BY BEN WINTERS
The New Yorker magazine is the house organ of sophisticated liberalism
and has been for years. In August of 1946 the magazine published John
Hersey’s book-length essay Hiroshima, about life in the devastated
Japanese city after the nuclear bomb. In 1962, it serialized Rachel Carson’s
Silent Spring, detailing the toxic affects of the pesticide DDT on the
environment. Today–along with an eclectic mix of arts coverage, literary
fiction, and profiles–the magazine brings its readers an articulate,
and decidedly leftist, take on current events and social issues.
How surprising, then, that–as detailed by Dennis Loy Johnson on his Web site, MobyLives.com–the New Yorker turns out to be a bastion of male privilege.
"There have even been issues of The New Yorker this year where the magazine’s table of contents featured no women at all, or where the only contribution by a woman was a single poem," Johnson reported on July 17, in the first salvo of a minor publishing-world brouhaha. "There hasn’t been much fiction by women, but when there is, it’s usually by a big star. And by far, the preponderance of contributions written by women so far this year have come from staffers filing reviews in the back section, as opposed to being featured in a star turn in the features section."
This was a surprising discovery. But somehow it was even more surprising that New Yorker editor David Remnick responded almost immediately to the MobyLives survey, apologizing in USA Today, of all places. Peter Johnson’s media column, after summarizing Dennis Loy Johnson’s findings, ran this quotelet from Remnick: ''We are publishing a lot of women, some of the best journalists and fiction writers around, but it’s clearly not enough. It will change.’’
Dennis Loy Johnson ran a follow up at the end of July, a much longer essay about the New Yorker’s shortcomings, noting that Peter Johnson was the only reporter who bothered to get a quote from Remnick on the issue. The questions remain: If they don’t shape up, will the New Yorker’s lefty cred be affected? And will David Remnick’s personal cred be affected by having appeared in USA Today?
Big Egos Blurt Preposterously Subjective Comments & More
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Salon.com
slammed Peck with
the graphic above, while Moody (below) is not responding to the brouhaha. |
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The second brouhaha in the world of publishing–in the publishing world, two brouhahas is a lot–was over the latest book from well-loved novelist Rick Moody, a memoir called "The Black Veil." It was reviewed by Dale Peck in the New Republic, and it was a review that garnered quite a bit of attention. Possibly because it opened with the sentence: "Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation."
That’s just the beginning of what could be the most thoroughly nasty book review in the history of a very nasty business. "Stop reading here if you are looking for a calm dissection of the work of Hiram Frederick Moody III," Peck warns early on in his piece, which runs to over 3,000 words. "At this point, the use of the diminutive 'Rick’ is about the only wise decision that I am willing to give him credit for."
And check out this part: "My gut feeling is that if you honestly do not believe that this is bad writing, then you are a part of the problem. When I finished 'The Black Veil’ I scrawled 'Lies! Lies! All lies!’ on the cover and considered my job done."
There is much in the review suggesting not just that Peck didn’t care for Moody’s book, but rather that he found the book, and Moody himself, to be personally offensive. To wit: "For me, the beginning of a Rick Moody book is a bit like having a stranger walk up and smack me in the face, and then stand there waiting to see if I am man enough to separate him from his balls."
It is possible that Peck needs a good editor, and/or an analyst. What he got instead was a number of articles about his review. Salon.com ran a piece by Heather Caldwell, essentially stringing together some reactions to Peck’s suckerpunch from other book reviewers and novelists. "Like it or not," she wrote, "Peck’s down-flung gauntlet has the literati talking about such larger questions as: What makes for good criticism? Is the literary world too polite and clubby? Can a novelist fairly review his more critically acclaimed rival? And finally, what is the effect of this kind of skirmish on literary culture at large?"
As is typical in articles of this kind, the results were mixed. Author Andrew Solomon said that "by refusing to recognize any of Rick Moody’s strengths, Dale Peck destroys his credibility and looks really very foolish." Meanwhile, Caldwell notes that "a review that might be perceived as endearingly caustic in Britain would be shockingly out of place in the U.S."
The novelist Stanley Crouch, who was harshly reviewed by Peck previously, offered Caldwell a simple explanation. "'Dale Peck,’ he says, 'is a troubled queen, and the only person who cares about him being a troubled queen is himself.’ "
The Toronto Globe and Mail had a somewhat reductive review of Peck’s review: "Few people have the need or the opportunity to flaunt their opinions as flagrantly as American writer and critic Dale Peck. 'Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation,’ he insisted in the opening sentence of a review essay in The New Republic recently. That is a preposterously subjective comment."
Note that another example of a preposterously subjective comment might be, "Few people have the need or opportunity to flaunt their opinions as flagrantly as American writer and critic Dale Peck."
ArtsLine has not read "The Black Veil," and is now scared to try.