David Plunkert This week, The New York Times Book Review unveils its first redesign in six years. In addition to the updated look, the Book Review’s back page is now home to a new feature: Bookends, where each week two distinguished columnists (from a rotating cast of 10) will address a provocative question from the world of books. First up, Zoë Heller and Adam Kirsch answer the question: “Are novelists too wary of criticizing other novelists?†Ms. Heller writes:
If nonfiction writers are, by and large, less squeamish about criticizing one another’s work, this is not, one suspects, because they are a bolder or less compassionate bunch, but rather because the criticism of nonfiction tends to be a more impersonal business than that of assessing novels. The critic of nonfiction contests matters of fact, of interpretation, of ideological stance. The critic of fiction, by contrast, has only aesthetic criteria to work with. You may respectfully take issue with another writer’s analysis of the Weimar Republic without impugning his skill and dignity as a historian. But when you argue that a novelist’s characters are implausible or that his sentences are inelegant, there’s no disguising the rebuke to his artistry.
On this week’s podcast, Jennifer McDonald, a preview editor at the Book Review, introduces Bookends; Sheri Fink talks about “Five Days at Memorialâ€; Julie Bosman has notes from the field; Katy Butler talks about “Knocking on Heaven’s Doorâ€; George Johnson discusses “The Cancer Chroniclesâ€; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Pamela Paul is the host.
