Charlottesville Words

It’s so great that the National Book Critics Circle is mounting a Campaign to Save Book Reviewing. The more book reviews and the more space for book reviews, the better. I just wish they wouldn’t put down bloggers and on-line reviewers while they do it. Edrants has a good post on this.

Here’s an example from their blog series:

Every blogger wants to write a book. In fact, the dirty little secret of the internet is “Littera scripta manet”–the written word survives. A book is real, whereas cyberspace is just keystrokes–quickly scribbled and quickly forgotten. But to publish a book isn’t enough: It has to be noticed. And this is where book sections matter. If you were an author, would you want your book reviewed in The Washington Post and The New York Review of Books–or on a website written by someone who uses the moniker NovelGobbler or Biografiend? The book review section, whether of a newspaper or a magazine, remains the forum where new titles are taken seriously as works of art and argument, and not merely as opportunities for shallow grandstanding and overblown ranting, all too often by kids hoping to be noticed for their sass and vulgarity. Should we allow our culture to descend to this playground level of discourse? Newspapers sift, filter, and evaluate; they are responsible and strive to be trustworthy. So, too, do their book review sections. To curtail such coverage is to abandon an intellectual forum for a childish free-for-all. We would be shortchanging not only readers, but also the art, culture and scholarship of our time.Playgrounds, as we all remember, are ruled by bullies, loud-mouths and prima-donnas.

–Michael Dirda, Book World Columnist, The Washington Post

Gee whiz, Michael, you don’t have to read the internets if you don’t want to.

But anyway, if you want to do something to help, the NBCC has some suggestions for getting involved.

Filed under: books, reading, writing