{"id":9334,"date":"2021-11-01T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-01T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9334"},"modified":"2022-01-03T08:00:08","modified_gmt":"2022-01-03T13:00:08","slug":"a-feast-for-book-lovers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9334","title":{"rendered":"A Feast for Book Lovers!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Last week, to celebrate the 125th<\/sup> anniversary of the New York Times<\/em> Book Review, current staff and contributors presented an entertaining look back at books where reviewers got it dreadfully wrong and reviews that sparked particularly pointed letters to the editor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contemporary authors read scathing sections of reviews panning books now considered classics. Catch-22<\/em>, reviewed in 1961, was deemed too long and too episodic\u2014a collection of incidents, not a coherent novel. Though the reviewer of Anne of Green Gables<\/em> considered her \u201cone of the most extraordinary girls to ever come out of an ink pot,\u201d she was deemed far too clever, well-spoken, and much too wise. (That\u2019s why we readers loved her!) Fahrenheit 451<\/em>, reviewed in 1953, was dismissed as a polemic. The reviewer believed Ray Bradbury had \u201cdeveloped a hatred for many aspects of current life,\u201d and showed what would eventually happen if the tendency to treat reading as a heinous event went unchecked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Book Review editor Tina Jordan called the letters the review has received \u201cthe Internet message board of their day,\u201d containing praise, complaints, grievances, and corrections. In one from 1962, an author pointed out a mistake in the review, and the reviewer agreed she\u2019d mis-read something (a bit unfathomably when they read us the disputed passage). Norman Mailer was mentioned in the review of a book by a different author, and Mailer wrote to dispute the comparison and in the process, assuring that more people heard about the controversy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Best was Jack London\u2019s response to a 1905 review that criticized the \u201cunrealistic\u201d fight scenes in his short story, \u201cThe Game.\u201d A devoted boxing fan and amateur boxer himself, London felt obliged to respond, saying, \u201cI have had these experiences and it was out of these experiences, plus a fairly intimate knowledge of prize-fighting in general, that I wrote The Game.\u201d So there!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 1986 novel in verse, The Golden Gate<\/em>, by Vikram Seth, received only condescending praise from its reviewer, which instigated a fiery letter from Susan Sontag, who called it \u201ca thrilling, subtle literary achievement.\u201d Clearly, opinions differ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This month, the Book Review will be publishing its list of finalists for the best book of the past 125 years\u2014and you can nominate your favorite here<\/a>! Meanwhile, you can read reviews and interviews<\/a> selected from the Review\u2019s amazing archives. The Book Review\u2019s anniversary celebration isn\u2019t ignoring the crime\/mystery\/thriller genre. Included in its retrospective content\u2014linked above\u2014are a 1912 review<\/a> of Arthur Conan Doyle\u2019s The Lost World<\/em> and commentary from over the years<\/a> on such classics as Agatha Christie\u2019s The Mysterious Affair at Styles<\/em>, Ellery Queen\u2019s The Dutch Shoe Mystery<\/em>, Dashiell Hammett\u2019s The Maltese Falcon, <\/em>and, one of my favorite books, not technically a crime novel, but filled with crimes, high and low\u2014Hilary Mantel\u2019s Wolf Hall<\/em>. A feast for book lovers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the New York Times Book Review, current staff and contributors presented an entertaining look back at books where reviewers got it dreadfully wrong and reviews that sparked particularly pointed letters to the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A Feast for Book Lovers! - 125 Years of The New York Times Book Review. ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[122,1288,266,261,359,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book","category-culture","category-history","category-journalism","category-review","category-the-morgue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2qy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9336,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9334\/revisions\/9336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}