Dan E. Moldea spent seven years on his book “Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football.” Early reviews looked good; bookstore orders did nothing to discourage optimism. Soon, though, the orders slowed. Moldea believed the reason was a review in the Sunday New York Times saying “Interference” contained “errors and unfounded insinuations.”
The reviewer was Gerald Eskenazi, who covered professional football for the Times. Moldea believed Eskenazi was predisposed to review the book negatively because a positive review might have damaged the sportswriter’s relationships with National Football League sources.
Even worse, Moldea believed, were misguided criticisms of his reporting. The Times Book Review editors stood behind Eskenazi, however. The newspaper would not even publish a letter of complaint from Moldea. So Moldea sued.
The trial-court decision gave him some satisfaction, but an appeals court decided the review did no legal harm to Moldea, even if it hurt his reputation and sales.
The unprecedented lawsuit understandably grabbed the attention of the book world. But despite its relative obscurity, the lawsuit also has relevance for readers of this book section. The litigation touched on almost every book-reviewing dilemma. Behind almost every seemingly innocuous review is a maelstrom. Here are some of the dilemmas that book-review editors, reviewers, authors and publishers wrestle with every day:
– Should a particular book be reviewed, given that the vast majority of books published each year never receive a word of mention in the Tribune or comparable sections? Almost every Hollywood movie is reviewed in the Tribune, but they number in the hundreds annually, not in the tens of thousands.
– Who should write the review–an acknowledged expert whose mind might be set and who quite likely knows the author? Or a generalist reviewer who might be closer in outlook to the average reader and probably has no personal or professional acquaintance with the author? Many editors say it is better to risk an overly hostile or overly friendly review than to publish an uninformed one.
There is less consensus among authors. Some are so sensitive about negative reviews that they would choose a favorable uninformed reviewer over an expert more likely to find fault. Other authors want to learn from reviewers and so prefer an expert even if the review finds fault.
– The number of potential conflicts in trying to match reviewer and book is huge. What if the reviewer chosen is also an author, and has been on the receiving end of a negative review by the current author? Or the current author’s spouse? What if the reviewer is working on a book for the same publisher? What if the reviewer and author share the same literary agent?
When an editor is aware of a conflict but makes the assignment anyway, she hopes disclosure in the reviewer’s identification line will suffice. But sometimes the editor does not know enough. Nina King, editor of Washington Post Book World, offers this example: “Asked if she knew the distinguished male historian whose latest work Book World was offering her, the almost as distinguished female historian murmured something about having met him once at a cocktail party.” King assigned the book.
That turned out to be a mistake. “It must have been quite a party,” King wrote after publication of the review. “We later learned that reviewer and author had enjoyed a very public love affair, and that Book World’s assignment was briefly the laughing-stock of history departments all over the country.”
– Should the editor seek reviewers most likely to write positively about the books assigned, on the ground that it makes no sense to discourage readers of the section from reading books? Or should negative reviews be encouraged, on the grounds that the word “critic” suggests criticism? (Besides, book editors worry about the readability of their sections, and negative reviews are usually more interesting. There are few compelling synonyms for “brilliant,” but there are many for “lousy.”)
Many authors would rather see a negative review than no review. A negative review at least alerts readers that the book exists, and many readers will consider buying it despite a negative review because the subject is of interest. But it is certain that a potential reader who is unaware of a book’s existence will not buy it.
Because so many reviewers are also authors, there is a compassion factor at work. Carolyn See, both author and reviewer, asks, “How, being a novelist, can I be so hard-hearted . . . as to . . . take a book I’ve read . . . and then sum it up in 800 words (without giving away the plot) and pass some sort of judgment on it, dismissing, in a week’s emotionless work, what it’s taken the author years of . . . really hard work to produce?”
– What are the responsibilities of the reviewer and book-section editor when it comes to accuracy? Should a non-fiction book be taken at face value, or should the reviewer do independent research to determine accuracy? Most reviewers and book editors do not.
One way to check for accuracy is to read previous books about the subject. If, for example, a reviewer is assigned a new biography of J. Edgar Hoover, is it incumbent upon the reviewer to compare it with previous biographies of Hoover? Or is it permissible to review the new biography in a factual–and intellectual–vacuum?
In the end, even if all dilemmas are avoided, differences of opinion are inevitable. Anybody who reads half-a-dozen reviews of the same book is almost certain to find wildly contradictory judgments. One of my favorite exchanges started with Elinor Langer’s lukewarm opinion of Carl Bernstein’s autobiographical “Loyalties” in the New York Times Book Review.
Bernstein defender Jessica Mitford complained that although she admired Langer’s books, her review showed poor judgment. Mitford concluded her letter to the editor on a note of regret: “Elinor, I hardly knew ye!”
Langer’s reply read in part: “As someone who regards Jessica Mitford as a national treasure, I can only say that the Bernstein family is fortunate to have her as a friend. The book she describes sounds wonderful, and I’m sure if I had read it I would have liked it, too.”
