Tom Lutz, the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, has written an eloquent state of the union on publishing and book reviewing, in response to this summer’s news that the LA Times has laid off its entire staff of freelance book reviewers and columnists. For those of you who haven’t yet been over there, the Los Angeles Review of Books is an impressive & inspiring new venue for long-form book reviews and essays, still in its beta version but aiming to release in full force by the end of this year. Lutz’s piece begins:
The Los Angeles Times proudly announced last week that it was as dedicated as ever to book coverage – “we have not changed our commitment,” said Vice President of Communications Nancy Sullivan. Sullivan was speaking to Publishers Weekly’s Wendy Werris, explaining that a new round of layoffs in the section and the cutting loose of the book section’s freelancers was not to be taken as a sign of what it clearly was: a further contraction of the section’s purview.
“Freelancers” in this case means not just those of us who have written the occasional review for the Times over the years but the new class of non-employees, the many people who used to be on staff and were laid off before being rehired as freelancers, like Susan Salter Reynolds; book columnists Reynolds, Richard Rayner, and Sonja Bolle were among those let go. Reynolds is a prime example of the new class of the gradually dis-employed: she has been writing succinct, insightful reviews for the Times for the last 23 years, usually three pieces a week, although often adding a fourth or even fifth in the form of a more in-depth review or feature (she is a woman who clearly does not sleep). For the first 21 of those years she was a staff writer, but for the last two she’s been a freelancer. The difference was a deep cut in pay, the loss of health insurance and a retirement plan, and the outsourcing of her office to her own house. The workload remained the same.
The agonizing death of print journalism, squeezed by investors into this deplorable state, has been one impetus for our project at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Lutz goes on to muse on the mission and scope of the newspaper vs. the novel:
No matter its ambition, the novel moves, at best, from the local to the global by reference to a specific story or stories; it keeps focus on the particular case, its arguments about the general necessarily analogical. The newspaper has, and should have, more encyclopedic ambitions. Even if it rarely can manage the depth of a great novel, it should always strive for a greater breadth. It will never survive if it keeps contracting.
Read the essay in full here. There’s much to be said about all this, but I have just moved to a new city and am feeling expansive, so I thought I’d use this post to point to and celebrate a few places where one can find excellent book reviews online, venues that, like the Los Angeles Review of Books, are working to fill the gap in book coverage left by shrinking newspapers, and/or to expand into new and nontraditional modes of reviewing. (Though, as Lutz notes, it is sadly true that few of these venues can pay their writers.) And so, a list of some of my regular internet stops (not comprehensive and in no particular order, but all places that pay real attention to independent publishers):
One of my favorites is Scott Esposito’s The Quarterly Conversation, now in its 24th issue, and publishing long reviews of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, with an admirable dedication to international literature. The most recent issue features a symposium on David Foster Wallace.
For poetry (or: mostly poetry), Jacket2 is now at its new home, affiliated with UPenn’s Kelly Writers House & the PennSound project, and publishing amazing “articles, reviews, interviews, discussions and collaborative responses, archival documents, podcasts, and descriptions of poetry symposia and projects.”
Also check out Coldfront, publishing poetry reviews, news, features, and links to online poems.
Each issue of Words Without Borders offers in-depth, intelligent, well-written reviews of literature in translation.
The Boston Review offers both critical essays and an excellent series of micro-reviews, the latter usually of poetry.
The Barnes & Noble Review offers a range of reviews, interviews, columns, and features. Moby Lives recently reflected on the promise of the Barnes & Noble Review in this post, “Boston Globe vs. B&N Review,” a hypothetical contest in which the B&N’s clean, elegant design and minimal ads made it the winner.
I’m a fan of the Critical Flame, a fairly new venue publishing longer, thoughtful reviews and essays.
You probably already know about the Rumpus, which has a “Sunday books supplement” and many reviews of poetry and fiction, along with interviews and cultural/literary news–and of course their book club, or rather clubs: for both poetry and prose.
The Millions, one of the earliest online literary/cultural magazines/communities, posts an engaging range of reviews, interviews, book news and commentary, and essays.
Writers Jordan Davis, Karla Kelsey, Ray McDaniel, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, and Vanessa Place review at The Constant Critic.
HTML Giant recently expanded and formalized its review section, with two long reviews a week, and three shorter, anonymous reviews.
n+1 publishes a wide range of online content, including the n+1 book review section, which goes up every other month.
See also the book reviews and features online at the Brooklyn Rail.
A nod to Gently Read Literature, in its new format.
If you’re already reading this blog I hardly need mention the wonderful book reviews at the Kenyon Review Online.
As I type this list–neglecting any number of places, I’m sure–I think about what it means that they are, while being only a small selection, so many, and how this functions in comparison to the containment of any newspaper’s book review section. Wonderfully, this expansion and decentralization means that many more books can be reviewed, and with a wider range of critical styles and aesthetic interests; but also that no one of us can read all the reviews I’ve linked to even in this single post. So how do we choose, what do we look for? Notes for a future discussion.