Respect Is Overrated

Anthony Rainone has written a thoughtful post below regarding the soon-to-be-infamous New York Times Book Review survey of post-1980 fiction. This will, without a doubt, be great fodder for the blogosphere for several days.

I don’t disagree with a word Anthony has said; in fact, he may be guilty only of soft-pedaling the issue. Anyone who purports to discuss American life, particularly urban American life, in the last 25 years without mentioning the work of Lawrence Block or Ed McBain displays irrelevance that may be beyond hope of redemption.

But let me address a larger point--why is this even necessary? Why does the NYTBR even need to publish such a piece?

The easy answer, of course, is that it sells papers and provokes discussion, both of which will certainly be true. Fine; the Gray Lady has to make some money. But editor Sam Tanenhaus has managed to fall victim to one of the more pernicious practices of the past few years: making lists of books that “enlightened people” feel the need to read.

When I was in college, I was well familiar with lists of required books assigned by those who thought they knew better than I did what I needed to read. They are called syllabi, and I suppose during my late teens and early 20s, they were necessary and beneficial to my education. But while the pursuit of a good liberal arts education is a worthwhile goal that can stand a few reading commandments from on high, a little of this goes a long way.

Today, of course, even those of us with sheepskins well in hand are often confronted with “reading lists.” You see them in the Listmania section of Amazon.com. You see them in the “best of” lists that compete for our attention in December. BookSense publishes one every month that appears to be little more than a collection of press releases. There are even Web sites devoted to suggesting what we ought to be consuming, this one and this woman being among the most irritating.

Are these lists inherently bad? I suppose not. But they’re not very illuminating either, and can have the effect of diminishing one of the great joys of going to a public library or a bookstore--simply browsing the aisles waiting for something to catch your eye, something unanticipated, unheralded and perhaps well beyond the media’s shelf date. The day I go to the library with Nancy Pearl’s reading list in my hands is the day I start watching more television.

Thanks for your input, Sam. Maybe one of these days I’ll get around to reading Beloved. Right now, I’m pretty excited about the new Victor Gischler I stumbled upon at Barnes & Noble.

READ MORE: "Rank Insubordination," by Laura Miller (Salon).