Jennifer Howard

Journalists are handed a lot of evidence that the world at large doesn’t think much of our trade. No-one seems to appreciate how selflessly we serve the greater good, what keen-eyed observers and trenchant analysts we are. So there we are, feeling all righteous and aggrieved, and then the news cycle coughs up a reminder that sometimes we really don’t have a clue. One recent example I found especially painful because it involved literary journalism, which has more or less been my home turf since the dawn of time. On Nov. 3, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a story headlined “Celebrating… Read more...

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the untimely death of the Yugoslav writer Danilo KiÅ¡ (A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, Encyclopedia of the Dead). My friend Rich Byrne pays tribute to KiÅ¡’ “painfully comic vision of human beings careening through a universe of injustice and accident,” and talks about how his work affected the Yugoslav/Serbian literary scene and how it anticipated the horrors to come: One of the great ironies of KiÅ¡’ career is that “Boris Davidovich” set off a lengthy war within Yugoslavia’s — and mainly Serbia’s — literary establishment that turned not upon interpretations of Stalinism (the vexed… Read more...

An abridged version for those who don’t want to wade through the chatty one below: 1. Read the book. All of it. 2. Be honest. Say what you think and why. 3. Do not hide behind vagueness and cliche. 4. Resist the temptation to be mean just because you can. 5. Remember that the author is a human being who (we hope) put a lot into this book. 6. Be entertaining. Dullness is unforgivable. 7. Don’t spoil the surprise. 8. Think twice before you accept an assignment. 9. Do not kid yourself that a review is the equal of a… Read more...

I don’t write many reviews these days. Ten years at Book World gave me my fill, and it was time to focus on on other kinds of writing. That’s been a happy decision, but I still read a lot of reviews (and write them once in a while), and I still find the push-and-pull between writers and critics a fascinating thing to watch. The recent bad behavior from Alice Hoffman and Alain de Botton made me think again about how that game’s played, or should be. So I came up with a code. (Authors need some guidelines too, as Hoffman… Read more...

It’s been a bad week for author-critic relations. First Alice Hoffman used Twitter to get back at a reviewer who made the mistake of not entirely loving her latest novel. Then Alain de Botton went after Caleb Crain—in the comments section of Crain’s blog—for not entirely loving his latest opus in a review for the NYT. (At least give de Botton points for drama: “You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that. So that’s two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review.”) I love a good literary smackdown as… Read more...

The WaPo has finally announced that it will kill the stand-alone print edition of Book World and move books coverage into Outlook and Style and the arts section. No surprise there; rumors have swirled (what else do rumors do?) for weeks now. What to say? I worked at Book World a long time, and I got used to it in its stand-alone print incarnation. But BW’s talented staff will not lose their jobs because of the Post’s decision. Literary news and reviews will still be part of the paper. Book World will have some kind of unified presence online. All… Read more...