Tuesday, March 17, 2009

What went on ...

... at the NBCC this weekend: Book awards take place in gloomy atmosphere.

5 comments:

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  2. CORRECTION TO PREVIOUS POST:
    The awards event sounds like it was--in a word--interesting. The 600 pound gorilla-in-the-room, of course, is the changing and evaporating world of newspaper reviewers/critics. While the Internet is proffered as the new venue for reviewers/critics, the P/G author (IMHO) does not sufficiently address several points: (1) the Internet is a wide-open territory for more reviewers/critics, but readers need to be wary of the credentials of those reviewers/critics because wider access to more reviewers/critics does not equal better access to responsible journalism; (2) once upon a time a reviewer/critic could actually earn a living at a newspaper (as you certainly know) but the Internet seems an unlikely source of adequate compensation for anyone who hopes to earn his or living as a journalist writing about books (unless underwritten by a corporate enterprise). Well, what do you think? What is the future?

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  3. Anonymous3:52 PM

    I'm glad that Bob Hoover gently took the piss out of all the backslapping and the self-importance, which I was all too happy to avoid. (Although I still haven't met Bob Hoover. Oh well. Maybe at BEA.)

    I let my NBCC membership lapse because I don't feel that the organization serves any reasonable interests. They remain hostile and condescending to any of the views outside that 4% that Bob mentions. And that goes for the Internet as well. If the NBCC somehow gets a clue (and some humility), then I may join again. But I don't have any sense that they are serving the interests, in particular, of young, emerging, and alternative critics. It's all a bunch of congratulatory wankery. And I can get plenty of that without having to pay for it if I so choose.

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  4. I think, Ed, that you and Bob would get along. He knows books, but he's free of cant about the "lit'ry" world. He's also, as you may have noticed from his comment about Ron Charles, quite dryly funny.

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  5. Anonymous5:11 PM

    Aw, poor little Ed. He ran for the board and I guess nobody voted for him, so that proves NBCC is a terrible bunch of backslappers.

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