Death Comes for the Book Critic?

Is book reviewing a dying art? Some critics think so, according to a piece today on NPR’s Morning Edition: “Book Reviewers Decry Fewer Newspaper Pages”. The number of print pages devoted to book reviews is declining, and yet another major newspaper recently axed its separate review section in favor of carrying scattered reviews in the Arts section.

Some blame declining newspaper readership, but others point the finger at bloggers, especially popular ones such as Bookslut. Critics of blogging book critics assert that independents (like me!) lack institutional credibility. How can a reader know if they're just spinning titles to promote sales or for some other nefarious purpose? Of course, indies (like me again) could counter that we're often less likely to be sales motivated than someone who's writing for an ads-dependent newspaper. Perhaps review readers deserve a little credit for being able to tell when a reviewer is biased and for being wise enough and motivated enough to move on to someone else as need be.

Putting the question of blame aside, as someone who relies on reviews in various media to find good books as well as occasionally writing formal ones for print publication, this is a troubling situation. I've been touched by it recently, when a nature group's newspaper that has often published my reviews decided to shrink the size and number of its pages. I applaud their goal to save paper and funds for other critical environmental projects, but I lament the loss of a good resource for nature book news. My latest review for them appears only on their website.

What’s being done about the decline? The National Book Critics Circle has launched a campaign to save the book review. Part of their effort is a new award, available to print, web, or other media, for outstanding book reviews. Learn more about the whole campaign at NBCC’s blog, Critical Mass.
Many environmentalists might see this is a backburner issue, much less pressing than stopping zebra mussels or protecting parkland from snowmobiles, but I believe that books wield extraordinary power to inform and mobilize environmentalists—and even occasionally make new ones. What other ways can be found to save the book review? I’ll be thinking about ways I can help and looking for suggestions from all of you.

Soaring with David Gessner

What better way to celebrate the 2007 centennial of Rachel Carson’s birth than a new book about ospreys, a raptor saved by the anti-pesticide outcry sparked by Silent Spring? In his acclaimed Return of the Osprey (Algonquin Books, 2001), David Gessner feted the birds’ post-DDT resurgence through reflections on a summer observing their courtship, nesting, fishing, and fledging. Intimate watching at the nest connected Gessner not only with the birds but also with their marshy Cape Cod home. Yet ironically, that book’s success helped pull the author away, to a new job as a writing professor in North Carolina. The move turned Gessner’s osprey obsession toward understanding the birds’ migratory trajectory, or, as he puts it, “My old question had been how to nest. My new question was how to be at home in movement.”

In Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond, Gessner follows the birds south by foot, car, boat, and computer, virtually-watching ospreys satellite-tagged for a BBC documentary. Most of his avian encounters are fleeting, though long enough for indelible descriptions of hovering, diving, and other dramatic moments. Recountings of human interactions are no less memorable, whether they depict a random couple met beside a spotting scope or hot shot birders buttoned-holed for advice. Gessner’s humor shines in these scenes, as when he imbibes beer along with lessons in soaring physics from a raptor expert near Hawk Mountain.
He switches to rum once he and the birds reach Cuba, but literary heroes accompany him all along the way. A devotee of Thoreau, Gessner here favors Whitman. A worn copy of Leaves of Grass, swiped from one of many guesthouses that shelter him, reveals a fellow wanderer who valued freedom as much as connection. Who would want just one cabin in the woods, Gessner asks, when you could experience many? “So many possible Waldens, “ says the author, “Cabin after cabin. Waldens on the fly.”

As often as he crosses geographical borders, Gessner shifts writing styles.
A lyrical passage on a mountain thunderstorm is soon succeeded by a farcical report on how broken Spanish affects testy immigration officials. This is not just a literary device or quirk but a sign of commitment to crossing boundaries of writing genres and natural place. As Rachel Carson depicted in her natural history classic, The Edge of the Sea, Gessner views borders as fertile spaces for wildlife and the imagination. In Soaring with Fidel, he richly imagines life on the wing for a magnificent raptor and reimagines a meandering but sure route toward his own happiness.