The Atlantic: Are New York Times Book Reviewers Biased Toward Writers Who Are "White And Male And Live In Brooklyn"?

The Atlantic:

Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner, two writers whose work is often referred to as "chick lit," have been tweeting and commenting in the press about Michiko Kukatani's rave review of Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom; Piccoult mused that she'd love to see "the NYT rave about writers who aren't white male literary darlings" and busted on Kakutani for using the word "lapidiary" in her review. Weiner tweeted "Carl Hiaasan doesn't have to choose between getting a Times review and being a bestseller. Why should I? Oh right #girlparts."

Read the whole story: The Atlantic

Comments

[Occam123]

07:05 PM on 08/24/2010

Do crocodiles lives in NY sewer system?

[Lev Raphael]

10:14 PM on 08/23/2010

How arrogant to be rich and famous and claim that you're oppressed.

You know what? I'd give my three NYTBR reviews for just a third of Picoult's 2010 royalties and a third of her audience. I'll bet if she were reviewed in the Times she'd be complaining that it was either a bad review (and therefore prejudiced) or complaining about who reviewed her, or something.

As a French friend said to me once, "There is no such thing as 'enough' in America--you always want more."

[ksun1]

03:45 PM on 08/23/2010

Wasn't Kukatani the same reviewer who gave rave reviews of a couple of books that were susbsequently exposed as total frauds? Memoirs with premises so ridiculous and incredulous that it wouldn't have taken a trained bloodhound to detect that they were blatant fakes. I'm thinking of one book about a teen male transvestite prostitute ( the author was really a middle-age woman); and another about a young white woman who claimed to have been raised as a foster child of a family of black gangbangers who forced her to sell crack ( the author really grew up in a middle-class family). I've long been suspicious of the glowing book reviews posted in the NYT; because the reviewers seem somewhat clueless.
I don't understand all the praise for Franzen's work, either. I read "The Corrections" after all that Oprah-related hubub about him not wanting to see his work categorized as a "woman's book". Aside from some sharply-observed details about the lives of a certain class of people, I found the book to be really ordinary and nothing "to write home about". The most interesting charcter, IMO, was the female chef; and I wouldn't have minded reading an entire novel about her life; but the remaining characters were boring ciphers.