Leisl Schillenger Makes an Over the Shoulder Catch in Deep Center Where Norman Mailer Cuts the Grass and Joe D Haunts The Ground Crew
You know that no one is more prepared than this reporter to cease and desist on the topic of the New York Times Book Review and its utter loathing of fiction. Norman Mailer may be cranky and a trifle carniverous in a vegan age, but it’s not as though he’s cooking crank in a West Village townhouse, or socking Rosie O’Donnell in the kisser, or giving commencement speechs at Vassar on the vagaries of chick-lit and the fall of civilization. Okay he wrote a novel about young Adolph’s formative years. Janet Maslin’s review innoculates the innocent with all the dudgeon the American Heart Association might muster in regard to the sausage and pepper sandwich. Read Norman at your peril. You’ll poke your Third Eye out.
Thankfully in the same periodical Leisl Schillenger writes an actual book review of Roddy Doyle’s novel PAULA SPENCER. It’s okay with Leisl that Doyle labors in this distasteful arena, and she pretty much sticks to the task with a one hand grab at the warning track of Roddy’s long fly ball. She makes it look easy! She discusses the book without a single reference to the futlility of fiction.
At least the Sports Section is on the job. The Yankees are stockpiling young arms ( not as gross as it sounds, my Bulgarian friends.) The Knicks lost a heartbreaker. To the New Jersey Nets. Strange odors waft across the river. Somewhere near Basking Ridge a reader is cracking open that new Norman Mailer novel. Oh, the horror.
January 20th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Fiction reviews are gradually moving out of the Book Reviews and onto the web.
There’s something ironic in this, but I can’t think of a good metaphor or analogy. I’ll leave a blank here for someone else to fill.