The virtues of book blogs - Reader comments at The New York Sun

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The Scorn of the Literary Blog

Submitted by Chandrahas Choudhury, Jun 14, 2007 00:14

Among the many oversights in this piece, Mr.Kirsch, let me point out three:

"Often isolated and inexperienced, usually longing to break into print themselves, bloggers — even the influential bloggers who are courted by publishers — tend to consider themselves disenfranchised...Professional writers usually assume that those who can, do, while those who can't, blog."

Actually, a great many writers have blogs! There is not, in the literary blogosphere, the absolute boundary between writers and bloggers that you posit - many writers who review for the mainstream press also have blogs of their own. In the same way, a great many books editors of newspapers - Frank Wilson of the Philadelphia Inquirer, or Sam Leith of The Daily Telegraph, write book blogs too. In my own instance, I write a weekly book-review piece for the Indian newspaper Mint, which I usually turn into a longer essay on my blog (www.middlestage.blogspot.com), with a couple of long quotes and more leisurely analysis. A blog often offers the means to be more through, not less, because you're not held down to a word length - say 500 words, which is all you get sometimes in our shrinking book-review pages - that restricts your options severely and means you don't often do the writer of the book justice.

"...bitesized commentary, which is all the blog form allows, is next to useless when it comes to talking about books"

This is factually incorrect. In fact, if there was any criticism to be made of the standard lit-blog review of a book, it's that it is often too long and rambling, since there are no constraints on space. In this one way, then, newspaper book reviews offer an incentive for discipline, economy, and clarity of thought. But often there are lots of things that blogs can do that newspaper reviews don't permit, such as a long quote from the book in question, or close textual analysis of the kind that a newspaper wouldn't have place for. The literary blogosphere actually offers a wide range of options, from the work of beginning writers to established critics. Again, you make a mistake in laying down a wall between the mainstream press and blogs - in some ways these actually complement each other, and make for a richer literary culture.

"The blog form, that miscellany of observations, opinions, and links, is not well-suited to writing about literature..."

I don't see how you can reasonably assert this. The established form of literary criticism is the essay, and the historical roots of the essay form, going back to Montaigne, suggest that essays are really a kind of miscellany - they have a thread running through them, to be sure, but also a trend towards digression and amplitude. I could understand it if you said, for instance, that the text-message form is not suited to writing about literature. But why the blog form? The blog form is the form of the essay. Period. There can be good essays and bad essays, but bad essays can't be used to make an argument against the form, any more that insipid newspaper reviews mean that newspaper book sections should be shut down.

Chandrahas

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Other reader comments on this article

Comment	By	Date
As is with all high minded writers......... published writers that is........officially published in a book or newspaper writers that is.............. [MORE]	cheyanne	Aug 10, 2007 16:47
Kirsch has his own blog set up within six months. He's right about some things, and wrong about a lot.... [MORE]	Levari	Jul 5, 2007 16:42
As print & online media continue to merge & mutate, it becomes increasingly difficult to make value judgements grounded on... [MORE]	Henry Gould	Jun 29, 2007 08:31
Re: ethics. There are none insofar as the publishing world goes. Reviews are de facto blurb factories. And people will read... [MORE]	Dan Schneider	Jun 27, 2007 08:23
Over the last two years, I have read and enjoyed many blogs but all of them on and off, the... [MORE]	Anirudh Karnick	Jun 27, 2007 08:00
What about the shills at Amazon booksellers? What category do they inhabit? There is number one reviewer, Harriet Klausner, whose... [MORE]	Barbara Delaney	Jun 19, 2007 20:34
Al the squabbling between bloggers and journalists - or in this case critics - obscures the real issue, which is... [MORE]	Ms Baroque	Jun 16, 2007 19:32
Perhaps I am just quibbling, but I find a number of reviews in the London Review of Books tedious, overly... [MORE]	Anirudh Karnick	Jun 27, 2007 08:11
A spirited debate has been raging over the bookblog, a medium soundly denounced by many literary critics, who condemn bookblogs... [MORE]	Bibliolatrist	Jun 16, 2007 14:07
Although I have to agree that the analysis, especially the part about the length and language of blogs, can be... [MORE]	Marc André Bélanger	Jun 15, 2007 12:41
I do not know what blogs Mr. Kirsch has been reading, but if he were to look around a little... [MORE]	Robert Archambeau	Jun 14, 2007 17:07
Kirsch states that bloggers are upset with criticism of their blogs, while the articles that have appeared recently have been... [MORE]	harvey	Jun 14, 2007 14:24
It's interesting that many any of the commentators who complain that Mr. Kirsch generalizes also generalize by not providing links... [MORE]	Bill	Jun 14, 2007 13:13
I really don't accept your thesis that blogging provides bite-sized reviewing; if anything blog reviews have lengthier reviews than what... [MORE]	Robert Nagle	Jun 14, 2007 12:23
Unfortunately the newspaper book reviewers have to come to terms with the fact that print journallism is struggling to stay... [MORE]	Gerry Young	Jun 14, 2007 10:52
I don't think we should confuse "reviews" with "literary criticism". Reviews run from the small town weekly up to the... [MORE]	rpm	Jun 14, 2007 10:19
"Those who can, do, and those who can't, blog?" Cute as hell, but also stupid as hell. Plenty of "real"... [MORE]	Kelley Dupuis	Jun 14, 2007 08:38
As a British reviewer, writer & blogger I enjoyed this article very much. I agree with a lot that you... [MORE]	PD Smith	Jun 14, 2007 07:14
Although I agree that there could be more book reviews available (especially as an LA Times reader disgusted by the... [MORE]	Katya Johann	Jun 14, 2007 02:28
Yet another 'the internet is bad for books' rant (print = good, internet = bad) without evidence or an understanding... [MORE]	Duncan	Jun 14, 2007 00:19
Among the many oversights in this piece, Mr.Kirsch, let me point out three: "Often isolated and inexperienced, usually longing to break...	Chandrahas Choudhury	Jun 14, 2007 00:14
Literally, a person can post whatever they want to on a blog. Someone who blogs in not infected with a... [MORE]	Justin Dobbs	Jun 13, 2007 21:25
In fact, despite what the bloggers themselves believe, the future of literary culture does not lie with blogs — or... [MORE]	Tammy Everts	Jun 13, 2007 19:20
Dear Mr. Kirsch, While I agree with many of the points that you make in your article on literary blogs, and... [MORE]	Reginald Shepherd	Jun 13, 2007 19:11
"The blog form, that miscellany of observations, opinions, and links, is not well-suited to writing about literature..." Adam Kirsch's spurious rhetorical... [MORE]	Steven Augustine	Jun 13, 2007 15:11
Don't get around much, do you, Kirsch? I won't trouble you with links to the many worthwhile blogs devoted to... [MORE]	Mark J. McPherson	Jun 13, 2007 15:10
Oddly enough, I found the link to this article on a literary blog. While I agree that perhaps literary blogging... [MORE]	Jessica	Jun 13, 2007 14:28
Dear CR Beha, So, using the "I know it when I see it" approach to what constitutes a blog and what... [MORE]	Jonny Diamond	Jun 13, 2007 14:10
I've heard these arguments before. So, only print reviewers are capable of an intellectual discourse on literature? If bloggers are so... [MORE]	Wendy	Jun 13, 2007 12:57
Iam leading publisher from India. My experience is very very bad , most leading newspaper of India stoped to review... [MORE]	Ramesh Raghuvanshi	Jun 13, 2007 11:37
Good literary criticism is a highly complex form of civilized discourse, and is generally not to be found in blogs.... [MORE]	Tom	Jun 13, 2007 11:15
As is oversimplification, particularly in the assumption that 'bloggers' and your rarefied 'professional writers' are in any way separate camps.... [MORE]	Matt	Jun 13, 2007 10:17
If the "literary" bloggers represent a dead end, the fact that their blogs are filled with the stones of ridicule,... [MORE]	Tim Barrus	Jun 13, 2007 10:01
Literary criticism is only worth having if it at least strives to be literary in its own right, with a... [MORE]	Pamela	Jun 13, 2007 09:22
Bloggers are essentially tastemakers, not reviewers. Bloggers' book commentary can be capsulized as, "I like this, I don't like that,... [MORE]	Richard S. Wheeler	Jun 13, 2007 08:54
Precisely because "literature is not news the way politics is news" (though I think a lot of people would consider... [MORE]	Rohan Maitzen	Jun 13, 2007 08:50
Mr Kirsch is a thoughful, useful and reliable commentator on books but alas his media overview is less than that.... [MORE]	Robert Birnbaum	Jun 13, 2007 08:34
As some of the very best reviews are available online or in print where is the dichotomy? [MORE]	G. Roberts	Jun 13, 2007 08:24
Adam Kirsch mixes up two (or more) separate issues. Given that bloggers can in no way be blamed for the... [MORE]	R Campbell	Jun 13, 2007 07:33
One obviously can say more in five thousand words than one can in fifty. However one can also create a work... [MORE]	Shalom Freedman	Jun 13, 2007 05:13
Shalom Freedman is himself a case in point! I have read many of Shalom Freedman's reviews on Amazon.com over the... [MORE]	Randy Deutsch	Jun 13, 2007 23:41
That this is a blog...right? Perhaps this appears in print somewhere, but I am reading it online, and can comment on... [MORE]	John	Jun 13, 2007 02:04
Adam Kirsch denies that literature is like news. However: "Literature is news that stays news." Ezra Pound, "ABC of Reading" [1934] chapter... [MORE]	Jonathan Vos Post	Jun 13, 2007 12:09
An article that is published online and made available for comments does not a blog make. The distinction isn't just... [MORE]	CR Beha	Jun 13, 2007 12:12
However, Kirsch is casting aspersion on all blogs when, as you say, he is referring to a handful of them.... [MORE]	John	Jun 13, 2007 13:45
It doesn't greatly matter anymore. Current-day Americans will not read good books in any case, and so it scarcely... [MORE]	Abner Furd	Jun 12, 2007 18:48