Leon Wieseltier’s NYTBR review of Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint is now available online.

Dear Mr. Wieseltier:

At the end of your review for Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint you write: “There are many good reasons to wish to be rid of George W. Bush, but there are no good reasons to wish to be rid of intelligence in our public life.”

Agreed on both points. I wonder then what you hoped to accomplish when you began a critical essay in one of our country’s most respected book journals by describing the novel at hand as: “This scummy little book …”

You know, because it seems strange to me that someone who wishes to elevate the level of public discourse in our nation would resort to an epithet right out of the gate. Those are the first four words of your review, I repeat them, just so you can savor them one more time: “This scummy little book …”

You will notice that nowhere in this letter do I agree with or condone your review of Mr. Baker’s novel. Yet somehow I find myself able to type you a letter without resorting to such statements as “This scummy little review.” You will also note I refrained from addressing you at top as Mr. Weaselter, though I desperately want to, such a weasel’s work do you make of your job as critic here: Biting, shifty and nasty.

See, in your review you include the parenthetical remark: “(About the deranging influence of blogs Baker makes a sterling point.)” — it is, I see, the single point in which you show yourself in accordance with Mr. Baker. Funny you should mention it. This is a literary blog, Mr. Wieseltier: Unremunerated, unedited by anyone but myself, sometimes written on the fly between the work that allows me to earn my keep. Yet at no point would I — nor the bloggers to whom I routinely link (you can see them to the right) — allow myself the “deranging” luxury of issuing such de facto statements as “Baker’s novels have always been desperate to be noticed” and “Like all of Baker’s books, this one is too close to its subject” without proof or context.

How long is this piece? 2,000 words? 2,500? Yet there was no room to name any of Mr. Baker’s previous novels, nor to place this newest one in context to his previous output? No room to quote from Checkpoint at length? No room to place Baker’s novel in any sort of literary tradition (Camus’ The Stranger leaps to mind as an appropriate place to start, as does our nation’s own tradition of protest literature), and from there to weigh Baker’s success accordingly? No room to mention any other book — except, excuse me, for an “anthology of anti-Bush writings”, itself apparently too unimportant to name?

I’m especially interested to hear from you about the many, many novelists who — unlike that Baker bastard — are not “desperate to be noticed.”

And finally, I can’t help but feel that a critic who starts out a high profile review with the phrase “This scummy little novel” is himself desperate to be noticed. A while ago, blogger Mr. Daniel Green of The Reading Experience wrote a post in which he questioned your role in assigning, editing and publishing Dale Peck’s attention-grabbing “hatchet jobs” (e.g., “Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation”, etc.). I thought the post interesting at the time, I now view it as prescient. Because there seems to be a disingenuousness at work here: You are a critic, you serve as a literary editor at The New Republic and yet you seem all too eager to play a role — advisory or in person — of, to borrow Mr. Green’s phrase, “pronounc[ing] almost all contemporary fiction a waste of one’s time.”

Bluntly put, sir, there is a way in which one can view your work as someone who does not like books much, but sure does like attention.

Sincerely,
Carrie A.A. Frye

Dear Mr. Tanenhaus:

If you were wondering, this is not what the blogging world meant when it asked for better coverage of fiction. If you expected congratulations for having devoted so much space to a novel, you will not receive them from me. Wieseltier’s essay is a political piece, and it is telling that this — the longest essay about a novel I can remember during your tenure as editor — is in fact there because, I believe, it represented the opportunity to treat fiction as nonfiction. This is depressing. And it’s a bit of a travesty. Because between you and Mr. Wieseltier there is no one responsible for this essay who appears to evince any interest in, any love for, or any understanding of the work of fiction.

I was shaken as I read this piece with the inescapable image of you and Mr. Wieseltier stepping on novels as someone would to put out a cigarette, using each book underfoot as a stepping stone to further your own careers. Allow me to say it more frankly, Mr. Tanenhaus: You don’t seem to care about novels. If so, I wish you would stop pretending you did.

Wieseltier includes the following statements in his review: “This scummy little book,” “Baker’s novels have always been desperate to be noticed,” “Like all of Baker’s books, this one is much too close to its subject.”

These last two claims (and these are claims, not facts) go uncorroborated and unexamined. None of Baker’s previous novels are even mentioned by name in the entirety of the piece, nor are the particularities of their damning, attention-getting stunts brought to light. Given that Baker is an important American writer, given that this is a highly negative review in a major publication, it behooves a critic to marshall his evidence — and it is the responsibility of his editor to demand that a review seemingly intent on damaging a writer’s reputation back up its most corrosive claims.

Unless the critic did not actually care about the novel, but just enjoyed the opportunity to use it as a stepping stone to his own (political and seemingly personal) agenda.

Unless the critic’s editor allowed such a piece to stand — knowing perhaps that the review would create a ruckus that would make his lagging book journal seem revived in relevance.

In other words, Mr. Tanenhaus, I am not arguing with Mr. Wieseltier’s right as a critic to be alarmed and enraged by Mr. Baker’s work. It is not a critic’s job to make nice — to hand out gold stars. I am arguing that somewhere in a book critic’s manner should be implicit the belief that the words on the page matter — that the novelist’s job is in fact culturally important — that books bloody fucking matter. Yet nothing in Mr. Wieseltier’s tone communicates this, from the bullying, disrespectful sally of “This scummy little novel” to the high-handed dismissal of any in-depth discussion or analysis of Checkpoint after five high-handed, uncontextualized paragraphs, in favor of spending the remainder of the “review” on a critique of the state of political debate in our country (where, I might add, Mr. Wieseltier proves himself just as willing to indulge in sophistic, uncontextualized statements as he is when discussing books — but that’s another matter).

When Mr. Wieseltier writes, “All the professional manipulation of opinion notwithstanding, reality is still more powerful than its representations” — it is all to easy to read this as a statement of a man who would prefer to be commentating on politics (reality) than fiction (its representations). A strange and — again, I repeat— depressing stance for a critic and his editor to take in the New York Times Book Review.

Sincerely,
Carrie A.A. Frye