In response to a pair of controversial book reviews by Jennifer Senior in last week’s New York Times Sunday Book Review, readers are airing out their own criticisms. Reviewing two books that voice unforgiving criticism of the Bush administration, Sidney Blumenthal’s How Bush Rules and Lewis Lapham’s Pretensions to Empire, Senior concluded that both books “suffer from a distorting case of Bush-phobia.” In the course of the review she likened Lapham’s book to heckling and blamed Blumenthal for always assuming the worst.
In this week’s Sunday Book Review, Blumenthal struck back, accusing Senior of resorting to “scurrilous innuendo” instead of actually addressing the central argument of his book. “Listing the intervening distortions would take up more space than the original article itself,” writes Blumenthal. “Was this supercilious piece intended to be a book review?”
Todd Gitlin, a professor here at Columbia’s Journalism School, also came to Blumenthal’s defense in the Times. “Her examples of his ‘pushing his arguments to the breaking point’ are petty and feeble,” writes Gitlin. “Relentless criticism and cogent analysis of a relentlessly dangerous and hard-to-believe administration make Senior uncomfortable. Her squeamishness is all too typical of the mentality that for years obscured the recklessness of the Bush White House.”
Afterwards, bloggers stoked the debate.
“I’d like to reproduce the parts of Senior’s review in which she addresses Lapham’s arguments, but there are none,” writes Jason Rosenhouse of Evolutionblog. “For all her talk about explaining and struggling with ideas, Senior seems uninclined to take up the project herself. Instead we hear only that Lapham is angry, that he is an unhinged Bush hater, and that Senior feels more like throttling him than his political opponents. We are treated to a handful of Lapham quotes where he seems very angry indeed. But is Lapham right to think Bush an imbecilic oligarch? Is it possible that anger is the proper reaction to the administration abuses Lapham writes about? Senior doesn’t tell us.
“This style of reviewing, where you criticize a writer’s tone rather than address his assertions and arguments, is commonplace today,” continues Rosenhouse. “Elsewhere in the review, Senior informs us that she actually read all of Lapham’s book. She needn’t have bothered; her vapid and content-free review could easily have been written from the jacket material alone.”
Continuing with the vapid theme, WireCan offers some insight: “I read that crappy NYT review of Lewis Lapham’s and Sidney Blumenthal’s books. Unlike most everybody else, I’d imagine, I read it last night as I watched Wife Swap (for the second week in a row, in fact; don’t ask) and, honestly, it was hard to know what was more offensively superficial.”
Not everyone is against Senior, though.
“Blumenthal doesn’t fare as badly in this review as does Lapham. And deservedly so,” observes Dymphna of Gates of Vienna. “Those in power are not without their problems. However, she (the reviewer, Jennifer Senior), makes a most telling point about the Left, one that was a major reason I departed their ranks many years ago: except for Bill Clinton’s occasional riposte, they have no sense of humor. None. Zilch. Nada.”
It was Senior’s portrayal of the books’ lack of a sense of humor that perhaps stirred up the most debate.
“Blumenthal lays out in excruciating detail the sins of the Bush administration–lives lost, billions squandered, international reputations diminished–and the Times deducts points because the book isn’t funny enough,” writes a disgusted Eric Boehlert of the Huffington Post. “(What’s funny is the fact the Times didn’t assign the review to a Washington political pro or presidential historian, but a MSM Gotham City magazine writer who’s recent articles have included stories like “My Life as a Thin Person” and “Are Jews Smarter?”)”
Amid such somber evaluations of funniness, one blogger manages to keep things light-hearted. “It must suck to have one’s book overtaken by the truth before it is even published,” quips TigerHawk.
Mark Boyer was a CJR intern.