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A review by kevin_shepherd
The New York Times Book Review: 125 Years of Literary History by Noor Qasim, The New York Times, Tina Jordan
4.0
“Life is worth living because there are books, and so let us open a tome with a happy thought, even if it were written by Schopenhauer.” ~Editor’s Note, NYT Book Review 1897
Editors Tina Jordan and Noor Qasim have crafted a 368 page, 600 lb. behemoth of reviews, interviews, editorials, letters, biographies, photos, and illustrations. This is a bibliophile’s biblio-file; a select anthology of the best (and a few of the worst) book reviews of the New York Times, 1896 to 2021.
Chapter One, 1896 - 1921
Most of the very early reviews are from anonymous sources (bylines don’t seem to be prevalent until around 1924). This was both a blessing and a curse: A blessing because reviewers could speak out against social injustices without fear of reprisals; a curse because reviewers could occasionally be remorseless and cruel with little or no backlash (of course, now that I think about it, this is exactly what often happens on Goodreads).
“Of course there are in every community, and in an American community in larger numbers than in any other except a British, plenty of people endowed with a heaven-born itch for minding other people’s business. The less they know about the business the more eager they are to mind it…” ~Editor’s Note on Censorship, NYT 1902
Featured authors of this period include George Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Louisa May Alcott, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and W.E.B. Du Bois.
Chapter Two, 1921 - 1946
“…even if the Germans were to get away with a lenient peace this coagulated stench will stick to them for the rest of their national history-a fate truly worse than death.” ~William S. Schlamm on Mein Kampf, NYT Book Review, 1943
Featured authors include Agatha Christie, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, Countee Cullen, William Faulkner, Margaret Mitchell, John Steinbeck, Richard Wright, Carson McCullers, Ernest Hemingway, Ann Petry, and Christopher Isherwood.
Chapter Three, 1946 - 1971
“In America the career almost invariably becomes an obsession. The “get-ahead” principle, carried to such extreme, inspires our writers to enormous efforts. A new book must come out every year. Otherwise they get panicky, and the first thing you know they belong to Alcoholics Anonymous or have embraced religion…” ~Tennessee Williams on The Sheltering Sky, NYT Book Review, 1949
Featured authors include John Hersey, J.D. Salinger, William F. Buckley Jr., Ralph Ellison, Flannery O’Connor, Anne Frank, E.B. White, Ryunosuke Akitagawa, Simone de Beauvoir, Ray Bradbury, J.R.R. Tolkien, Eugene O’Neill, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Shirley Jackson, Harper Lee, Joseph Heller, Rachel Carson, Tom Wolfe, Kurt Vonnegut, Truman Capote, Frantz Fanon, Jean Toomer, Philip Roth, Mario Puzo, Michael Crichton, Robert Hayden, and Jacqueline Susann.
Chapter Four, 1971 - 1996
“I would think to myself… that the battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War I: Never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain.” ~Peggy Noonan, What I Saw at the Revolution, NYT Book Review, 1990
Featured authors include John Updike, Nikki Giovanni, Stephen King, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, Vincent Bugliosi, Shere Hite, John Cheever, Joan Didion, Michael Herr, Paule Marshall, Zora Neale Hurston, Art Spiegelman, Toni Morrison, Randy Shilts, Gabriel García Márquez, Sandra Cisneros, and Jackie Collins.
Chapter Five, 1996 - 2021
“No marriage is as arbitrary and accidental as one between a writer and a reader, set up by a brief infatuation in a bookstore or the enthusiasm of a third party.” ~Caleb Crain on Interpreter of Maladies, NYT Book Review, 1999
Featured authors include Jhumpa Lahiri, J.K. Rowling, Zadie Smith, Alice Sebold, Miguel de Cervantes, Alison Bechdel, André Aciman, Haruki Murakami, Junot Díaz, Jennifer Egan, Robert A. Caro, Celeste Ng, Jacqueline Woodson, Walter Mosley, Lucia Berlin, Colson Whitehead, Tommy Orange, David Sedaris, and Jericho Brown
_______________________________
Smash-Mouth Criticism
Critic John Leonard points out that the reason we see so many “slash-and-burn” critiques is because they are easy to write. For those of us who rate and review, he offers these six rules of engagement:
1. As in Hippocrates, do no harm.
2. Never stoop to score a point or bite an ankle.
3. Always understand that in this symbiosis, you are a parasite.
4. Look with an open heart and mind at every different kind of book.
5. Use theory only as a periscope or a trampoline, never a panopticon, a crib sheet or a license to kill.
6. Let a hundred Harolds Bloom.
Sage advice.
Editors Tina Jordan and Noor Qasim have crafted a 368 page, 600 lb. behemoth of reviews, interviews, editorials, letters, biographies, photos, and illustrations. This is a bibliophile’s biblio-file; a select anthology of the best (and a few of the worst) book reviews of the New York Times, 1896 to 2021.
Chapter One, 1896 - 1921
Most of the very early reviews are from anonymous sources (bylines don’t seem to be prevalent until around 1924). This was both a blessing and a curse: A blessing because reviewers could speak out against social injustices without fear of reprisals; a curse because reviewers could occasionally be remorseless and cruel with little or no backlash (of course, now that I think about it, this is exactly what often happens on Goodreads).
“Of course there are in every community, and in an American community in larger numbers than in any other except a British, plenty of people endowed with a heaven-born itch for minding other people’s business. The less they know about the business the more eager they are to mind it…” ~Editor’s Note on Censorship, NYT 1902
Featured authors of this period include George Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Louisa May Alcott, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and W.E.B. Du Bois.
Chapter Two, 1921 - 1946
“…even if the Germans were to get away with a lenient peace this coagulated stench will stick to them for the rest of their national history-a fate truly worse than death.” ~William S. Schlamm on Mein Kampf, NYT Book Review, 1943
Featured authors include Agatha Christie, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, Countee Cullen, William Faulkner, Margaret Mitchell, John Steinbeck, Richard Wright, Carson McCullers, Ernest Hemingway, Ann Petry, and Christopher Isherwood.
Chapter Three, 1946 - 1971
“In America the career almost invariably becomes an obsession. The “get-ahead” principle, carried to such extreme, inspires our writers to enormous efforts. A new book must come out every year. Otherwise they get panicky, and the first thing you know they belong to Alcoholics Anonymous or have embraced religion…” ~Tennessee Williams on The Sheltering Sky, NYT Book Review, 1949
Featured authors include John Hersey, J.D. Salinger, William F. Buckley Jr., Ralph Ellison, Flannery O’Connor, Anne Frank, E.B. White, Ryunosuke Akitagawa, Simone de Beauvoir, Ray Bradbury, J.R.R. Tolkien, Eugene O’Neill, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Shirley Jackson, Harper Lee, Joseph Heller, Rachel Carson, Tom Wolfe, Kurt Vonnegut, Truman Capote, Frantz Fanon, Jean Toomer, Philip Roth, Mario Puzo, Michael Crichton, Robert Hayden, and Jacqueline Susann.
Chapter Four, 1971 - 1996
“I would think to myself… that the battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War I: Never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain.” ~Peggy Noonan, What I Saw at the Revolution, NYT Book Review, 1990
Featured authors include John Updike, Nikki Giovanni, Stephen King, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, Vincent Bugliosi, Shere Hite, John Cheever, Joan Didion, Michael Herr, Paule Marshall, Zora Neale Hurston, Art Spiegelman, Toni Morrison, Randy Shilts, Gabriel García Márquez, Sandra Cisneros, and Jackie Collins.
Chapter Five, 1996 - 2021
“No marriage is as arbitrary and accidental as one between a writer and a reader, set up by a brief infatuation in a bookstore or the enthusiasm of a third party.” ~Caleb Crain on Interpreter of Maladies, NYT Book Review, 1999
Featured authors include Jhumpa Lahiri, J.K. Rowling, Zadie Smith, Alice Sebold, Miguel de Cervantes, Alison Bechdel, André Aciman, Haruki Murakami, Junot Díaz, Jennifer Egan, Robert A. Caro, Celeste Ng, Jacqueline Woodson, Walter Mosley, Lucia Berlin, Colson Whitehead, Tommy Orange, David Sedaris, and Jericho Brown
_______________________________
Smash-Mouth Criticism
Critic John Leonard points out that the reason we see so many “slash-and-burn” critiques is because they are easy to write. For those of us who rate and review, he offers these six rules of engagement:
1. As in Hippocrates, do no harm.
2. Never stoop to score a point or bite an ankle.
3. Always understand that in this symbiosis, you are a parasite.
4. Look with an open heart and mind at every different kind of book.
5. Use theory only as a periscope or a trampoline, never a panopticon, a crib sheet or a license to kill.
6. Let a hundred Harolds Bloom.
Sage advice.