Jennifer Weiner just called me a book critic, and she didn’t mean it in a nice way.
Weiner, of course, is the author of a heap of books, including Good in Bed & In Her Shoes, and a lively advocate for popular fiction. She thought I was shitting on Jackie Collins when I tweeted “Jackie Collins, serving up sexy Hollywood trash! Oh, YAWN.” Her reply was swift: “Book critic being snotty, dismissive to popular commercial writer? I see your yawn + raise you a coma.”
Well, she hadn’t clicked on the link, to this Jacket Copy post — it’s about how Collins’ stock-in-trade — shockingly sexy tales of Hollywood! — has been usurped by sources of more immediate gratification: TMZ, Perez Hilton, you know. Seems to me like there isn’t much of a place for 400-page trashy Hollywood novels anymore. Collins has a new book, Poor Little Bitch Girl, that treads a mashup of Heidi Fleiss and Paris Hilton and more and… feels very tired.
What shocked me, though, wasn’t anything about Jackie Collins — it was that Jennifer Weiner was calling me a book critic. As if I was one of those shadow bogeymen of haute culture, a gatekeeper. Me? But… and I think of all the ways that I have been outside the gates. Oh, so many. Oh, for so long. Take today: I am totally wearing the wrong shoes.
But it’s true, I have to admit, that I write book reviews. I’ll be on the board of the National Book Critics Circle, starting in March. And I love writing about books, in a way that’s thoughtful, and even smart.
And I suppose that makes me a book critic.
And I think I’m OK with that.
You should be! You’re a great book critic. I’ve always considered you to be very fair and open-minded but with a great critical edge.
A book critic with nothing but nice things to say would be a publicist or packager, or whatever they’re called this week. An authentic critic brings her personal aesthetics and integrity (integrity–imagine!) to a book. Those who’ve found an honest and similar mind in the critic’s writings rely on her or his critiques to say why a book is worth reading or not; what’s best about it; what works; and what doesn’t.
At its best, which necessarily means not rolling, laudatory adjectives, criticism is an art. Promotion doesn’t qualify. The lowest common denominator, who will always rule, have no interest in art except possibly upon their coffee tables.
A note for Carolyn Kellogg:
You should write an article comparing Caroline Blackwood and Patricia Highsmith. I don’t know which is more interesitng, their lives or their books.
Jonathan Starr in Los Angeles.