Papers’ Stepchild : Reviewing Books: It’s Haphazard

Last summer, Paul Erdman reviewed Michael Thomas’ novel “Hard Money” for the New York Times. Erdman called the book a “tasteless exercise . . . an ego trip disguised as a novel.”

Thomas was not terribly surprised by Erdman’s verdict; four years earlier, Thomas had reviewed Erdman’s novel “The Last Days of America” for Saturday Review, and he’d written, “It fails miserably (and) . . . left me with a nasty taste.”

Two months ago, Jerry Pacht, a retired Superior Court judge in Los Angeles, reviewed the autobiography of Richard Kleindienst, U.S. attorney general in the Administration of Richard Nixon, for the Los Angeles Times.

Pacht didn’t like the book. That wasn’t surprising either. Pacht had been a longtime liberal and Democratic Party activist.

The editor of the New York Times Book Review says he didn’t know about Thomas’ earlier review of Erdman. The editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review says he knew nothing of Pacht’s politics. Both editors say that had they known then what they know now, they would not have assigned the books to those two reviewers.

But the publication of those two reviews underscores the inevitable risks and inherent problems in one of the least understood processes in American journalism--the selection and assignment of books for review.

Even though book publishing is now a $9-billion-a-year business in the United States, publishing executives themselves say they don’t understand the book review process--except that “it’s riddled with carelessness and often burdened by conflicts of interest” in the words of Stephen Rubin, vice president and editorial director of Bantam Books.

Assignment of Reviews

How do book review editors at the nation’s newspapers decide which books to review? How do they decide who’s an appropriate reviewer for a particular book? Can they dictate the kind of review a book gets by their choice of the reviewer? Can they avoid inadvertently assigning a book to a reviewer who is the author’s friend (or enemy), rival (or colleague), mentor (or student), ideological soul mate (or adversary)? Can they avoid assigning a book to a reviewer who wants to use the review to gain revenge (or to curry favor), to advance his pet theory (or professional career)?

In an effort to answer these (and other) questions on the book review process, a Times reporter recently spent several weeks conducting more than 100 interviews in a dozen cities with reviewers, book review editors, literary agents, editors and publicists at New York publishing companies, newspaper and magazine editors, and such authors as Gore Vidal, John Irving, Nora Ephron, Anne Tyler and Ann Beattie.

The impression that emerges from these interviews is one of a process that is singularly haphazard and arbitrary--and of a product that varies wildly from newspaper to newspaper.

Only three newspapers--the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times--publish a separate Sunday book review section; most other major papers publish Sunday book reviews as part of their arts and leisure sections or, less frequently, in their comment and opinion sections. Some newspapers publish book reviews in their weekday news and feature pages, rather than in special Sunday sections; others do both. Most newspapers publish reviews somewhere, sometime, though, even if they’re just wire service reviews or--in many smaller papers--straight reprints of the book publisher’s own press releases and book jacket copy in the guise of a review.

But at most papers--with the notable exception of the New York Times and, to a much lesser degree, the Washington Post--book reviews are a neglected stepchild; most reviews are written by free-lance reviewers who are underpaid, assigned and edited by editors who are overworked and understaffed and published in sections with little or no financial support from book advertising.

Most book review editors say they don’t even have the time or the staff to sort through and evaluate all the books that come flooding into their offices every day.

About 50,000 books are published annually in the United States. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times each reviews about 1,500 to 2,000 of them. Other major papers--the Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, Miami Herald--review about 600 to 1,200 each. Most papers review even fewer than that--about 300 each, on the average, according to a 1984 study.

‘Feel Like Shipping Clerk’

Constance Casey, book editor of the San Jose Mercury-News, says she spends so much time just taking books out of their mailing bags and carrying them around and piling them up that “I feel like a shipping clerk.”

Book review editors have no more time to select reviewers than they do to select books. Most editors compile a list of possible reviewers and their areas of special interest, and they turn to that list for every book. The result: They often assign reviews to an assistant professor at the local college or university who may have some expertise in the area but is not necessarily a sparkling prose stylist (or a disinterested observer). Almost as often, book review editors make an even more predictable kind of assignment: They ask Texans (and Canadians, Montanans, feminists, ex-CIA agents and other easily identifiable groups) to review each other’s books, even if they are sometimes singularly inappropriate choices.

Novelist Mary Gordon, for example, says that because of the subject matter of her books (“Final Payments,” “Company of Women,” “Men and Angels”), she’s now “typed to review Irish, Catholic and mother books.”

“It’s absurd . . . a giant bore,” Gordon said. “I think my next book is going to be about cannibalism.”

Sheila Ballantyne had an even stranger--and more revealing--experience after her novel “Imaginary Crimes” was published. Book review editors asked her to review a couple of mysteries--even though her book had nothing to do with “crime.” Clearly, the editors had not read the book--or even its jacket. Just its title.

One-Person Operations

That’s not unusual. Most newspaper book review editors--even at newspapers as successful and as prestigious as the Philadelphia Inquirer and Miami Herald--run essentially one-man (or one-woman) operations, with no full-time editorial help. At some papers, the book editor doesn’t even work full-time on books.

Because they have so little time, help and space, most book review editors start their daily book-winnowing process by automatically rejecting more than half the books that come in; they usually reject all the technical and professional books, the textbooks, how-to books, investment guides, cookbooks and diet books (which they generally send on to their paper’s food editor), most self-help books, paperback reprints, sports books (sent on to the sports department), religion books (sent on to the religion editor), science fiction, Westerns, romances, mysteries and children’s books (although the larger papers run periodic roundup columns on some of these books).

Even after this wholesale, arbitrary carnage--”I feel like . . . (all these books) are lost kittens and I’m saying, ‘Send them over to the pound,’ ” Casey said--book review editors still face 10 or 20 or 50 times more books than their papers have space to review.

Many books are obvious choices for review--a new novel by a major writer, a biography of an important figure, a study of a contemporary or historical event of some significance, the latest book by a seminal thinker or controversial public official. Other books are reviewed because the writer or the subject is of special local interest; political books get more attention in the Washington Post than almost anywhere else, for example, and books by and about gays tend to get more attention in the San Francisco Chronicle than in any other major daily paper.

Still other books are reviewed because they illuminate a current or recent controversy--South Africa, the nuclear arms race, the Mideast, a notorious crime.

Difficult to Categorize

But most books don’t fit into any of these categories, and book review editors are thus left with few criteria other than the vagaries of their own viscera to choose the books they think their readers are (or should be) most interested in.

The old saying “You can’t judge a book by its cover” notwithstanding, Dianne Donovan, book editor of the Chicago Tribune, is one of several editors who say a book’s cover sometimes does influence her decision about whether a book is worth a review. Book review editors say they’re even more influenced by the name of the author or the publisher or the subject matter.

Many publishers complain that books published by Alfred A. Knopf are more likely to be reviewed than books by most other publishers. They’re right--largely because Knopf has a long, distinguished publishing history, and book review editors feel they’re taking less risk with a Knopf book than with the books of many other publishers (especially if the book is a first novel).

Sometimes a book editor decides a particular book deserves a review because of something intangible.

“You pick up a book and hold it to your forehead and wait for it to buzz,” said Michael Dirda, an editor at the Washington Post’s Book World. “It’s an almost psychic experience. . . . You just know it should be reviewed.”

Dirda was speaking half in jest. But only half. The book selection process is often just that “haphazard and eccentric” in the words of Gordon Lish, who is both a novelist and an editor at Alfred A. Knopf.

“Given the way papers usually do these things, you might just as well throw all the books down a staircase and review only those that land the furthest down the staircase,” Lish said.

At all but a handful of newspapers, the choice of which books to review or to ignore is ultimately made by one person, acting unilaterally--but not necessarily in a vacuum.

Lobbying for Review Space

Book review editors routinely consult the major trade magazines, Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, and publicists for the major publishing companies regularly write, telephone and visit them to lobby for their new books.

“I’m gracefully aggressive in my pursuit of reviews,” said Julia Knickerbocker, director of publicity for Simon and Schuster. “I cultivate relationships with editors and reviewers all over the place so I can call their attention to books that might otherwise be ignored.”

Editors at publishing houses also get involved in the courtship of reviewers and book review editors.

Roger Straus, president of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, says he is “already trying to orchestrate” reviews for a German book that his company will publish in the first English-language edition late next year.

“I’ve spoken to two possible reviewers, and I’m having it translated into French for one of them,” Straus said. “I would have no compunction about having lunch with Mike Levitas (editor of the New York Times Book Review) and saying, ‘Mike, we have this outstanding book coming out, and I think the ideal reviewer for it would be Susan Sontag or Richard Howard or whomever.’ ”

On occasion, this approach can backfire.

Robert Gottlieb, president of Alfred A. Knopf, says that when he published Anthony Hyde’s “The Red Fox” earlier this year, Knopf touted it as being much better than a typical genre thriller. The New York Times apparently agreed. Joseph Skvorecky was assigned to review the book. Since Skvorecky is both a “literary” writer and a Knopf author, Gottlieb should have been delighted.

He wasn’t. Skvorecky, it seems, is too literary--”a serious author,” Gottlieb said. “It was lunatic to assign that book to him. There was no way he was going to like it.”

He didn’t like it.

Recommendations Ignored

Levitas and other book review editors say they discourage--and usually ignore--publishers’ recommendations for reviewers, just as they try to avoid assigning a book to a reviewer whose publisher is the same as the author’s. They don’t always succeed in the latter effort, though, because they don’t always take time to check or, in some instances, because they think a reviewer from the same publishing house as the author will probably write a favorable review, and that’s exactly what they want.

A book review editor can assign a review to anyone, so if the editor likes (or doesn’t like) a particular book or author, he can often select a reviewer likely to reach the same judgment, based on the reviewer’s previous writings as well as on his personal and professional alliances.

Although editors say they try not to be quite that arbitrary in their assignments, most editors, writers and publishers interviewed for this story said the practice is both pervasive and inevitable.

But writers and publishers worry more about the biases of free-lance reviewers--who write most of the nation’s book reviews--than they do about the biases of the book review editor; the free-lancer may not feel he can afford to live by the same ethical code that governs most journalists.

Meager Pay

Smaller papers often pay their reviewers nothing; the reviewer just gets to keep the book he’s reviewing. With a few exceptions, larger papers generally pay only $50 to $250 per review--even to big-name writers. The Washington Post, for example, says it has a set fee of $175 for “99.5%” of the free-lance reviews it publishes. (The New York Times pays $200 to $500 for most full-length reviews.)

Writers generally do book reviews not primarily for money but for prestige, for exposure and because they have something to say or someone they want to encourage or promote (or punish). That makes them suspect when they ask a book review editor if they can review a particular book--as many of them do--rather than just saying they’re interested in certain kinds of books and then waiting for an assignment.

Some editors figure a request for a specific book may betray a vested interest, and they routinely refuse such requests. Other editors figure that volunteers may alert them to books they might otherwise miss, so they’re reluctant to discourage them, even at the risk of being manipulated.

It would seem that most questions about vested interests could be easily resolved on all review assignments. A book editor could simply ask a potential reviewer, volunteer or not, if there were any reason he would not be able to give the book a fair evaluation. The reviewer would answer yes or no, and the assignment would be made or not.

Few Inquiries

But surprisingly few book review editors make these elementary inquiries. Although editors at the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and a few other papers say they try to ask at least some variation of those questions, many reviewers interviewed for this story said they’ve never been asked about possible conflicts by any editors.

“They expect you to be forthcoming; it would be awkward to grill you,” said Mordecai Richler, author of “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” and “Joshua Then and Now.”

Why? Wouldn’t it be in everyone’s best interest if editors asked--politely, not accusingly--about possible conflicts? But editors tend to trust (and covet) writers and don’t want to offend them. Besides, most editors have neither the time nor the inclination to go looking for a second reviewer if their first choice disqualifies himself.

Thus, just as most editors are dependent on publicists for the publishing companies to alert them to new books, so they’re “dependent on the reviewers to tell me if there’s any problem I should know about” in the words of Carlin Romano, book editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Romano was almost burned once when a reviewer who’d had a dispute with novelist James Michener withheld that information. Romano found out about it and pulled the review at the last minute.

Honesty Prevails

Fortunately, most reviewers are more honest.

John Irving, author of “The World According to Garp” and “The Cider House Rules,” has a simple policy: He won’t review a friend’s book, and since, he said, “Everyone in the writing business has at least met almost everyone else,” he has a simple definition for friendship: “If I know the author’s address and telephone number and the names of his children and wife or husband, the person’s a friend; I won’t review his book.”

Jonathan Yardley, Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic at the Washington Post, has a different approach.

Yardley says he met novelist Anne Tyler (“Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant”) a few years ago, and they and their spouses had dinner once, and Yardley and Tyler later went to a baseball game together. The two live only about a mile and a half apart, Yardley says, and he liked Tyler very much, “but I realized she was an important writer . . . an excellent writer, and I wanted to write about her, without any personal involvement, so I didn’t call her again.”

Then, last summer, Tyler’s new book, “The Accidental Tourist,” was published. Like most full-time, staff reviewers for major newspapers, Yardley chooses the books he wants to review. But unlike staff reviewers at, say, the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, Yardley’s choice is subject to the approval of his paper’s book editor, Brigitte Weeks--and Weeks knew that Yardley and Tyler were acquainted. She suggested he let someone else review the book.

After “an argument,” Weeks says she agreed to let Yardley do the review.

“The Accidental Tourist,” Yardley subsequently wrote, is “dazzling . . . unique . . . extraordinary . . . beautiful . . . incandescent . . . heartbreaking . . . exhilarating.” Yardley closed his review by saying:

“Words fail me: One cannot reasonably expect fiction to be much better than this.”

After that review ran, Yardley says he invited Tyler to a baseball game.

“I feel free to be friends now,” he said. “I’m on record with what I think about her writing. . . . If I review any of her future books, I’ll just acknowledge (in the review) that we’re friends and go on from there.”

Academic Conflicts

The problem of personal relationships (and professional rivalries) between author and reviewer is especially nettlesome with reviewers from academe because they’re often less well-known to editors.

“If you have a book on the Ukrainian sparrow, and only three guys in the world know a lot about Ukrainian sparrows, how are you supposed to know that they probably all have books coming out on the Ukrainian sparrow . . . and two of them are fighting for the Ukraiian Sparrow Chair at the . . . university?” asked Digby Diehl, book editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

Book editors at the Los Angeles Times have not generally asked reviewers about possible conflicts of interest, and at least twice in the late 1970s--once with a college professor--they were embarrassed because of that failure.

The professor, from the University of California, Irvine, asked for a book and then gave it a scathing review. It turned out that the author was a fellow professor whom the reviewer had long disliked. In the other case, a San Francisco writer asked to review a particular book for The Times and then gave it a rave review. It turned out that the reviewer was a good friend of the author.

After these incidents, Art Seidenbaum--then editor of the Times Book Review--said no one could ever again request a specific book for review. Jack Miles, Seidenbaum’s successor, says he has made exceptions to that policy only in the case of a reviewer he especially trusts or covets--a policy similar to those at the New York Times and Washington Post.

Possible Conflicts Abound

Even when book review editors reject volunteers and assign reviewers themselves, though, the possibility of a conflict of interest is considerable. The problem is particularly acute in New York, where virtually all the major publishing houses and the most important review media are located and where many authors and reviewers also live. Often, authors know not only the reviewers but the review editors as well.

Conflicts of interest arise outside New York, too, though.

In May, for example, Herbert Gold, a San Francisco novelist, reviewed his friend Jerome Charyn’s novel “War Cries Over Avenue C” for the Chicago Tribune.

“Charyn’s talent is as rich as anyone writing,” Gold wrote.

Last year, Christopher Buckley reviewed Myra McPherson’s “Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation” for USA Today. McPherson had referred to Buckley unfavorably in her book--but not nearly as unfavorably as he referred to her in his review (“sloppy . . . silly . . . pathetic . . . badgering . . . not an especially graceful writer. . . .”).

There are many similar examples--some of which occur when an editor deliberately assigns a book to someone he knows won’t like it and will say so in a provocative fashion.

“It’s the philosophy of ‘let’s you and him fight,’ ” said Alison Lurie, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Foreign Affairs” and “The War Between the Tates.”

Reviewed by Opponent

Such a fight might be fun for the reviewer--but not for the author. That’s why Harold Willens, a Los Angeles businessman and nuclear freeze activist, was so enraged when the Wall Street Journal assigned the review of his 1984 book on the nuclear arms race to someone he had frequently debated in public.

The reviewer, Sam Cohen, wrote that Willens was guilty of “either ignorance or intellectual dishonesty;” Willens said, “Asking Cohen to review my book was like asking King George III to review Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense.’ ”

How common is this practice? How common are other kinds of conflicts of interest in book reviewing? Not as common as all the complaints would suggest. Most book reviews are fair and honest, assigned and written in good faith, whatever their other flaws.

“Most of the paranoia (about reviews) is unjustified . . . the scandals few and relatively insignificant,” said Calvin Trillin, who writes for the New Yorker and the Nation and is the author of several books. “A lot of the conspiracy charges you hear are just authors and their friends grumbling about how anyone could possibly not like or, worse, ignore the wonderful book they worked their ass off on for three years.”

Or as Nora Ephron, the author of “Heartburn,” put it: “The number of reviews that don’t pass the nose test is very small. It’s just that when they don’t pass, they stink to high heaven.”

Editors Not Omniscient

One reason for the occasional stink is that book review editors cannot possibly know about every personal friendship and every political feud that could produce a conflict of interest for a reviewer. Another reason is that book reviewing is a unique form; as Gore Vidal once wrote, “Of all artists, the writer is the only one to be judged almost entirely by his competitors”--and many of these competitors are themselves frustrated, failed or fledgling writers.

Herb Gold says he can still recall, with some embarrassment, a “vicious review” he wrote of Nelson Algren’s “The Man With the Golden Arm” in 1949.

“Years and years went by and I noticed something funny,” Gold said. “I hadn’t forgotten the book. . . . I hadn’t forgotten the book because it was a very good book . . . an admirable book, a remarkable book in many ways.”

Gold says he was “very young” when he wrote his review, and he later came to realize that as “a would-be novelist, maybe a bit jealous,” he’d written the review out of frustration and envy, “out of my needs at the time,” rather than as an honest piece of literary criticism.

Personal animosity is probably even more likely than personal envy--or political animosity--to yield an unfair review. And yet Vidal has often been asked to review Norman Mailer and the late Truman Capote--both of whom he has long been widely known to dislike. Gold says book review editors have similarly encouraged him to review books even after he’s explained that he and the author were enemies.

Both men agree that such reviews, while entertaining to read, are ultimately unfair to the author.

Vidal’s Rules

“The first rule of reviewing is you never review anyone you dislike personally,” Vidal said. “The second rule of reviewing is you never review anyone you like personally.”

Most people in publishing agree with the first; many disagree with the second. Conspiracies of enmity are wrong, they say; conspiracies of amity are not. The prevailing theory seems to be that it’s all right to review a friend’s book just so long as you genuinely like it. That’s why there are far more reviews written by friends and others predisposed to like an author than by enemies or others predisposed to dislike the author.

Thus, J. D. O’Hara, who teaches English literature at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, encouraged Ann Beattie (“Chilly Scenes of Winter,” “Love Always”) early in her writing career and says he considers her a friend. He’s also managed, he says, to give a favorable review, in a variety of publications (including the New York Times), to “every one of her books except her second novel, and I couldn’t very well have reviewed that one because she dedicated it to me.”

Sometimes editors deliberately assign a book to a reviewer known to like its author. In October, for example, Patricia Holt of the San Francisco Chronicle asked William Abrahams to review “The Stories of Muriel Spark.” Abrahams raved about the book--and about Spark. The book was published by E. P. Dutton; Abrahams is a senior editor at E. P. Dutton.

‘Longtime Idol’

Most book editors try to avoid such clear conflicts, but Holt says she thought it perfectly appropriate for Abrahams to review Sparks’ book since “I know she’s a longtime idol of his, and I expected a celebration of her talent, not a real critical analysis.”

“Celebrations” are frequent in the nation’s book pages. Several book review editors--and several reviewers--said that they see the celebration of talent, especially new talent, as the primary purpose of book reviews.

“Your job is to get good books into the hands of people who will enjoy them the most and convey that joy intelligently to your readers,” said Charles Simmons, an editor on the New York Times Book Review from 1954 to 1984.

So what happens when an editor sends a book out for review, and the reviewer doesn’t like it?

Most of the time, the review is published anyway--perhaps in a less prominent position than originally planned. Once in a while, the review is killed. Or rewritten.

Harvey Shapiro, editor of the New York Times Book Review from 1975 to 1983, recalls receiving a very negative review of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slapstick” and thinking the review was “unfair, out of context.”

Shapiro suggested that the reviewer rewrite the review, using “Slapstick” as a vehicle to look at Vonnegut’s whole career.

The reviewer did just that--”and devastated Vonnegut’s entire oeuvre, “ Shapiro recalled.

Shapiro felt honor-bound to run the review--even though it called Vonnegut’s work “empty” and “formulaic,” accused him of “easy, sentimental cynicism” and said he was “an ideal writer for the semi-literate young. . . .”

Most Reviews Favorable

Such harsh reviews are uncommon in newspapers today. Indeed, despite the popular conception of the critic-as-ogre, eager to savage every new book that comes along, book reviews are far more often positive than negative. Some writers think too many reviewers are too kind too often; the hard, critical edge necessary to both inform the reader and improve the form is too often missing, they say.

But except in the case of an eagerly awaited, major book--or an inflated reputation, which many critics feel compelled to puncture--most book review editors prefer to use their limited space to encourage readers to read good books, rather than to discourage them from reading bad books.

This is also true of most full-time staff reviewers who work at the major newspapers.

“That’s a fundamental difference between book reviewing and film or theater reviewing,” said Richard Eder of the Los Angeles Times. “When I was a theater critic (for the New York Times), I reviewed just about every play that came along . . . which, by definition, means at least 80% dreck. So I got a reputation as a very tough critic.

“But there are so many books published every year that a book critic usually reviews only those that interest him. Unless you’re an absolute ass, that means 80% of your reviews will be favorable. So now I’m perceived as a very benevolent critic.”

Trading Places

There are other reasons so many book reviews are favorable--not the least of them being fear. Writers and reviewers dance an odd minuet; today’s author is tomorrow’s reviewer: If I criticize your book today, you might criticize mine tomorrow. If I praise your book today, you might praise mine tomorrow. If I write a good review of your new book today, you might give me a good quote (a “blurb”) for the jacket of my new book tomorrow.

All this happens--with great regularity--given both human nature and the insular nature of the literary community.

Moreover, writers know how hard it is to write a book--and how painful it is to read criticism of that book.

“I don’t like to write reviews anymore,” said Alice Adams, a novelist and short story writer (“Listening to Billie,” “To See You Again”). “I find that I think of the writer, not the reader, and I’m too responsible, too kind. That does the reader a disservice.”

Although Saul Bellow once said, “Writers seldom wish other writers well,” many writers--John Irving and Anne Tyler among them--actually refuse to write a negative review.

“I only write a review of another book if I absolutely love it,” Irving said. “I can’t imagine a more subjective enterprise than writing a novel, and if you do that most of the time, as I do, you are also a most subjective reader. . . . I don’t trust myself about a book that I think is bad. I might very well do another writer a disservice.

“If an editor asks me to review a book, and I think I might be interested, I tell him I’ll read it as soon as I get it, but if I don’t like it, I’ll just send it right back so he can send it to someone else to review.”

Irving has another reason for not wanting to write a negative review.

“One of the great pleasures of being a grown-up,” he said, “is that you no longer have to eat everything on your plate to make your parents happy, and you no longer have to finish every book because you’re going to be tested on it in school.

“If I’m going to review a book, I have to finish it. But I love to read. I read for pleasure. . . . I can’t imagine tainting the pleasure of books for myself by reading something I didn’t like.”

Subsequent articles in this series will appear in the View section Thursday and Friday. NEXT: Power, Politics and Paranoia at the New York Times.

Susanna Shuster of The Times editorial library assisted with research for this story.