Book Reviews? LRB vs the failing New York Review of Books vs ... ?

i wanna read everyone's angry emails tbh

― macropuente (map), Wednesday, September 19, 2018 6:04 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would buy this issue

I'm reading Toibin's review of the Gunn collection and so far it's not bad. I've liked several of his novels and have never minded his criticism.

nyrb ppl think he's good, lrb ppl think he's bad: it's like melody maker versus nme in the late 80s, and grebo

― mark s, Wednesday, September 19, 2018 6:08 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in what way do lrb people think he’s bad? he’s in like every other issue

I don't like the Grenfell piece, but I don't think it represents the political stance of the whole LRB (certainly not all of its contributors) -- more the political stance of its author.

O'Hagan is one of the LRB's 17 million contributing editors, who as far as I can see can publish whatever they like.

That NYRB issue hasn't even been published yet: I wonder if they'll actually run the article that blew up in their faces.

Interview with Buruma:

‘I am embroiled in a big scandal, in the middle of storm on social media,’ said Ian Buruma on the phone from New York. ‘It is rather ironic: as editor of The New York Review of Books I published a theme issue about #MeToo-offenders who had not been convicted in a court of law but by social media. And now I myself am publicly pilloried.’

really makes you think

it's a pity he was a man

Twitter runs the NYRB now.

new editors: shanley and the helldude

Flopson: yes, I know that Colm Toibin writes a lot in the LRB. I have said this twice on this thread. That is one reason that I said that my original comment was deliberately glib. The fact that he writes in the LRB is also the reason I have read loads of his essays, and think he is a quite bad and extremely overrated essayist.

Nonetheless, I think that Mark S's joke also has something to it -- I think that CT *is* more respected in the US than the UK. He works there, and anecdotally I have met American scholars who think he is wonderful and couldn't believe I didn't think the same.

The question re whether he is actually good or bad, in any individual's view here, should probably better be discussed on another thread. I think I have probably already said what I thought about it somewhere on this board.

Despite my typical great frustration with his essays I did read his book on Bishop. I'm not sure now if I thought it was better than the essays.

I have read two of his novels - I think they would need separate judgement.

It would be a pretty amazing own of Buruma by the disgruntled members of his former staff if the next issue was indeed composed entirely of the angry letters/emails and, of course, tweets of the last few days.

As a reward for making them see sense on this NYRB should commission mark s to review the dril book.

Update, September 20 at 9:36 a.m.: Buruma spoke briefly about his departure to the Dutch outlet Vrij Nederland, saying that he has “been convicted on Twitter, without any due process.” He also claims that he resigned from the position and that university presses, who advertise in the NYRB, were threatening a boycott because they feared adverse campus reactions to the Ghomeshi article.

It’s not a trial, dipshit!

The blaming of the college kids is such a giveaway.

oh noes i was convicted on twitter just for being a shithead

(also the magazine would have lost a fuckton of revenue had i stayed on but waaaah social media)

idk how many college kids are aware of the NYRB enough to pressure university presses -- i'd guess the presses were more scared of a faculty response

(if any of that part is even true)

this thread is interesting but buruma doesn't seem like a dutch guy through and through.

his behavior is more simply explained by the fact that he is an old man and the apparent cultural consequences of polder model sound a lot like what you see everywhere else.

you remember my writings, discussions, rants, and other assorted peeves I got with Dutch media's mechanism of "debate"? Buruma, a Dutch guy through and through, tried to polder model sexual abuse and now has to contend with the fact that it is not an acceptable approach https://t.co/d6O4WOdgy6

— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) September 19, 2018

how would "campus kids" even stage a boycott of university presses?

(lol except by not doing the reading i guess, a boycott without a discernible effect in many cases amirite?)

(sidebar: i love the word "polder" and the various dutch concepts that supposedly arise from it)

w/Flavia there are no simple explanations (one of the best things about her).

I was quite interested recently to find POLDER as a term within SF criticism.

Link please, if possible

if "polder" does not appear somewhere in a Fall song I will eat someone's hat

A Polder Lover etc.

James Redd:

http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=polder

doomed like the flying dutchman forever to sail the world's media, on his forehead a post-it note reading "dick" which everyone can see but him: the ian buruma story

his behavior is more simply explained by the fact that he is an old man and the apparent cultural consequences of polder model sound a lot like what you see everywhere else.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, September 20, 2018 5:16 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^ this.

See a lot of Dutch13s trying to appropriate what happened to try and explain this happened because he is Dutch. There's a black hole at the heart of the polder model, it has been used for eternity to cover things up or smooth things (hello racism) over. This particular case though seems reaching... He's an old white man, that's p much it in this instance imo.

very enterprisingly the NYRB, now that it has my email -- thx to me sending the message that toppled IB -- has begun spamming me with trailers for pieces not by jian ghomeshi

(i don't really mind this, i do think it's funny)

A publisher who once threatened me with legal action also simultaneously added me to their mailing list

Just got my digital copy of the NYRB: it has the offending article, no angry letters, and lists Buruma as editor, so no last-minute changes to this edition.

Posted in the LRB thread, but figured I'd also share here - one of the nice things the LRB does which I don't think the NYRB does (?) are publish 10K+ word essays/reviews.

I haven't finished this one from the new issue, but so far this is very moving and powerful.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n18/tom-crewe/here-was-a-plague

nyrb/buruma update, posted in the weinstein thread here (in case anyone missed it): Weinsteins step down as Miramax CEOs

"The article was shown to only one male editor. Most members of the staff (including six female members of staff...) were excluded from the substantial editorial process”
^^^so much for the polder model!!

1/ Just received email of letter from 110 NYRB contributors protesting firing of Ian Buruma “His dismissal in these circumstances strikes us as an abandonment of the central mission of the Review, which is the free exploration of ideas.” pic.twitter.com/XI84Fkwrob

— Cara Buckley (@caraNYT) September 25, 2018

*eyes roll out of head, onto floor, into the pits of hell*

nooo Luc Sante

he's going to be very put out when they run my email on the cover of the "reader's respond" issue

alfred brendel's response i'm less concerned abt at this juncture

lol i hope they actually call it "reader's respond": ALL DRIL ALL THE TIME

I wonder who organized this letter, and how many of the signatories read the "not my concern" interview, and who was asked to sign and refused.

Maybe some of the signatories know him well enough to discount a poor choice of words in an interview vs the guy they know.

it wasn't just a poor choice of words though, was it? He lied about the editorial process that led to the article

I don’t see much description of the editorial process in the interview. He says there was an office discussion but that seems to have taken place after the substantive editing had taken place. So “lied” seems a bit strong. Maybe disagreements were stronger than he let on.

Late to this, haven't read Mark's Burumabusting letter, am only familiar with "ponder" in its xpost Science Fiction Encyclopedia sense---"ponder modeling" is consensus-building, right? Normalizing etc. And he lied about consensus-building among the editors. re contributors' protest, don't see what the Ghomeshi piece had to with xpost ideas, or literature (he's not exactly the Celine of unrepentant sex offenders).

has anyone spotted the complete list of signatures anywhere? i've only found summaries and the cut-off alphabetical seen above

(my letter is not yet and may well never be publicly available, dow: it is merely one of i assume many emails sent to the nyrb)

Everyone is going to have one signatory in that list which is just going to cut you to pieces isn't it? Janet Malcolm re-think this!

The letter they signed isn’t really Trenchant enough for me to be that fretful about any of the signatories.

I still haven't recovered from learning Jan Morris love watching Mrs Brown's Boys, so not able to even consider looking at signatories to that list

I actually agree with the writers of that letter. It's such an overblown reaction to fire someone because of one stupid decision. Jonathan Haidt said on Sam Harris' podcast last week that the only correct way to deal with an internet mob is to ignore it. And here's Laura Kipnis in the New York Times:

Do we now live in such unforgiving times that one problematic essay (or interview) guillotines a job? If so, my fear is that no editor in America will be taking editorial risks ever again.

What’s painful about the stance of many now claiming the #MeToo mantle is the apparent commitment to shutting down voices and discussions that might prove distasteful or unnerving. What use is such an intellectually stifled version of feminism to anyone?

Again, i suspect it's not so much the article alone as the completely clueless follow-up interview that did him in.