Vol. 1, Number 4	Winter 1998 issue

 

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The New York Times Book Review on The Catcher in the Rye: This Salinger, he's a short-story guy. And he knows how to write about kids. This book though, it's too long. Gets kind of monotonous. And he should've cut out a lot about these jerks and all that crumby school. They depress me.

And on Virginia Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out: But aside from a certain cleverness—which, being all in one key, palls on one after going through a hundred pages of it—there is little in this offering to make it stand out from the ruck of mediocre novels which make far less literary pretension.

Taken from the original reviews of these books (in 1951 and 1920, respectively), these quotations highlight the embarrassingly fallible nature of book reviewing. They are unsigned, and no wonder—would you want to go down in history as the critic who blew off Holden Caulfield?

To celebrate its hundredth anniversary, the New York Times Book Review has gathered these and other noteworthy reviews into an anthology entitled Books of the Century. Subtitled A Hundred Years of Authors, Ideas and Literature, the collection includes interviews with, essays by, and letters from authors to the magazine—many of them finding fault with reviews of their work. ("It is rather hard on a poor devil of a writer," Jack London writes, "when he has written what he has seen with his own eyes or experienced in his own body, to have it charged that said sights and experiences are unreal and impossible.")

Though the essays and interviews (Dr. Seuss on writing for children, John Updike being interviewed by one of his own characters) are quite interesting and often amusing, the hundred years' worth of book reviews are the anthology's main attraction. Several reviews display amazing perception and foresight; the review of Ulysses, written on its initial publication in 1922, remains one of the most intelligent pieces of criticism of that famously difficult novel. On the other hand, many of the reviews make one realize how often the critics simply failed to appreciate the significance and lasting appeal of books now considered classics, as they did with masterpieces ranging from The Great Gatsby to Mrs. Dalloway. Some of the most mistaken appear in sidebars under the rueful heading "Oops!", one of the anthology's best features, which includes unwarranted praise as well as critical blunders like the two cited above.

In their preface, the editors explain that they tried to include a representative selection of reviews from each decade: a mix of enduring classics, social commentary, biographies of important figures at the time, popular fiction and non-fiction, and books that seemed to have all the makings of classics but have instead been completely forgotten. One probably shouldn't read them straight through, as I did, but sampling a few reviews of familiar books and an interview or two with a favorite author will give an idea of how both the craft of literary criticism and attitudes towards literature have changed over the past hundred years.

I came away with the impression that criticism, and perhaps the literary world in general, was once much less concerned with artificially attributing Greater Significance to books too slender to bear the mantle of being the Next Great American Novel; they valued literature for its craft, its aesthetic value, and its effect on its intended audience. Witness an unsigned verdict from 1908 on The Wind in the Willows: "The book is not easily classified—it is simply destined to be one of those dog-eared volumes which one laughs over and loves. Which should be quite enough for any book to achieve." No attempt to assess its cultural significance, no effort to make it into something far grander than it is: just a simple, appreciative assessment of a touching, enjoyable book.

By the time I had made it through to the reviews of the1980s, I missed this recognition that a good book could simply be that: a good book, unfettered by impressive literary forebears and psychoanalysis of both the characters and the author, generally in terms of one another. (It was probably the review of John LeCarré's A Perfect Spy, which claimed Charles Dickens as LeCarré's model and tried to reconstruct his relationship with his father based on a fictional father-son relationship, that pushed me over the edge.)

I sensed that a book review was once meant to mark the appearance of a well-written, significant, or simply heartwarming—but always literary—book. The world of book reviews appears as a much cozier, warmer place than now: more elitist, yes, in its strict categorization of books as "literature" or "fiction," but elitist in the best of ways. Rather than force on a novel a significance or over-analytical reading it neither deserved nor asked for, the reviewers of yesterday accepted books on their own terms. They sought to point a discerning reader towards books worth more than the paper and ink used to produce them, whether they were masterfully crafted statements on the human condition or simply well-wrought, enjoyable tales—and they recognized that one did not have to be both to be worth reading.

Today, this distinction seems to have been lost. Though a spot atop the best-seller list has become the Holy Grail of the publishing world, this financial success seems to be viewed as an embarassment, a mark of literary inferiority—a smudge to be wiped from a new blockbuster's glossy cover with glowing reviews citing an unnecessary (and often invented) lineage.

In today's world of critics who attribute literary value to novels primarily to justify commercial success, it seems strange to remember that earnings were not always the only, or even the principal, measure of a book's success. In the very first review of the collection, dating from 1897, an anonymous reviewer writes:

It is sad to think that not one novel reader in ten thousand, probably, will be able to comprehend [the characters'] views of life, art, and conduct, leaving sympathy out of the question. But...counting all the tens of thousands of novel readers in the English speaking world, one from each of the tens of thousands will make up a company that is worth while. So that we need not grieve for Henry James.

Any book appealing to one ten-thousandth of its readers (not the total market, but the far smaller group of people who actually bought and read the book!) would certainly never make it into print in today's profit-driven publishing industry. Nor would most authors accept the critical position that being loved "should be quite enough for any book"—not now, when we have agents, publicity departments, and even television news correspondents racing to establish every book printed as—finally!—the Great American Novel (not to mention the director of the film version, the screenplay writer, the producer, the studio spokespeople, and the big-name star who's already signed to play the lead in an effort to cross over into "serious acting" from action blockbusters.)

Besides intemperate ranting, Books of the Century may provoke a reflection on the trends in literary and cultural values over the past hundred years or a meditation on what a book should be. Or it may do none of these things, which is perfectly all right. For all deeper meaning and cultural significance aside, it is a good read. Which should be quite enough for any book to achieve.