What do you get when you put Steve Wasserman, Mark Sarvas, Peter Osnos, Elizabeth Sifton (FSG) and Carmin Romano on a panel, moderated by Evan Cornog? The discussion began by focusing on Steve Wasserman’s recent Columbia Journalism Review article on the crisis in book reviewing, entitled (with an unacknowledged debt to Joan Didion) “Goodbye to All That.” James Marcus has a lively report, complete with video (very internetty!):
“I had some problems with Steve’s article,” [Romano] said, zeroing in on the tension he saw between populism and elitism. “The problem isn’t anti-intellectualism in American life. The problem is anti-Americanism in intellectual life.” Wham!
And from Elizabeth Sifton:
Sifton’s Law: “The audience for a first novel is 100 times the number of the friends of the author and publisher combined.” Yet Sifton admitted that the Internet had screwed up all conventional wisdom about readership and potential reach. It was a brave new world out there — possibly a jungle, depending on your point of view and position on the food chain.
Meanwhile, Mark Sarvas, the litblogger (and soon-to-be novelist) on the panel, wasn’t leading the internet charge.
“I’m not a glassy-eyed proselytizer for the greatness of the Internet…. But I do see a generation that’s completely comfortable getting its information from the Web.”
Ed Champion notes that while it was nice for litblogs not to get blamed for the crisis in book criticism this time around, the focus could have been more contemporary.
This all made for great fireworks, but one of the panel’s many problems was that it was fixated upon a media environment more reminiscent of 1997 than 2007.
Mark may have been cast in the role of articulate upstart, but if you’d been there at the Javitz center as he and Steve Wasserman chatted while sipping bad martinis, you would have known in advance that the two are almost universally in agreement.
Since I’m seven hours away, I’m grateful to be able to get these reports through ye olde internet (call me glassy-eyed.) But I can’t help be a bit disappointed that Mark didn’t liveblog it.
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