AOL's Book Maven

Gawker.com has its Fake Writer Days, Weeks, Months... here at AOL's Book Maven, it's Beleaguered Book Criitic Week. First there was Jerome Weeks at the Dallas Morning News resignation column; now it's TIME magazine's Lev Grossman defending himself against a blogger.  

Obviously I am quite sympathetic to both beleaguered critics. Weeks, facing a diminished Arts section, took a buyout; Grossman, facing constant carping from an online critic, writes a rebuttal. It's not easy being a critic of any kind.

However, Weeks said something that bears repeating:

"...book culture may seem a dwindling, quaint endeavor to advertisers in mad pursuit of illiterate teens and at a time when arts coverage in general is getting dumped or fragmented into a million Web sites. But there are hundreds of thousands more new books released per year than TV shows, sports programs, movies or CDs. For all the talk of the death of print, more people have access to more books now than at any time in history."

Does this mean that people simply have less use for critics than they ever did? It seems counterintuitive -- if there are more books to choose from, wouldn't you think there would be more critics than ever? -- but some things are.

What do you think?

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• #4 Comment from arulraj1985 
  2/13/08 12:21 PM | Permalink

  
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• #3 Comment from benboise 
  9/27/06 3:47 AM | Permalink

  I linked to this blog from the aol portal page.  They mentioned something about a "naughty beach scene". I came only to find out more of the risque scenes from "Where's Waldo?".  Spent 10 minutes reading other things while I searched-- but no Waldo explanation.  Why is "Where's Waldo" banned?
• #2 Comment from bookmaven2005Entry Author 
  9/25/06 11:47 AM | Permalink

  Why thank you, Majbeck...
  
  
• #1 Comment from majbeck 
  9/24/06 3:23 PM | Permalink

  I think that readers trust critics less these days ( as there is less trustin the world in general), so we become wary to their recommendations. I did, however, always listen to Grossman, and even if I did nto agree with him, I would take his opinion seriously.
  I wonder if the huge amount of critics, bloggers, websites and extraneous information makes us wonder about the qualifications of critics... do we listen to the opinions of people who have no qualifications in that area of which to speak?? Just something to ponder. I don't take book or plumber or restaturant or clothing (etc, etc) recommendations from anyone if I don't know their qualifications.
  I listen to you, Maven. You are rarely off the mark.