The New Haven Review of Books Debuts

Many of you will know the legend of how the New York Review of Books was founded: there was a newspaper strike in New York in 1963, and a bunch of scary smart friends decided that if they couldn't read their Times Book Review, they'd just have to start their own. And the New York Review of Books became the most important intellectual journal in the country.

I have no such hopes for The New Haven Review of Books which will have its debut at a publication party at Labyrinth Books in New Haven on Thursday night. But with ye olde worlde wide webe, we might get as many readers as the first copy of the New York Review did, 44 years ago.

There's no newspaper strike in New Haven. In fact, there's barely even a newspaper, now that the the New Haven Register has had its news staff slashed worse than a screaming chick in a horror movie. (It regularly gets scooped by the online-only New Haven Independent, with its staff of three paid reporters and a bunch of volunteers, like me.) No, the impetus for the New Haven Review of Books was only that we have a lot of terrific writers around these parts, and by coming together we could make two important statements.

First, in an age of shrinking book-review holes in newspapers, we're going to have to find new ways to get the word out about great books. Some of those ways will be local, and small in scale. We may never publish another issue of the New Haven Review (our motto is "Published Annually at Most"), but by just publishing once, we've made a statement in support of literary culture. Wouldn't it be cool if other small- and medium-sized towns -- Austin, Des Moines, Albany, etc. -- decided they wanted local book reviews, too? Maybe such reviews would feature local writers doing the reviewing, the way ours does, or maybe they would feature reviews of books by local authors. Either way, they would be reminders that major urban publications do not have to be the sole instruments for book reviewing.

And that leads us to the second statement that even one issue of a small, local book review makes: there are writers everywhere. Just here in New Haven and the surrounding towns we managed to round up Alice Mattison, Bruce Shapiro, Debby Applegate, Deirdre Bair, Jim Sleeper, Amy Bloom, and a couple dozen other greats. Many of us have never even met one another. We don't have a literary "scene" in this modest city; there is no cocktail-party circuit. But there are writers. (Indeed, I argue that medium-sized towns may be more conducive to literary production that big cities.)

This model won't replace the big-city, big-time book reviews; we still need them. And unless some angel comes along to fund another issue, this may be the last you hear of the New Haven Review of Books. But we're in an age of renewed attention to localism and regionalism, and book reviews -- like farmers' markets, or even local currencies -- can do their part.