In his farewell to this Book Review,...

In his farewell to this Book Review, Art Seidenbaum referred to “Endpapers” as a “flat atop the crossword puzzle.” This morning, as I move in, I am reminded of a writer who consigned all critics to a flat beneath the crossword puzzle. Gustave Flaubert wrote: “Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy--as regards form, almost always; and as regards moral value, incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.”

To be sure, the editor of a book review need not be a literary critic in his own right, and, therefore, need not be, in Tennyson’s phrase, “a louse on the locks of literature.” He is nonetheless likely to be taken for a louse. No academic preparation will preserve him, for the paradox of specifically literary reviewing is that while the reviewer who knows nothing of literature is an illiterate, the reviewer who knows everything about literature is a literary critic, which--by the consensus I am reporting--is worse. No: Forewarned, in this case, is not forearmed. The book review editor, whether louse in his own right or merely the harborer of lice, must resign himself to be scratched. Honor is not to be had. He must content himself with irritable pleasure.

Literary criticism is not the whole of book reviewing, of course, any more than literature is the whole of life. Book reviewing is literary criticism when the book reviewed is literature. When the book is something else, so must be the review. At its best, a literary review is a small work of art offered in homage to a larger one--or, as it may be, flung against it. But when the book under review is a work of knowledge rather than a work of art, the review must also be a work of knowledge. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” John Keats wrote, but Albert Einstein took a different view. “If you wish to describe the truth,” he wrote, “leave elegance to the tailor.” Come back, Albert Einstein. We need you to review for the Los Angeles Times.

Understanding and something I can only call responsible reporting are essential to all book reviewing. Past that point, what counts for most in a literary review is a blend of taste, sensitivity and style. What counts for most in a non-literary review is knowledge of the non-literary subject. The hostility of writers toward critics may be paralleled by the hostility of experts toward journalists, but many journalists do acquire subject expertise, and many experts do learn to write for a lay readership. The traffic between research and journalism already flows more freely than the traffic between creative writing and criticism. In these pages, I hope that it may flow more freely still. Books preserve knowledge. Book reviews preserve books. It is in this sense that I hear George Bernard Shaw’s famous line: “Only journalism lasts.”

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, the saying goes, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. What most strikes this long-time book editor about the newspaper business is the unforgiving regularity with which the mouth must be opened. My predecessor set a standard of deftness and pith on the scheduled page, not to speak of judgment and geniality off the page, that I can scarcely hope to match.

But if I begin a bit daunted, I also begin happy. What is happiness? Maurice Hewlett once listed the following desiderata in the London “Times Literary Supplement”: “There must be something going forward; you must be doing it yourself; you must not have too much of it; you must not have as much as you want of it; you must think it the only thing worth doing.” The Los Angeles Times Book Review is going forward. I am doing it myself, if gropingly and scarcely without assistance. I do not have too much of it. I do not have as much of it as I want. And as of this day, I do indeed think it quite the only thing worth doing.