A kind soul linked to me “Where Have All the Book Reviewers Gone?” by Dwight Garner. I am not going to link to it here. I do not know how you got here if you did not use a search engine, probably for something other than this blog, so I trust you can find it. In lieu, I will like to the New York Times Pitchbot, which describes the esteem that I hold for the New York Times, and why I feel that way.
I do, however, like Mr. Garner as a book reviewer. Him on Tim Ferris is a classic, even if I find the specific killer line forced, a joke that you’re looking for an opportunity to use. I am guilty of this as well.
But capital L-Letters to the Editor have suggested length limitations, and in trying to meet that while issuing a reply, I worry that I come off too sharp towards him. So I want to correct that some by a fuller piece in response. That, and in my attempt to honor the publication rights thing, I want to avoid being lazy and just posting it here.
The article proposes a world where LLM takes over the role of book reviewing. In specific it cites situations where the review is alleged to have used AI, and has a frame story of an old science fiction story that sounds hilarious and slightly xenophobic, (or potted in xenophobia) where book reviews spring from technology, specifically parodying the audiophile approach to stereo equipment. Which, thinking of it, probably spares it from the xenophobia.
Garner treats this world as one to come. But the thing as Garner interprets it into LLM form, where you can set a book review device to Delaney and get a review in his style, has already happened, more or less, and to some outrage. That Garner seems to write without that awareness speaks to a criticism of his own piece on an institutional level.
As an aside, this is part of why I recommend to people that you play around with AIs. Anyone who has could quickly ken to what he suggests as something that is fully possible and know the limitations of how it would work. Hating it (AI) is still a valid position, but I suggest getting enough familiarity to know why to hate it, as opposed to hating how people use it, or hating it to show group affiliation, i.e. the number of people who complain about AI art but who would never hire an actual artist to do the same thing.
This unawareness of the online lived world expands. We do not live in an age of a lack of book reviews. By character count, we live in an era of more book reviews than ever. We may live in an era of bad book reviews – I thought to clarify that as bad reviews about books, but we live in the world that MST3K and Old Man Murray built. Or do you know how many podcasts I’ve stopped listening to that are all about making fun of bad art?
There are many people offering critical commentary about books in “bookish” spaces on the internet. If you want the sort of perpetual academic convention last night party, head to YouTube. If you want that excited person standing next to line at the coffeehouse, go to TikTok. Goodreads and…er…every website trying to do the Goodreads thing, is full. All the online stores have comment sections that make for reviews, and often dislodge into a sort of running conversation in replying to reviews. True, you have to pick through the white supremacists and speed runners, but you can train the algorithm to work for you.
I think that people complain about the algorithm, but so much is about its use and purpose. But if you put in the effort, things change. You can get what you want. I have no idea of this TikTok that others speak of.
When I introduce myself as a book reviewer, people shift to a sort of O tempora model of the prevalence of screens. If anything, I think my problem is the opposite, the sort of fandomization of books. A lot of ills of the book community arise out of that. But even the most books-as-fetish of the community, they are still doing a lot of reading. But people refuse to see it.
What is dead is Harold Bloom. Literally, yes. But also the Bloomian character. You got a whole variety of terms here to talk about what I am talking about, and they are uniformly lousy. However, if you look at the writers Bloom esteemed, and the sort of books he esteemed, there is is a sort of typified character you find. It is what King was poking fun at with with Finders Keepers. Anyway, no one cares about that guy. Or they care, but there is not a privilege to it among the readership. There is not prestige fiction. These readers are omnivorous to the point of locust-hood. Or I should say women, as it is a female space. I do not think that there is a causal relationship there, but it is relevant.
The kind of reader who wants to read a review in a published Sunday supplement is gone. People are still interested in reviews of those books, but the place of those types of reviews is diminished. They are not esteemed as aspirational to part of a lifestyle or class signifier. No one needs it left on the doorstep to elucidate to the neighbors as to what sort of person lives there.
Instead, people read. And then write about that reading.
I think that you can expand this to a much greater value in terms of looking at legacy media. Newspapers began as a means to sell advertising and attack your political opponents. There was some point in history where newspapers turned into capital J-Journalism and started being about distilling objective truth and information, with a sideline in ad space. The literary review made sense in this context, when people put faith in institutions and the paper itself operated as a sort of vanity project.
Blame whatever you want for the change but there has been a reversion to the mean. The main role of papers like the New York Times or the Washington Post have in this world is as a sort of fig leaf of respectability to the patently deranged political landscape, a sort of persuasion that everything is fine really, palliative care to the United States.
People wring their hands at the loss of high minded ideals. I am decidedly more pragmatic about it. Newspapers exist to sell something. What sells the newspaper is what is included in the newspaper. We are at the end of a period of time where the appearance of indifferent meritocracy is useful to make money. We are beginning a period of kleptocracy, where direct appeals and subservience to the administration is the way to make money. Who needs a serious book review for that?
The energy and desire for that still has to go somewhere. It goes online. What is different is that it does not have somewhere to grow. It is never going to be as good because it is not professionalized. You are not allowed by financial concerns to put in the time it needs. You do not have the minors to start in. It is, however, still good. And the good should not be enemy of the perfect.
So, yes, no full time book reviewers, as much as I wish it was otherwise, but we have outlived our purposes to the people who cut the checks. But that is not identical to book reviews being dead or dying. Worries about being replaced by AI are unlikely. We are, I suspect, cheaper than AI.
CITATION HEEDED 