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"Men in the Off Hours" by Anne Carson
The poet's breathtaking fourth collection takes in the picnic of sex and love and death that time spreads in its wake.
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Secure, solid, stable -- boring?
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[04/04/00]

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"Fay" by Larry Brown
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[04/04/00]

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Book Bag
Do not disturb
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By Jhumpa Lahiri
[04/03/00]

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To the dismay of those who consider the book industry interesting, Arnold covers inane topics that run the gamut from writers' pets that appear in author bios ("No doubt years from now those afflicted with bibliomania will look back and be puzzled as to why so many of our present-day writers included their dogs and cats and other curious items and achievements in their book flap 'About the Author' sketches") to publishing houses' thirst for new novelists ("Keep pecking away at your personal computer. There's a growing market for first novels, and there may be a yearning editor looking for you"). In the words of one literary agent, Arnold "writes as if he has no sense of the industry."

"Arnold's column is meant to be provocative, but instead it's ephemeral and ineffectual," explains a Random House editorial director, who, like most publishing professionals with complaints about the Times and like everyone interviewed for this story, adamantly refused to speak for attribution. The marketing director of a major nonfiction house is equally exasperated: "He states the obvious as if it's new and exciting, when his subject matter is often completely dated."

A major problem, notes another agent, is that Arnold "never features interesting topics or perceptions. He seems not only to lack a clue, but also passion. He opts for superficial treatments of easy-to-read, ready-made topics." Arnold sees it differently. "I usually write what I find to be interesting. The hardest thing about the column is coming up with the ideas, but there's no set formula. I pay attention to the news [of the industry] but not slavishly. I teach myself [about publishing] as I go along."

But in the years of Arnold's tenure as a publishing industry columnist, critics complain, he has consistently ignored the most timely and pressing publishing stories. His most recent "trendspotting" pieces have included the "new" marketability of the short story, which Arnold attributes to Francis Ford Coppola's (not particularly high-profile) magazine, Zoetrope, and the subsequent commercial success of last year's story collection "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing" by Zoetrope contributor Melissa Bank; literary parties that benefit literacy campaigns; and the deluge of biographies of and memoirs by recent sports figures. "If there are trends happening," comments one agent, "they're not new if he's reporting it."

Perhaps the most astonishing of Arnold's omissions is that he has yet to substantively address the consolidation of publishing, a change that has shaken the industry to its very foundations. The mergers of powerhouses such as Putnam and Penguin, HarperCollins and Morrow/Avon, and Random House and Bantam Doubleday Dell have transpired unremarked upon by the Times' publishing columnist.

Also baffling is Arnold's silence on the matter of last October's biggest publishing scandal, St. Martin's recall of J.H. Hatfield's "Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President." The biography alleged that the presidential candidate had been busted for cocaine possession in Texas in 1972 and had had the charges erased from his record with help from family friends. Hatfield's allegations relied entirely on unnamed sources, and his credibility was shattered when the Dallas Morning News revealed that the author had served five years of a 15-year sentence in a Texas prison for trying to hire a hit man to murder his employer. The incident highlighted the fact, little known outside the book industry, that many nonfiction titles go to press without even the most rudimentary fact-checking.

It's unlikely that the political subject matter kept Arnold from commenting on the Hatfield affair -- on July 22, his column, "Stumping at the Bookshelf," took up the scintillating topic of how presidential candidates use their memoirs as campaign tools. But the extensive Times national desk and media desk coverage of Hatfield's disgrace "never seemed to have filtered down to Arnold's column," remarks one agent.

In the weeks that followed the cancellation of the publication of Hatfield's book, Arnold never alluded to the scandal, which could have made for a compelling and highly relevant "Making Books" column on the subject of how publishers vet not only books but the authors themselves. Instead, Arnold's columns around that time dealt with the increase in epic-length books ("They're Bigger. But Better?" Oct. 28); an author abandoned by a series of exiting editors at St. Martin's Press ("Pat Jordan. An Author in Limbo," Nov. 4); and editors who have left big publishing houses to pursue careers as literary agents ("Why Editors Become Agents," Nov. 11). According to Arnold's boss, John Darnton, the Times' culture editor, Arnold "simply didn't think to write a feature on the subject. It was covered as breaking news, so I don't consider this a major oversight."

"I try not to do what the rest of the paper does," responds Arnold when asked why he skipped the story. "I write a column, not features, not reported pieces. So much coverage was done in the news sections on J.H. Hatfield that it seemed redundant to me to do a piece on it at the time. I don't like to run with the crowd."

When Arnold does focus on relevant or interesting issues, as he did in a column entitled "Literary Advocates for Black Voices" (Jan. 13), about the challenges black agents face in dealing with a primarily white industry, he often overlooks some of the most crucial players. "He didn't even bother to mention Janet Hill, a hugely influential editor at Doubleday, who heads one of the most prestigious African-American publishing programs in the business. I mean, she publishes E. Lynn Harris!" exclaims a senior editor from the Bertelsmann Group. "His column is all over the place," says another publishing insider. "He always jumps to the wrong conclusion, dedicating too much space for one lame publishing topic and not enough space for all that he tries to take on."

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