1. Knausgaard reviewing Houellebecq in the NY Times (via @jamespoulos) should embarrass everyone involved:http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/books/review/michel-houellebecqs-submission.html …
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Replying to @jakebackpack
2. That its editors allowed it to be published rather than politely declining, paying him and giving someone competent a shot?
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Replying to @jakebackpack
3. And this is the problem with literary stardom. No one, apparently, can say no to these guys.
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Replying to @jakebackpack
4. A lot of you, my Twitterpeople, are teachers and editors. What would you do if one of your students or writers gave you such a mess?
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Replying to @jakebackpack
5. Now, the problem isn't that Knausgaard hadn't previously read Houellebecq or Huysmans. There's an expertise bias in literary reviewing.
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Replying to @jakebackpack
6. Non-experts, reviewers new to an author or subject, can be riveting reviewers; they stand in for the experience of the ordinary reader.
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Replying to @jakebackpack
7. But giving a man thousands of words to windily stroke the significance of his unpreparedness is a bit much, no?
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Replying to @jakebackpack
8. Anyway, what's really embarrassing isn't the gratuitous final product, it's that I can tell you precisely how this review happened:
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Replying to @jakebackpack
9. The book editors said, "Let's give a famous book by a European guy to another famous European guy." There's literally no other rationale.
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Replying to @jakebackpack
10. The NYT Sunday Book Review frequently prefers literary celebrity to *good reviewers*, and the Review's quality reflects that preference.
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@jakebackpack Or worse, political celebrity, like when they had Janet Napolitano review Masha Gessen's Tsarnaevs book. Gawd that was awful.
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Replying to @ChaseMadar
@ChMadar Yeah, that was particularly ham-handed and appalling.1 reply 0 retweets 1 like - 1 more reply
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