Salon | Letters to the editor

_______________ TERRORS OF THE AMAZON BY LEV GROSSMAN (03/02/99)

Lev Grossman may not like some of the comments about his novel "Warp" that have been posted at Amazon.com, but he is absolutely right when he says that Amazon, by democratizing the book-review process, is "changing the very structure of literary culture as we know it." In my opinion, it is a wonderful change.
In no conventional publication will you read reviews as interesting and original as some of the ones you'll find posted at Amazon. Particularly enjoyable are those written by readers whose first language is not English. Oftentimes these readers manage to produce phrases that are better than anything you'll find in the work of Michiko Kakutani or Christopher Lehmann-Haupt.
For instance, if you go to Amazon and look up the novel "The Black Book," by Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, you'll find the following comments by a Turkish reader:
Sometimes you feel crying, sometimes exciting. You change your time and make a trip to post-modern Istanbul underground roads and pubs. You listen stories about life, death, love and mistism. Enjoy it please and share it with me.

Of the same book, another Turkish reader writes: "It is the startle of a new era in novels."
What better word is there than "mistism" for describing the combination of mystery and murkiness found in novels such as Pamuk's? And doesn't it sound much more exciting to be present at the "startle of a new era in novels" than merely at the start of one?
These days, if you want literary criticism free of cant and professional posturing, you're much better off checking out the reader comments at Amazon than you are reading a traditional book review, like the New York Times', or even an online review, such as the ones in Salon. At Amazon -- just as in the pages of an Orhan Pamuk novel -- "you change your time," and it is a change for the better: a move into a much more democratic future.
-- Kevin Mims
In an time when legions of good writers can't get their manuscripts spat on, let alone read, by editors and publishers, you'd think a young writer with an actual physical book on the shelves that people he's never met have bothered to purchase and read would feel OK about the deal. You might also think that same writer, if he were serious about his craft, would pay some attention to the thoughts of his readers, perhaps even take some of the less-venomous criticism of his work to heart, so that he might improve his output.
Not Lev Grossman. He wants adulation from his readership; when he does not get it, he resorts to shilling for himself through self-written phony rave reviews he posts at Amazon, and then has the additional temerity to publicly admit his self-promotion and giggle over it in a Salon essay. He fails to grasp the potential value of Amazon's online reader reviews -- not only to the reader (since they give one an idea of whether the book is any good) but to the artist as well, by providing quick and undoctored consumer feedback that does not necessarily have to be the occasion for depression or suicide by the writer. Grossman's piece (especially the final note of defiance to negative reviews) reveals that he's learned nothing from his pans, and leads me to believe he's likely to get more bad reviews on his next work.
-- Brian H. Corcoran

_______________ COME OUT OF THE ALGONQUIN WITH YOUR HANDS UP! BY SUSAN LEHMAN (03/04/99)

The Patrolmen's Benevolent Society and Mayor Rudy Giuliani are completely out of touch. If they're so incensed about being "smeared," why don't they explain to the city how an unarmed man was shot 41 times in the foyer of his own apartment building? Where is the investigation into the shooting? Where is the accountability? Where is the decency, or the humanity, to say: "This is what happened, it was wrong, and here's what we're doing to make it better?" Instead there are only stonewalling and public relations. The PBA is right: This has to stop now. Not the magazine covers, the silence about brutality.
-- Matthew McIver
Brooklyn, N.Y.

N E X T+P A G E+| Camille Paglia and right-wing hypocrisy

_______________ TERRORS OF THE AMAZON BY LEV GROSSMAN (03/02/99)
	Lev Grossman may not like some of the comments about his novel "Warp" that have been posted at Amazon.com, but he is absolutely right when he says that Amazon, by democratizing the book-review process, is "changing the very structure of literary culture as we know it." In my opinion, it is a wonderful change. In no conventional publication will you read reviews as interesting and original as some of the ones you'll find posted at Amazon. Particularly enjoyable are those written by readers whose first language is not English. Oftentimes these readers manage to produce phrases that are better than anything you'll find in the work of Michiko Kakutani or Christopher Lehmann-Haupt. For instance, if you go to Amazon and look up the novel "The Black Book," by Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, you'll find the following comments by a Turkish reader: Sometimes you feel crying, sometimes exciting. You change your time and make a trip to post-modern Istanbul underground roads and pubs. You listen stories about life, death, love and mistism. Enjoy it please and share it with me. Of the same book, another Turkish reader writes: "It is the startle of a new era in novels." What better word is there than "mistism" for describing the combination of mystery and murkiness found in novels such as Pamuk's? And doesn't it sound much more exciting to be present at the "startle of a new era in novels" than merely at the start of one? These days, if you want literary criticism free of cant and professional posturing, you're much better off checking out the reader comments at Amazon than you are reading a traditional book review, like the New York Times', or even an online review, such as the ones in Salon. At Amazon -- just as in the pages of an Orhan Pamuk novel -- "you change your time," and it is a change for the better: a move into a much more democratic future. -- Kevin Mims In an time when legions of good writers can't get their manuscripts spat on, let alone read, by editors and publishers, you'd think a young writer with an actual physical book on the shelves that people he's never met have bothered to purchase and read would feel OK about the deal. You might also think that same writer, if he were serious about his craft, would pay some attention to the thoughts of his readers, perhaps even take some of the less-venomous criticism of his work to heart, so that he might improve his output. Not Lev Grossman. He wants adulation from his readership; when he does not get it, he resorts to shilling for himself through self-written phony rave reviews he posts at Amazon, and then has the additional temerity to publicly admit his self-promotion and giggle over it in a Salon essay. He fails to grasp the potential value of Amazon's online reader reviews -- not only to the reader (since they give one an idea of whether the book is any good) but to the artist as well, by providing quick and undoctored consumer feedback that does not necessarily have to be the occasion for depression or suicide by the writer. Grossman's piece (especially the final note of defiance to negative reviews) reveals that he's learned nothing from his pans, and leads me to believe he's likely to get more bad reviews on his next work. -- Brian H. Corcoran
_______________ COME OUT OF THE ALGONQUIN WITH YOUR HANDS UP! BY SUSAN LEHMAN (03/04/99)
	The Patrolmen's Benevolent Society and Mayor Rudy Giuliani are completely out of touch. If they're so incensed about being "smeared," why don't they explain to the city how an unarmed man was shot 41 times in the foyer of his own apartment building? Where is the investigation into the shooting? Where is the accountability? Where is the decency, or the humanity, to say: "This is what happened, it was wrong, and here's what we're doing to make it better?" Instead there are only stonewalling and public relations. The PBA is right: This has to stop now. Not the magazine covers, the silence about brutality. -- Matthew McIver Brooklyn, N.Y.
	N E X T+P A G E+\| Camille Paglia and right-wing hypocrisy