This morning, I bounced over to Metacritic — an aggregator of film, music, game, TV, and book reviews — to take a look at their composite review of James Frey’s new book Bright Shiny Morning. Except what I found was this message:
*Note: Metacritic’s regular coverage of Books has concluded with the final Harry Potter installment. We may highlight individual books in the future, but for consistent quality meta-review coverage of books, please consult our friends at The Complete Review. Thank you! Marc Doyle, co-founder, Metacritic.com
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. I mean I know the book business is struggling, that sales are down, etc., but it’s somehow even more striking that book reviews are also struggling. When no one wants to talk about your product, you could be in real trouble.
And is it meaningful that so much of the pessimism regarding books corresponded to the publication of the final Harry Potter novel? What are kids going to read now? How are bookstores going to make any money? Who will ever care about books ever again ever?
This all got me thinking about book reviews, and I found a long essay by Steve Wasserman, former editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review : Goodbye to All That. If you’re interested in books and book culture, you should read it. Read the whole thing.
His basic point is that it is essential for a good society to publish good books and for those books to be discussed in newspapers (whether in print or online is irrelevant; what matters is that newspapers are still the predominant source of news in America).
Yes, books are news, and many newspapers around the country seem to have forgotten that. The problem is that books are only news to a small number of people. Newspapers who still maintain book sections use them as ‘loss leaders.’ That is, for many of a given newspaper’s most affluent and well-educated readers, the book review is one of the most important sections of the paper. If you want these people to read the rest of your paper, you’d better have a decent book section, is the idea.
But so what does it mean that many book sections have been getting the ax, lately? What does it mean that a tiny percentage of Americans read books and that a tinier percentage yet read book reviews?
Does it mean that forces of anti-intellectualism are winning?
More importantly, does it mean we are doomed to a future in which our entertainments consist only of endless Grand Theft Auto sequels?
I’m exaggerating to make a point. I don’t think books or the discussion of books will ever go away. Books will exist, whether on paper or on the Kindle, for as long as human civilization endures. What’s disheartening is that for so many people, they may as well not exist. And that number seems to be growing larger. Even as our population grows, the number of readers shrinks.
What does this mean?
Yes, it does mean that the “forces of anti-intellectualism are winning.” People are not smart, and they are getting even, um, not-smarter. Dumb people have dumb kids, and they’re taking over. (We’ve discussed this before, and the premise of the (bad) movie “Idiocracy” is based on it.)
People don’t like to read anymore because it takes too long. We all have ADD and we can’t focus on anything longer than 30 seconds. I am not completely innocent here, for several reasons. One, I’m not a big book review reader myself. I was never what I would call an avid reader either, when I compared myself to you and your wife. But then I met other people who are really not “readers.” It was scary. Two, whereas I don’t actually have ADD, I am reluctant to watch movies that are longer than 2 hours. And when I do, my first comment is usually “it was too long.” But, even from my simpleton quasi-reader point of view, I still think you are right. We should read more, and we should care more about what book s have to say.
You are absolutely right to file this under the “decline of western culture.” It is a sign of the decline. You’ve hit the nail on the head as far as books ago. I would like to take a moment to address it in movies, since that is what I do. Of course, movie reviews are still rampant. (Any idiot with a Yahoo! account can post a badly- written error-riddled review.) They don’t suffer from the same decline as book reviews. And although the movie business is on a similar decline, I won’t argue that it is the same as the book business. But, I will argue the quality of the movies is catering to the lowest common denominator, and it is similarly contributing to the decline. The general rule-of-thumb, or common practice, if you will, is that if you want to make good movies, you make independent movies. If you want to make money, you make Hollywood blockbusters. And never the twain shall meet. Recently, there has been some breakdown of this formula. To which I say “Bravo!” Perhaps our decline can be slowly reversed if this trend continues. Also, making books into movies does NOT help the problem. You know I’m right, and you know the reasons. I can discuss them another time.
Also, speaking of ADD, movie critic James Berardinelli had this to say about ‘Speed Racer’: “This is spectacle at 24 frames per second: colors, images, cars zipping and flying in all directions – everything for the ADD viewer, except I’m wondering what ADD viewer is going to sit through more than two hours of this. ”
The one thing I will say to oppose all of the fantastic points you have made, Tom, is that I find when a movie is bad, the review is oh so good. Another example for Speed Racer