory, and art forgery. In it he quotes Kipling:
When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden’s green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, “It’s pretty, but is it Art?”
Posted by: OutOfContext | Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 11:14 AM
Editor: Oh, right. So he's written three books about this sportswriter? It's a trilogy? Like Lord of the Rings.
Lance: Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Posted by: Mike Schilling | Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 11:45 AM
This skepticism of the blogosphere evidenced by the literati (and much of the mainstream news media as well) will pass in time. I still read the Washington Post and some other inky pubs, but more & more of what I learn is from online sources, mainly blogs. Even a great novelist may not recognize a sea change when he's in the midst of one.
Posted by: Ralph Hitchens | Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 01:37 PM
What these "credentialed" folk don't seem to gather is that, yes, most bloggers start as someone sitting in their basement--or wherever their computer is located--and sending a lot of words into the void. Some of those people are philistines and some of them are highly-educated and some of them are neither, but still possessed of a keen eye and an expressive turn of phrase and a great deal of insight.
And the ones who are philistines--the ones who can't really spell and have nothing interesting to say--well, for the most part no one really reads their stuff anyway, so it doesn't really matter. They're doing it for themselves and when their comments section remains empty for month after month maybe they'll stop.
The ones who have talent and insight will build word-of-mouth and all sorts of people will read their work and eventually they'll find themselves quoted, perhaps, by the Credentialed Elite.
It's the market--just as it was the market that got the C.E. where they ended up. It's just a different medium.
But it's foolish to disregard these folks. If Ken Levine wants to write a blog in which he talks about TV and movies, then dammit I'm going to read what he has to say because he's been in the business and may have insights that the average "professional" critic doesn't have. And if Josh Marshall wants to write about politics, and to continue hammering away at an obscure story about some odd U.S. attorney firings, which he only stumbled onto because of his earlier obsession with the ill-doings of a certain San Diego congressman, and if he's doing solid investigative work that also calls upon the input of his readers, and then that story ends up potentially bringing down the Attorney General of the United States once the "professionals" decide to pick it up--well, then I'm going to continue to read Josh Marshall, too.
It's the market, stupid. It rules us all.
Posted by: Karen | Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 03:32 PM
Good piece. I would just add that our whole effort at newcritics.com (including your generous contributions, Lance) is a massive refutation of the higher-than-thou critics shelf.
Though I do like Ford's latest - indeed, reviewed it on the citizen-powered newcritics right here:
http://newcritics.com/blog1/2007/01/13/richard-fords-jesus-of-suburbia/
Posted by: Tom W. | Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 04:16 PM
these blogophobes only prove their own ignorance by missing the fact that a whole lot of highly accomplished people blog, people who have credentials and resumes that make holders of simple BAs in journalism look like a pitiful pack of underachieving goof-offs
I and my three degrees are applauding. *wink*
On a more serious note, I think what has these people disturbed is that increasingly the gatekeepers that they relied upon to tell them what (and who) to take seriously and what (and who) to ignore are unable to fulfill this function.
Instead, it's incumbent on the individual reader (or journalist, or whomever) to read the opinion or argument being presented, think about it, and come to his or her own conclusion. No longer can one get away with simply taking stuff at face value "just because" Big Name said it was important. Nor can Big Name simply spout off the opinion of the day and have it received as gospel truth; readers are more demanding, and sloppy, unsupported ideas are rightly disparaged, regardless of whether they issue from Big Name or Joe "Basement" Schmoe.
The days of the well-paid sinecures for Big Names are on their way out, and I for one approve.
Posted by: Rana | Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 04:55 PM
Lance, I agree with you.
But to be fair, Schickel has done some excellent tv documentaries on the "Golden Age of Hollywood" and reportedly (I haven't read them) some good books on the subject as well. OTOH his movie reviews in Time are certainly nothing special.
Posted by: tdraicer | Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 06:56 PM
Richard Schickel is pretty much the definition of a Mainstream Hack and his drearily dull observations and would-be insights, not to mention his extremely boring aesthetic sense and deadly dull essays/books, have been one of the sadder layers of banality we've all been wading through in American culture for close to 40 years. I'm glad the bloggers irritate him, because the old fart has been irritating me all my life.
Richard Ford's novels have never tempted me into actually reading one of them, by the way, and after this absurd outburst, it's much easier to ignore him altogether.
Posted by: sfmike | Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 08:09 PM
As a blogger, I obviously think it's a mistake to simply write off the value of blogging for every possible writer and reader. That Ford and Schickel so easily dismiss the whole idea that you might run across something of value on a blog shows they've not put a lot of time or thought into their (elitist) positions.
As a fan of Pauline Kael, I think critics can have a valuable role in parsing works of art and shaping the consensus on such ongoing questions as, But is it Art? That doesn't mean they should make pronoucements from a throne, it means they should be engaging bloggers -- and anyone else who will join -- in a discussion about the merits of particular works and the larger questions they may evoke.
Schickel is the very defintion of middlebrow. He should hardly be pointing fingers.
Posted by: Kevin Wolf | Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 08:22 AM
There are real-life authors who actually blog on a fairly regular basis, so some of them seem to get it.
I just found Susan Wittig Albert yesterday after reading a couple of her mystery novels. She writes about lots of things, including her gardening.
Posted by: Linkmeister | Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 03:12 PM
Glenn Greenwald, writing at Salon.com (in too many articles to link them all) details how the punditocracy is having the same issues with bloggers as Ford and Schickel are having. It would seem the old guard doesn't know how to maintain relevancy in the face of the new media. Which is too bad. Time's circulation may be good, but it is no longer great (and like most print media, probably falling). Time has a finite number of readers, approximately the same number as the circulation, and a limited time in which any review is relevant. Blogs like this stay out there forever and have a potentially unlimited readership.
Good thing is, those who don't adapt will fade away. Schickel who?
Posted by: Vir Modestus | Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 03:52 PM
I don't know if Schickel and Ford are totally wrong. It probably would be better if we could get our criticism through better vetted (and better paid) printed sources. But Schickel and Ford don't seem to understand that American intelligensia has almost entirely moved into the universities, and, by this point, it would be more honest if our news media finally admitted what they really are and started printing pornography (hey, the world's leading "newsman" is someone who precisely did that - Murdoch).
Little magazine are just now blogs. Cahiers de Cinema would now be started online.
Posted by: burritoboy | Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 05:48 PM
When did "lie of the land" turn into "lay of the land"? (The land is not acting upon anything else, so the verb is a form of the intransitive "to lie", not the transitive "to lay".)
To answer my own question, probably about the time "sneaked" turned into "snuck".
Posted by: stinger | Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 07:51 PM
"Cahiers de Cinema would now be started online."
Yup.
Posted by: Campaspe | Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 08:57 PM
It's always sad when you realize you're losing the privilege you once had but never fully appreciated. Now that the onslaught of the internet has all but demolished the barriers to entry into the world of critics, Schnickel and Ford might be wondering, after all these years of writing, if they are truly talented or just lucky to have been chosen by the powers that be. My guess is, probably both. There have always been many brilliant writers, and skilled critics. But not all of them were given the opportunity to showcase their abilities. Now that practically anyone can get their words read online, if they attract enough attention, Schnickel and Ford have a lot more competition.
Posted by: Bianca Reagan | Saturday, May 26, 2007 at 03:31 AM