Winde van verandering waai blykbaar orals.
Philip Hensher: Help save the review (and the reviewer)
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Newspapers are going through a period of change, no one can doubt that. Under the pressure of the internet and its myriad contributors, the purpose of pages of criticism seems less obvious as it once was to some owners and editors. In an age where everyone is willing, it seems, to express their views for nothing, and to make them universally accessible for nothing, what is the point of paying a critic to express what is only one person's opinion?
One hears, almost everywhere, gloomy prognostications of the future of newspaper criticism in its traditional form. Some newspapers have done away entirely with a standing critic of some art forms or media, and have found that the world doesn't collapse if you get rid of a television critic, say.
Last week, the much-loved and greatly admired literary editor of The Daily Telegraph, Sam Leith, was unexpectedly sacked. There is no sign that the Telegraph is planning to get rid of the books pages, although Private Eye has reported that he was told that his job was now "otiose". Nevertheless, at a party to launch the new online Book Club of The Spectator, there were plenty of people prepared to venture that the books pages, in their traditional form, had had their day. The future belonged to bloggers and the view, taken en masse, of the reviewer on amazon.com.
I declare an interest here as a regular book reviewer for The Spectator and other papers. It's not, however, an accident that the best literary editors in London are often among the most admired and respected in the literary world. They walk a demanding path, matching expertise with subject, thinking who will write with some sparkle, who will supply gravitas, who will exercise some sympathy towards a book which may need it, who perhaps may entertain readers with a sharp view of an overindulged author. Casting against type is a favourite game in the theatre; the unexpected commission is as much an art form as any other.
The ones who stick around are very good at it. Kate Summerscale at the Telegraph, Erica Wagner at The Times, Suzi Feay at The Independent on Sunday, Boyd Tonkin at The Independent, Mark Amory at The Spectator and Claire Armitstead at The Guardian – some of whom, before you ask, I write for, some of whom I don't – are ones that stand out in memory or present reputation.
What the books pages offer, I think, is some guarantee of expertise, and some guarantee of responsible disinterest. Neither is total, of course – you don't want expert quibbling with expert, nor a page full of reviewers who don't live in the literary world at all. But there must be some kind of guarantee here, considerably in excess of anything the self-publishers of the internet can offer.
The best literary blogs, such as dovegreyreader.com, are clearly as good as anything written in the paper press, expert and disinterested. Others, frankly, are self-publicists who know very little, and who may, as far as anyone knows, be serving an agenda. Every author knows the obsessively hostile blogger or online reviewer who turns out to be a slighted participant on a creative writing course; those reviews on amazon are interesting guides to what ordinary readers think, but not necessarily the product of any great expertise or experience. Nor are they meant to be.
There is a place, however, for expertise and experience to speak out in a critical fashion, and that place, I think, is going to continue to be the books pages of newspapers. I hope the party chatter that proprietors are looking at eight or 10 pages of book reviews and shaking their heads is just that, chatter. If not, you'll miss them when they're gone, I promise you.
