Black on White

In the weeks following the publication of my book “Moscow Carrousel” (Knopf, $3.50—Adv.) I watched the book review collumns of the New York papers with rather intimate interest. In fact, I felt a bit self-conscious every time the family caught me at it. Formerly I had skipped the book reviews as naturally as one skips the editorial page.

In a few instances I watched in vain. Yet the attention I lavished on those pillars of critical erudition was not wholly wasted. If I did not learn much about current books, except their names and price, I did develop a sympathetic understanding of the reviewing business. The sympathy is all-embracing—for the critics carrying such a cruel load of work, for the authors at the mercy of such harrowed reviewers and for the public that presumably abides by their judgments.

I have no private complaint. Seasoned authors assure me that I got “a pretty good break,” as such matters are reckoned in the book trade. Diligent scrutiny reveals in almost every review a sentence, a phrase, or at least a word that can be quoted in advertising. Perhaps if reviewers had read the book even such valuable phrases and words would be mising. No, I have no personal grievance.

But in the interest of social history I must record first, my impression that the reviewers had not read the book; and second my naive astonishment at that fact. I record it in the interests of the larger truth. Who knows: in future ages this piece of all the pieces being composed today may be dug from under the alluvial deposits of time and become an important historical document under the title “The Lyons Lament, circa 1935.” It may become the cornerstone of a new school of social research. I cannot dodge my duty to unborn generations in their search for some guiding principle in understanding literary criticism in the ancient civilization of the XXth century. They must be forewarned that the relation between a book and its reviews is extremely sketchy at best, and just isn’t at average.

The polite fiction by which such book columns regulate their exalted daily existence is that one mortal man, equipped with two eyes and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, and approximately one mind of the current model, can and does read at least one book and sometimes several books every day of his life; that he can taste a few score more as he goes along, dash off a novel of a profound treatise on what the world’s coming to anyhow; and that, having disposed of these literary chores, he has enough time and strength left to cultivate a garden, attend literary teas, argue about Russia, answer letters from indignant neglected authors, keep up his training in poker or pinochle, as the case may be, and make the acquaintance of his own wife.

I know this catalogue does not exhaust the multifarious activities of a book columnist, but it suggests the scope thereof. I know, too, that he doesn’t get paid enough to hire a staff of assistants and ghosts. A book reviewer worth his salt and pepper can avoid reading what other people write, but he cannot avoid writing what other people read. Yet the polite fiction aforementioned expects him unreasonably to do both.

Assuming that a critic reads the book he criticizes, I am forced to the absurd conclusion that he read at least 1,000,000 words in the week that “Moscow Carrousel” (Adv.) appeared. My contribution was a modest 100,000, which soothes my conscience; a fellow by the name of Thomas Wolfe was to blame for the major portion of the fearsome total. Maybe this gentleman’s intrusion made it a particularly garrulous ### But even a run-of-the-mill week amounts to half a million words, and the innocent reader who believes that a reviewer can actually wade through such a sea of ink without drowning is much too innocent.

The most that can be expected from a conscientious daily book critic is that he smell the books pouring into his cubicle before selling them to that circulating library in the stationery shop or beauty parlor for 35 cents apiece. A nose for books, like a nose for news, is the principal equipment for the respective newspaper jobs —at any rate in these days when both news and literature have such unmistakable aromas.

On the basis of the treatment accorded to my own book (“Moscow Carrousel,” Knopf, $3.50 — Adv.) I can say, moreover, that the most satisfactory reviewers are those who limit themselves wisely to the jacket and the publisher’s blurbs. These blurbs, if sometimes too emphatic and slightly biased, do have some recognizable relationship to the contents of the book. They were composed by the author himself, or someone in the publisher’s promotion department who actually read the thing. A review based exclusively on the blurb consequently cannot avoid touching the book in question at some vital spot.

It is when the hard-worked critic inadvertently dips between the covers, where he has no business dipping, that mischief begins. The passage he reads at random is rarely representative of the book in its entirety. A chance anecdote leads him astray or touches off his pet prejudices. Worst of all, an accidental passage tempts him to display his “inside” knowledge and to argue with the author. The book is forgotten while the critic shines.

Which is not to say that I am ungrateful for those lovely quotable words and phrases. Embellished with a few asterisks and set in fancy type even their authors will never recognize them.