At the New School University, Art Winslow, who was an editor at the Nation for 16 years, moderated a National Books Critics Circle panel called “Ax-Grinders, Score-Settlers and Patty Cake: The Politics of Reviewing, and The Reviewing of Politics.” The panelists described how politics and criticism intersect over what books are assigned, how they are reviewed, and who reviews them.

Editor and publisher of mobylives.com, Denis Loy Johnson, asked whether the culture drives the books published or the books and their marketing drive the culture. “To my mind,” he said, “the bestseller lists are ruining the book industry because they are driving what is popular and what is sold and displayed in bookstores.”

He talked about the effect of events like September 11. “What did the book industry do in the days following 9/11?” he asked. “What did people buy? What did people look for? All the big books were about Islam and the World Trade Center buildings themselves, coming mostly from university presses and other independent presses, and they were selling like hotcakes.”

At the moment of that occurrence, he said, “People got smart and got interested.” Books about spirituality were selling, he said. “Book chains scrambled to get these books, and the little publishers scrambled to print more copies, as they were selling like mad.”

A contributing editor at the Nation, Liza Featherstone, offered a concrete example of a book clashing with certain business interests. She described what happened after her book “Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Worker’s Rights at Wal-Mart” received a positive review in the New York Review of Books.

“What an intellectual would do is write a letter,” she said, “What Wal-Mart did was take a two-page ad” taking issue with the political analysis advanced by the review.

Rick Perlstein, who covered the 2004 presidential campaigns as a national correspondent for the Village Voice, said he would like to see people with literary backgrounds – not just political writers – review political books. Mr. Perlstein showed the audience a shirt bearing the likeness of InsideHigherEd.com’s “Intellectual Affairs” columnist Scott McLemee. (This was first reported on thehappybooker.blogs.com). The Latin on the shirt said, “Ingenium Vincit Cognationes” or “Talent beats connections.”

Speaking of connections, the Knickerbocker discloses that he has met Mr. McLemee twice, and recently gave him suggestions on how to let more people know about his fine column.

The editor of the New York Times Book Review, Sam Tanenhaus, recalled John Updike having written that a reviewer ought to quote enough of the book so as to get a sense of what the author’s own writing was like. When another panelist suggested that readers tend to skip over quoted texts, Mr. Tanenhaus described a conversation he had with Louis Menand about including separate boxes laid out with texts.

Menand had cited Samuel Johnson’s observation that trying to capture a work through quotation was like carrying a brick to indicate what a house was like. (Johnson’s precise quote said one “will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house for sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.”)

Science writer and critic Jim Holt said that one thing he had learned was that reviewing bad books by nonentities was a sheer waste of time. “If it’s by Norman Mailer, that’s exciting; if it is by David Foster Wallace, okay; but if it is by a nonentity, it will only hurt his or her feelings and it will bore the rest of you.”

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WEST COAST WISDOM

In the audience at the panel was Los Angeles Times Book Review editor Steve Wasserman. He is excited about the 25th annual presentation of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, set to take place on April 22 at UCLA’s Royce Hall. At the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park, the Knickerbocker recently heard Mr. Wasserman give remarks at the announcement of prize finalists.

Mr. Wasserman told the audience: “Eight and a half years ago, when I was invited to become the Los Angeles Times Book Review editor, I was convinced that there were enough adults out there who wanted serious reading rather than being served up the baby talk that passes for daily fare. But I was warned by my provincial New York friends that the relentless sun had so baked the brains of the inhabitants” that they preferred reveling in the “cult of the body rather than devote themselves to the life of the mind.”

“Recently,” he continued, “I had occasion to look up the definition of ‘canard.’ I turned to the New Oxford American Dictionary, which defined ‘canard’ as ‘an unfounded or untrue story. Example: as in that old canard that Los Angeles is a cultural wasteland.’ I was mightily tempted to declare mission accomplished.”

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KNICK-KNACKS

Columbia University law professor Patricia Williams read this week from “Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) at McNally Robinson Booksellers. In one passage, she said an advantage of taking up piano after age 50 was no one wants to show you off in recitals … David Rieff is planning a private memorial event in about a week for his mother, the noted novelist and critic Susan Sontag. The Knickerbocker hears that the event will consist of music rather than speeches.

CLOWING AROUND

Jerry Lewis, who loves clowns and is still considered among the world’s top comics, received a unique 80th birthday “gift.” Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus has assented to his appearing as a clown in one performance during its run at Madison Square Garden, March 24 through April 10. MSG official photographer, George Kalinsky, suggested to Mr. Lewis that he do this after Mr. Lewis was so thrilled seeing pictures of famous clowns Emmett Kelly and Otto Griebling in Mr. Kalinsky’s book “Garden of Dreams: Madison Square Garden 125 Years” (Stewart, Tabori & Chang). They were taken when they performed in the Circus at the Garden. Mr. Kalinsky is awaiting word from Mr. Lewis on when he wants to make this appearance.