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Edited by Sam Jemielity Written by Dave Chamberlain, Sam Jemielity, Ray Pride, Frank Sennett and Annabelle Villanueva With Michael McClintock and Simone Muench BOOKS HUB |
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First 25
1 OPRAH 2 OPRAH 3 JOSEPH CARDINAL BERNARDIN 4 LOREEN MAXFIELD 5 TENNY AHN 6 GARRY WILLS 7 SCOTT TUROW 8 MIKE ROYKO 9 STUDS TERKEL 10 JUDITH MICHAEL 11 SARA PARETSKY 12 ANDREW GREELEY 13 LEON FORREST 14 ROGER EBERT 15 JAMES FINN GARNER 16 DENNIS RODMAN 17 DAVID FOSTER WALLACE 18 GWENDOLYN BROOKS 19 MARK PATTIS 20 MORRIS PHILIPSON 21 BOB GREENE 22 SUSAN HAHN 23 BRAD JONAS 24 NICHOLAS WEIR-WILLIAMS 25 ELIZABETH TAYLOR |
Last year we ranked
Oprah
third in our Lit 50. She was so peeved that she engineered the Book Club segment, busting out of the confines of Chicago's literary world to become the most important figure in publishing, period. In doing so, she edged out her dual personality-lifestyle chronicler-even though her fitness book sold more than a million copies (as did the accompanying manual, so readers would be balanced as they powerwalked). In the last year, death made big book news. The late, lamented
Mike Royko
takes Nelson Algren's place as the icon of the gritty Chicago voice.
Eugene Izzi's
suicide made national headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Cardinal Bernardin
's painstakingly documented demise spurred huge sales of his memoir. Still, for many of Chicago's big-name figures, the beat went on-the chains oozed into new neighborhoods,
Turow
and
Wills
scored hits. Activist writers continued to fight the good fight, wherever they found it-
Gwendolyn Brooks
kept on keepin' on. Strange doings in Normal, Illinois-
David Foster Wallace
's weird wit, publisher FC2's NEA headache-also caught our eye. In literary matters, the City of Big Shoulders has a broad reach.
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MacArthur Grants for middlebrow writers or a shining vision of a million minds poring over thousands of words (well, at least once a month)? Lighthouse for readers or barrier reef for eager-to-defer publishers? Since Oprah began her monthly Book Club broadcasts, her 15 million daily viewers in the United States (not to mention those in 120 other countries), have bought an average 1.2 million copies of her lit picks. Seven picks, seven bestsellers. Who would argue with a such a streak? "At least it's not Danielle Steele" is a fine sentiment; but does the "Read it, it's good for you" nudging of the talk show host (described in the New York Times Book Review as "The high priestess of self-help") make reading a chore like washing, ironing, or low-impact aerobic exercise? There's also the question of the multiculti earnestness of Winfrey's selections, such as Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon," the second title to get the magical nod (written by the author of "Beloved," another Morrison novel that Winfrey owns and intends to star in a movie version of.) If Oprah's so powerful, could she truly challenge the perspectives of her audience? Could she get Thomas Pynchon to materialize? Naah. That's not her gig. That would be abusing her power, abusing her audience. They are not ready for that. They need a hug, a good cry between paper covers. We'll be back right after this dinner party. Besides, as Winfrey told the Wall Street Journal, "I haven't been attracted to a lot of men writers. Most of the men writers I've been attracted to are dead." Still, whatever the title, there's the potential for remarkable profit pass-through for booksellers on volume alone, and that cash could generate the capital to finance a few more titles to pack the discerning bookseller's shelves.
Noteworthy: She's so powerful, her reruns push Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect" to the wee hours. Last year: 3
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1
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| "In the Kitchen With Rosie" has 6.7 million copies in print since spring of 1994. How can any corporation follow that performance? Who else is on Team Oprah, the retinue of loyals that accumulates behind a person of immense privilege, who can share their secrets, and their intimacy with Oprah, with the world? The double-barrel answer came this year with personal trainer Bob Greene-not the cheeseburger king of the Tribune, but the fitness director of an exclusive spa in Telluride Colorado, who also has been described as "an inspirational exercise physiologist," and who first met Winfrey in 1992. Besides working on Oprah's weight and self-esteem, the duo collaborated on "Make The Connection: Ten Steps to a Better Body-and a Better Life," which sold 300,000 copies in its first week alone. (The spiral-bound, you-fill-it-in companion, "A Journal of Daily Renewal," shipped over a million copies at the same time.) Filled with musings on weight, food and self-esteem, "Make the Connection" is also studded with full-color photos of the talk-show host both overweight and thin, leaning in its later pages to snaps of Winfrey and Greene, in matching sunglasses, running marathons, Rollerblading, jogging and grinning an awful lot. On a related note, Simon & Schuster just published Stedman Graham's "You Can Make It Happen, A Nine-Step Plan For Success," a self-help book filled with the usual platitudes, impenetrable charts and a description of Oprah's sturdy arm-candy as "one of the nation's most quietly active community business leaders." Just what
we
were thinking.
Noteworthy: Oprah's hairstylist offers up the next helping of second-hand Winfrey wisdom. Last year: 3
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2
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The best-selling success of Joseph Cardinal Bernardin's posthumous memoir, "The Gift of Peace," seems to reflect the acute desire of the lay church to have some heroes left in contemporary Catholicism. A database search for reviews of Bernardin's book turned up very few, which makes its multiple weeks on bestseller lists all the more impressive, another augury of the waning influence of reviews in the bookselling business. Those who met the late Archbishop often spoke of Bernardin's inherent goodness, describing him as a decent, funny person full of faith, a pleasant relief from the tendency of some members of the cloth to view the world from the ivory tower of the rectory. While the weeks preceding and following his protracted death by cancer were rife with obeisant journalistic takeouts and hagiographic tie-ins-see Loyola Press' companion photo book, "This Man Bernardin," with text by Eugene Kennedy-Bernardin's intellectual stance on love and faith struck all the right chords for a traditional progressive Catholic to strike. Still, when even fallen Catholics turn into school kids in the presence of a priest, any priest, the "spiritual growth" described in the media seems more wished-for by journalists than inherent in the late Cardinal's simple prose.
Noteworthy: Brought Loyola Press to national prominence. Last year: Not ranked
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3
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Anyone crammed against the magazine racks or stagnating on the serpentine check-out line at Borders Michigan Avenue store on a Saturday afternoon realizes the continued popularity of the chain's booming expansion. Less than a decade after springing up in the area, the Borders' juggernaut rolls on with eleven local stores, counting the one opening this August in Geneva. Managers report that sales at the Clark and Diversey store have steadily held since its opening two years ago, and the location continues to bank on its positioning as an allpurpose Lincoln Park leisure destination, blending into the community by expanding its selections of AfricanAmerican and gay and lesbian literature. But some tiny misfires have begun to show within the once seemingly impermeable machine-the chain is phasing out its subpar new media inventory, unable and unwilling to compete with equally giga-sized computer warehouses; ongoing plans for an online service have been trumped by the recent debut of www.barnesandnoble.com; and the Lincoln Park store labor union imbroglio (see No. 44). Still, Borders' aggressive location scouting and positioning hold strong, and continued expansion‚particularly in suburbia‚seems inevitable. Noteworthy: Tom and Louis Borders started the chain in Ann Arbor in 1971. Last year: 1
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4
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Though the skirmishes are hyped as bookselling's equivalent of Godzilla versus King Kong, so far the only casualties of the Barnes & Noble-Borders feud have been slain independent stores, their flattened corpses twitching like trodupon Tokyo denizens. Yet despite both chains' monstrous superpowers, Borders is often painted as the energetic upstart, encroaching upon Barnes & Noble's staid, "Booksellers Since 1873" image typified by those ersatz woodcuts of a curmudgeonly Kurt Vonnegut. This spring found B&N on a furious counterattack. Soon after opening an airy, very Borderslike, 30,000squarefoot Webster Place superstore-complete with music department and requisite cafe-the chain launched a much-ballyhooed online bookstore challenging virtual rival amazon.com's Internet supremacy. One of three district managers, Tenny Ahn oversees the newly minted Webster and Clybourn space, and the chain's overall success in Chicago depends largely on the precocity of the new arrival. Regardless, with the Lincoln Park Barnes & Noble's continued territorial defense against Borders' invading Clark and Diversey store, the chain seems entrenched as a powerhouse. Noteworthy: Barnes & Noble is suing amazon.com for claiming to be the earth's biggest bookstore. Last year: 2
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5
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| Only a playful, energetic mind could jump so nimbly from an exhaustive-yet highly entertaining-look at Lincoln's Gettysburg Address to a book-length essay on John Wayne's import in and impact on our culture. Garry Wills, Pulitzer winner, syndicated columnist and all-around man of letters, plays to packed auditoriums during the history and pop-culture seminars he teaches at Northwestern University. And he's probably the person on this list you'd most wanted to be marooned next to at an otherwise-dull dinner party. The only knock on Wills was that his recent essay collection, "Certain Trumpets Call Leaders," seemed pitched a tad too calculatedly toward selling magazine excerpts.
Noteworthy: Wills also wields considerable literary clout as a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. Last year: 7
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6
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| Boomer self-indulgence finally overtook Scott Turow on "The Laws of the Fathers," a melange of sixties flashbacks and how-did-we-get-here-from-there musings that fell flat as a thriller and overreached in trying to create a convincing Boyz from the Hood-type character. But, geez, the guy's first three novels were masterworks-"Presumed Innocent," "Burden of Proof" and "Pleading Guilty." And "Presumed Innocent," which sold 4.7 million copies and got Harrison Ford to shave his head, almost single-handedly elevated the legal thriller to literary respectability
and
blockbuster status, a two-point conversion John Grisham has managed to bobble with every movie script thinly disguised as a page-turner. So let's hope Turow works through his midlife crisis, lays the sixties to rest and gets back on the gavel by the time his next novel comes out sometime in 1999.
Noteworthy: Turow stays sharp as a working partner at Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal. Last year: 4
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7
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| If you picked up a daily newspaper anywhere in the United States last year, you had a better than fifty-fifty chance of seeing Mike Royko's byline in it. He was syndicated to some 800 of the 1,500 remaining U.S. dailies. Outside of comic strips, horoscopes and advice columns, that's an unheard-of accomplishment. But beyond that feat and the biography undoubtedly in the offing, two things will cement Royko as an important Chicago literary figure now and forever: "Boss," his ear-to-the-ground, eye-on-the-horizon take on Mayor Richard J. Daley and the Chicago Machine, which is required reading for anyone looking to understand the inner workings of the City That Works; and the impact he had on generations of writers. How special was Royko? Used to be that copy-editing students at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism were tested on an unbylined column; after they painstakingly corrected all of the style quirks, the teacher informed the class that they'd all flunked the assignment. That, after all, was a Mike Royko column. And nobody edits Royko.
Noteworthy: There are almost 2 million copies of "Boss" in print. Last year: Not ranked
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8
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| With Mike Royko gone, Studs alone stands proud as a living icon of Chicago's in-your-face regional voice. Although his often prattling nighttime talk on 98.7 WFMT-FM can seem like a hifalutin Harry Caray imitation, Studs has had remarkably continued success recording his oral histories in books such as "Hard Times," "Working" and his Pulitzer Prize-winner "The Good War." With the announcement of his retirement at the end of this year, Chicagoans-especially younger ones-should make a point of tuning in to a man who, albeit crotchety, cranky and prone to reminisce, carries a wealth of wit and knowledge from years of interviewing hundreds of cultural icons the likes of Tennessee Williams, Simone de Beauvoir and Bertrand Russell. His memoir "My American Century" is due out from The New Press in August.
Noteworthy: Studs' 85th birthday this weekend has a sudsy sponsor in the Goose Island Beer Co. Last year: 8
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9
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| The romance continues for the husband-and-wife writing machine. Judith Barnard and Michael Fain have been cranking out saucy numbers that combined have spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. In the consummate cross-town romance, Fain attended the University of Chicago, while Barnard went to Northwestern. Their debut, "Deceptions," written in 1982, became a bestseller and was made into a movie. "Acts of Love," their ninth novel, tells the story of a theatre director who falls in love with a reclusive ex-actress. It reached No. 8 on the New York Times best-seller list, a familiar spot for the food and wine-loving twosome.
Noteworthy: The couple's working on a novel Barnard describes as a "departure" from their norm. Last year: 26
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10
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| Sara Paretsky has championed the cause of female mystery writers on the solid strength of her recurrent alter ego-the Jewish-Italian-Polish private dick V.I. Warshawski. Paretsky's contributions earned her a 1996 Mark Twain Award from the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature. In recent years, she has turned toward cultivating new talent, editing two anthologies of women mystery writers, "A Woman's Eye" and "Women on the Case," the latter recently released in paper. Paretsky is currently laboring under the sexist label of "Visiting Fellow" at Oxford University's Wolfson College, instructing Brits used to nightstick-toting bobbies on the finer points of packing a .38. But don't despair that Paretsky has foresaken the pen for the podium. Her next novel, "Ghost Country"-a nonmystery about three very different women set in the fabled gritty underside of Chicago-is due out in the Spring of '98.
Noteworthy: V.I. stands for Victoria Iphigenia. Last year: 24
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11
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| The prolific priest shows no signs of flagging. While dividing his time between teaching at the University of Chicago and the University of Arizona, he cranked out "Irish Lace" and "White Smoke" last year, and "Summer at the Lake" is coming out, duh, this summer. Known for inciting controversy because of his fiction's Vatican-slamming and saucy bedroom scenes (when once asked how a cleric could know, he replied, "Confessions"), Greeley's been riding coat-tails of late. A sound bite darling for WMAQ-TV Channel 5 during coverage of Cardinal Bernardin's death and funeral, Greeley backed out of providing station commentary during the Francis George "coronation" after Jerry Springer signed on at the NBC affliliate.
Noteworthy: Cardinal Bernardin's scoring loads of posthumous literary success, but Father Greeley's the only priest in town with fifteen million copies in print. Last year: 16
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12
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| At the Art Institute this winter, noted black writers such as John Edgar Wideman paid homage to "Little Leon," a diminutive man whose literary stature will only grow over time. Forrest's "Divine Days" was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1993. But Forrest's modernist sensibility has so far denied him the wide audience of more user-friendly black authors Terry McMillan and Toni Morrison, or for that matter, the equally difficult but ever-trendy Thomas Pynchon. As a professor at Northwestern, Forrest has his hand in many pies. He plays to packed classes, has been helping behind the scenes to guide Northwestern University Press' forthcoming African-American series, and recently shared his memories of post-World War II Chicago baseball in a Tribune story about Jackie's White Sox tryout.
Noteworthy: As a kid, Forrest was a Cubs fan until Jackie Robinson signed with Brooklyn. Last year: 11
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13
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| If you haven't heard about Roger Ebert's Pulitzer Prize-the only one ever awarded to a film critic-he'll be the first one to tell you about it. Didn't know that Ebert penned the screenplay to Russ Meyer's "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"? Just tune into one of his talk-show appearances or read his Sun-Times Answer Man column, in which he recently celebrated the fact that Mike Myers quotes from his "Dolls" script in "Austin Powers." But that plug was delivered with characteristic tongue-in-cheek bravado, and the Pulitzer mentions usually serve to deflate partner-in-thumb Gene Siskel. Ebert also compiled the well-informed "Roger Ebert's Book of Film," an anthology of writing on the movies. In the final analysis, Ebert walks the walk even more than he talks the talk, writing witty essay after witty essay week after week in the Sun-Times while Siskel is reduced to human blurb-o-mat up the river. His "Roger Ebert's Video Companion" and other collections tie him with Leonard Maltin as the book world's most important working film critic.
Noteworthy: He went to Cannes. Siskel didn't. Last year: 10
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14
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| Garner made a cottage industry out of mocking the plague of political correctness in "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories" and its follow-ups. Three books, 4 million copies sold. But will the world last long enough for him to enjoy his wealth? The inscription page of Garner's latest book, "Apocalypse Wow! A Memoir for the End of Time," reads, "Before the world ended, this book belonged to _________." Inside, Garner notes the eerie coincidences: "999 Vs. Today. 999: Tubercular peasants dressed in rags and covered with mud, filth and grime. Today: Models in Details magazine." For those fed up with millennial fever, "Apocalypse Wow" is a cleansing enema. Still, it hasn't hit the best-seller list.
Noteworthy: Before embarking on his comic career, James Finn Garner wrote bank manuals. And he doesn't like waffles. Last year: 6
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15
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| Attempting to rebound the success of "Bad As I Wanna Be," the Worm's "Walk on the Wild Side," co-authored with Sports Illustrated's Michael Silver, has yet to crack the New York Times' Top 15 non-fiction bestsellers. Despite an anti-plug from Oprah and her posse, and despite striving for technical-foul records while the Bulls quietly charge towards a fifth championship, people just aren't buying Rodman the way they were a year ago. Why the change of heart? Oversaturation, perhaps. MTV's insipid "Rodman's World Tour" makes DR out to be a boring moron; his film debut, "Double Impact," was a double-loser. And maybe basketball fans aren't willing to walk on the Worm's wild side. Tattoos and shirt-ripping court (jester) antics are one thing, but how many times Rodman strokes his worm in a week maybe just out of bounds for most sports fanatics. Or if he supped on Madonna's privates. Or that he wants to change his name to Orgasm. Or how to have sex in public. Dennis needs to plan very carefully; when he leaves the Bulls, and therefore the most high-profile sports team on the planet, people may just stop caring entirely, rebounding notwithstanding.
Noteworthy: The Worm is sharing shelf space with ex-wife Anicka's book, "Worse Than He Says He Is." Last year: 16
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16
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By now, the 1,000-page buzz of "Infinite Jest" has been dulled by hyperbole New York Times Notable Book of 1996) after actually reaching No. 12 on the Times best-seller charts. And while an editor willing to cut "Infinite Jest" down to a size you could get through a bus door would have upped the number of buyers who actually read the damn thing, the hype alone scored Wallace choice writing assignments from all the best magazines. The tennis fiend turned adolescent athletic shortcomings into gold by writing brilliantly in Esquire about his own stunted career at the net and Michael Joyce's successful but anonymous life as a pro tennis journeyman. That essay made it into Wallace's follow-up book, the prose collection "A supposedly funny thing I'll never do again." Not nearly as hot as "IJ" both because it isn't a novel and Wallace's intensely funny, erudite prose tends to overwhelm, "A supposedly funny thing" is nonetheless a truly funny collection.
Noteworthy: Wallace garnered a $50,000 Lannan Literary Award for 1996. Last year: 9
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17
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She just keeps going and going: still doing fifty to seventy readings a year.The 79-year-old Brooks likes to read from "Children Coming Home," a collection published by The David Company, which she started in honor of her father. It's been nearly half-a-century since Ms. Brooks won The Pulitzer for "Annie Allen"-becoming the Jackie Robinson of that juried distinction. She's held the post of Illinois Poet Laureate since 1968. She completed "Report from Part II" in 1996, the second volume of the autobiography she started in the early seventies. As writer-in-residence at Chicago State University (where the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Culture opened in 1993), Brooks is a fixture at conferences, literary festivals and competitions such as the mid-June Illinois Poet Laureate contest at the University of Chicago.
Noteworthy: In honor of her 80th Birthday, the City of Chicago has declared June 1-7 "Gwendolyn Brooks Week," with a day-long tribute June 7 at the Harold Washington Center, where poets and performers will offer eighty "gifts." Last year: 18
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18
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| With a recent move to suburban Lincolnwood, NTC/Contemporary Publishing Co. capped off the integration of the two publishing firms acquired by the Tribune Company. The headquarters' shift from the Prudential building downtown to Lincolnwood didn't please everyone at the company, as some workers chose to leave rather than suffer the reverse commute or relocate to suburban hell. At his new "campus," president and CEO Pattis plans to continue publishing in the areas of health, fitness, travel and careers, among other general trade and reference books. The company also plans to expand in juvenile publishing. All told, NTC/Contemporary sees up to a hefty 600 titles in its crystal ball for 1997 alone.
Noteworthy: One of the biggest selling titles for NTC/Contemporary has been "Baby Signs," about how infants communicate with sign language. Last year: Not ranked
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19
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| The chipper Philipson runs a heady organization down in Hyde Park. Two of the Press' books were Publishers Weekly Books of the Year for 1996, "The Last Happy Occasion," by Alan Shapiro, and "Patrick White: Letters," edited by David Marr. This year's releases include French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's acclaimed sixteenth-century saga "The Beggar and the Professor" and "The Good European," an essay on the places Nietzsche lived and their relationship to his work. The press also has beefed up its religious and gay/lesbian studies output, in an effort to continue printing what Philipson calls "original, forceful interpretations of issues debated in the humanities."
Noteworthy: Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It" was the first work of fiction published by the University of Chicago Press. Last year: 25
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20
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| Is there enough room for two Bob Greenes in this room? Online publishing info service BooksFirst doesn't seem to think so‚punch the Trib columnist's verdant name into the system's search engine and a brief bio of Oprah's exercise guru pops up, describing his fitness, metabolism and weight-loss specializations above a listing for the elder Bob's latest tome, "The 50Year Dash: The Feelings, Foibles and Fears of Being HalfaCentury Old." Yet as much as detractors wish to permanently jettison the columnist from the collective consciousness, Bob still blips high on the clout radar. "The 50Year Dash" showed some flabby legs on the Trib's local bestseller list, yet few Chicago denizens can boast of having a cushy, multibook deal with Doubleday. Let's just pray his next work doesn't mention Baby Richard.
Noteworthy: Check out his early compilations "Johnny Deadline, Reporter" and "Cheeseburgers" for a taste of the nostalgic era when Greene was one of the most promising young writers in America. Last year: 35
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21
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| After seventeen years of working at the Northwestern's esteemed TriQuarterly magazine, Susan Hahn will finally take over as head editor. In response to gossip that TriQuarterly might fold, Hahn says, "We're alive and well, fat and sassy." Hahn, whose influences include Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and Stevie Smith, just published her third book of poetry "Confession," and is currently working on a fourth book, which should be completed in August. Lately, Hahn has been writing plays as well; she is finishing the last part of a trilogy. Hahn says "after writing a poem I feel better about myself, the universe," while "playwriting is much more disciplined." Will this rendezvous with playwriting transmit to TriQuarterly? "I plan to open the journal up to interviews with playwrights," she admits. But her first issue as editor is devoted entirely to fiction and poetry. Future issues will include letters written by Tolstoy and a novella by Chaim Potok.
Noteworthy: Although she now edits a magazine run by Northwestern University Press, Hahn's published all three of her poetry collections with the University of Chicago Press. Last year: Not ranked
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22
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| Charming Brit Weir-Williams brings an air of sophistication to the increasingly bottom-line driven world of publishing. Northwestern scored a huge success with DePaul English professor Ted Anton's "Eros, Magic, and the Murder of Professor Culianu"; but the coup was not as big as Weir-Williams might have expected after coverage in the Tribune and a glowing review in the New York Times Book Review. The Wildcat press also took over TriQuarterly, yanking the prestigious literary magazine away from the University's academic arm. Northwestern publishes eighty-five titles a year and handles distribution for several small presses, including Fiction Collective 2/Black Ice Press, which found itself embroiled in an NEA brouhaha (see No. 44). The Cambridge grad Weir-Williams also heads the Illinois Book Publishers Association, which has tried to fend off the relentless tide of cutbacks by banding together; but Weir-Williams admits the IBPA has not been hugely successful so far.
Noteworthy: At over half a million copies sold, the biggest-selling book in the Press' history is "Improvisation for the Theatre" by Viola Spolin, the mother of Second City improv company founder Paul Sills. Last year: 32
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23
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Publishers increasingly have been plagued with having to absorb returned books that are the byproduct of the superchains' hyperactive ordering and overstocks. While that money crunch continues to hamper the publishing industry, it's propelled the success of CIROBE (Chicago International Remainder and Overstock Exposition), the international remainder trade show organized by Jonas. "It's a solid, small niche," says Jonas. "Bargain books are important to people looking for values, but now people are starting to see that there are a lot of quality remaindered books. The stigma of saying åif it's bargain, it's bad' has diminished." Jonas' retail interests are also solid-with its three locations Powell's remains the most prominent used bookseller in the city. Noteworthy: Powell's South Wabash store offers nearly 200,000 titles; by comparison, Barnes & Noble's new Webster Place location houses 150,000 books. Last year: 23
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24
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| It's not difficult to find a more exciting activity than reading the Tribune book coverage foisted on us every Sunday by Taylor. Your toilet bowl might need a good scrubbing, for instance. You could arrange the push pins in your desk drawer by color, attend a stranger's retirement party or go watch some high-school kids take the SAT. The Trib is so worried about appearing provincial that it wastes ink on dull tomes already covered to death in New York papers. Hack review have the section in a choke-hold, squeezing out thoughtful essays that link new books to societal trends and current headlines. And Taylor, who took over Books last year in a much-heralded move, appears to be navigating with a broken compass. Trib Books was pretty dull stuff back when it was tucked inside the old Sunday section, but reading the current version ghettoized inside WomaNews is every bit as stimulating as watching Deep Blue calculate its next move. It's no surprise the Trib's recent survey of its 150 years of arts criticism chose a 1984 review of Thomas Pynchon's "V" as its most recent book entry.
Noteworthy: We're still thinking... Last year: 19 |
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