Time For a Review of the Times Book Review?
Two years ago the New York Times Book Review published an essay of mine, "Allan Bloom and the Conservative Mind," in which I showed that Bloom rejected conservatives' touting his 1987 bestseller The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students as if it were a manifesto for their movement.
True, Bloom's book was properly scathing of leftist racial and sexual "identity" politics and of the political-correctness police. And it inspired a surge in conservative campus funding, pedagogy, and activism intended to rescue liberal education from a vapid, divisive multiculturalism.
Far from rescuing the liberal arts, though, the conservative surge was weakening them. It was inundating undergraduate life with premature training in marketing, self-marketing, national-security strategizing, misplaced religious enthusiasms, and sometimes, as a grace note, jejune affectations of classical virtue. And no one, I showed, had decried all this more loudly than Bloom himself.
Bloom was eccentric, and not, shall we say, my cup of tea. But some of his arguments deserve rescuing from conservative ideologues and from journalists addicted to "left vs. right" scenarios or confused and embittered by what they think liberals did to their own educations. Such journalists thought I must be trying to rescue Bloom from the right in order to claim him for the left. They didn't notice that liberal education is endangered far more now by conservative capitalist surges than by tenured radicals – an important distinction.
As it turns out, some of these confused journalists were working at The Times Book Review itself.
Under its editor-in-chief Sam Tanenhaus and a curdled former leftist apostate or mini-con or two, the Book Review clambered onto the bandwagon of neoconservative folly in Iraq, skewing its mix of reviews toward bashing critics of the war until sometime in 2005. Around then the Book Review began doing some damage control, sometimes bashing addled liberals all the more eagerly, as if that would cleanse its own excesses. How many more rounds of reviews by Christopher Hitchens, David Brooks, Paul Berman, Peter Beinart, Joe Klein, and others fixated on the follies of the left will it take to make obvious the Review's displacing of its own war guilt onto whatever liberals it can find who are even more addled than its own liberal war hawks and neo-con fellow travellers?
Occasionally the Book Review does praise a good liberal book (by the Times' own Frank Rich, for example), or it lets someone like the sorry Beinart hustle some truly embarrassing neo-con like Norman Podhoretz off-stage. Tanenhaus, in a meltingly tender New Republic profile of William F. Buckley, Jr., seemed to me to be trying to insinuate himself retroactively into Buckley's early and prescient skepticism about the war. But integrity at the Book Review (and the New Republic) will require a change not of tactics but of hearts -- and, in some cases, maybe even hands.
I've assailed the Book Review on this in passing here, and in The American Prospect, perhaps annoying some review editors. And now comes another Times Bloom essay by one of them that really ought to be read alongside my own.
Rachel Donadio's "Revisiting the Canon Wars" is fair and balanced, so to speak, but it repeats so much of what I said two years ago that one wonders why she wrote it at all. This is the Bloom book's 20th anniversary, but, if the timing of these two pieces were reversed, wouldn't Book Review editors have told me, "We can't run yours because we ran a big essay on this subject only two years ago."?
Donadio's essay is also twice as long as mine, but that's no improvement, reflecting as it does Review editors' penchant for writing much more voluminously and ponderously than they let other reviewers do. (Did you ever finish Tanenhaus' grand reassessment of Richard Hoftstadter, nearly five times the length of most full-page Times reviews? Or Barry Gewen's encyclopedic and exhausting meditation on the death of art?)
Donadio's extra space does let her call around to savants for apercus on who's killing liberal education, but her composite of their comments is something of a muddle. She acknowledges that Bloom mistrusted capitalism and that market and career pressures may indeed hurt the humanities more than mad lefties do. But her essay leaves the impression that if liberal education is ailing, it's mainly because – as an enlarged "pull quote" in the margin puts it -- "Two decades after Allan Bloom's book, it's generally agreed that his multiculturalist opponents won the canon wars." So it was they who shattered any possible consensus about which great books and core courses are essential to a good education.
But was it? Mightn't it also be "generally agreed" that while multiculturalist leftists were winning the canon wars, multiculturalist (global) capitalists were winning almost everything else? As Todd Gitlin put it memorably in The Twilight of Common Dreams, while the left was marching on the English Department, the right was marching on the White House, pushing a neoconservative interventionism that turned on the universities themselves. That has ill served liberal education, let alone ancient or Enlightenment republicanism. I say more about this today in The Guardian.
When I made such arguments in the Book Review in 2005, some of the most encouraging responses came from thoughtful conservatives: Ross Douthat wrote that "the questions Sleeper's essay raises are important, and deserve a hearing on the Right." Four of Bloom's former editors and friends wrote to thank me for rescuing his legacy from "Take Back the University" yahoos like Kimball and David Horowitz. Bloom's colleague Nathan Tarcov, who'd co-directed with him the conservative Olin Center at the University of Chicago, said so in a letter to the Times.
It was right of the Book Review to publish Tarcov's letter then (next to one from David Horowitz, of course), but on Sunday a tiny but very telling indication of how the Review has changed came in the online box of "Related" Times articles posted with Donadio's essay. It failed to link the most "related" article the Times has published in recent years – my Bloom essay. Yet it did link the conservative zealot Roger Kimball's glowing 1987 review of Bloom's book, and then Kimball's own book, "Tenured Radicals," as well. Whether out of pique or incompetence, editors who can't reference their publication's own published work are getting Orwellian and letting their own paper down.
It would be nice to "take back the Book Review" from its punch-drunk conductors, but not in order to hand it over to politically correct former editors like Rebecca Sinkler. We badly need gatekeepers with a civic-republican integrity and courage that reflects liberal education, not the curdled ressentiment about professors that we get so much from Tanenhaus, culture columnist Edward Rothstein and others I'm too merciful (or just not annoyed enough) to name.
I started the new year keeping track of the number of left/right political books and their reviewers, but I actually trashed the document after a few weeks because I was too depressed by it. At least the letters this Sunday were both skeptical about David Brooks's last diatribe.
You mention Barry Gewen's "meditations" on "the death of art." It should be said that this, too, was part of the conservative storyline in the culture wars, about thought being spoiled by liberal academics and their horrible ideas. It launched me on a screed of my own.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
September 17, 2007 12:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
"True, Bloom's book was properly scathing of leftist racial and sexual "identity" politics and of the political-correctness police. And it inspired a surge in conservative campus funding, pedagogy, and activism intended to rescue liberal education from a vapid, divisive multiculturalism."
Yes, Bloom's book was this, but its major failure was that it was largely inaccurate. The surge of identity politics was but a minor deviation from the mainstream domination of universities and faculty politics.
The attention paid to his claims and to yours were far out of portion to the reality of identity politics or multiculturalism.
And, his writings on multiculturalism were largely an innacurate description.
And, you rescued Bloom. congratulations. And now the Times Book Review failed to acknowledge your important piece. For shame.
How could they miss your important essay? It must be a conspiracy.
Duane Campbell
tenured radical.
author:
Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. (2004)
September 17, 2007 8:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks to Jim for another splendid post. Just a few quibbles:
1) Why didn't he link to MY review of Allan Bloom? It's in my book Divided Mind, downloadable from my website: www.georgescialabba.net.
2) In his 2005 Times essay, Jim quotes without demur Bloom's likening of student movements in 1930s Germany and 1960s America: "The fact that in Germany the politics were of the right and in the United States of the left should not mislead us. In both places the universities gave way under the pressure of mass movements." This is daft. There was no mass movement behind the American students remotely comparable in magnitude (never mind malignity) to the one behind the German students. The response of eminent academics who left Germany in the 1930s was prudent. The response of eminent academics like Bloom to a few overexcited students in the 1960s was hysterical.
3) In the same place, Jim refers in passing to "the failure of the Enlightenment," a common trope: viz., "Enlightenment ... rationalism had collapsed into fascism or Communism." The Nazis did not conceal their hatred for Enlightenment rationalism, and Stalinism owed infinitely more to Tsarism and Russian Orthodoxy than to Enlightenment rationalism. The Enlightenment did not fail us; we failed the Enlightenment.
September 17, 2007 9:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Much though I appreciate my good friend George Scialabba's "quibbles," I can do without the pique in them -- especially coming as they do just after the troll-like reflections that were posted above them!
1) The "Related" box that ran with Donadio's piece linked only Times articles and books that, if I'm not mistaken, had been reviewed in the Times. Obviously they couldn't link everything published on the subject, but isn't it a bit surprising that they skipped their own biggest essay, of two years ago, on the same matters which Donadio is reworking?
2) Anyone who reads my Bloom essay (linked above in the text) -- as everyone who read Donadio's on Sunday should do -- will see that I quoted Bloom's comment that "in both [1930s Germany and 1960s America] the universities gave way under the pressure of mass movements" to embarrass those conservatives who harp on the sins of the 1960s. Bloom did not want to be one of those conservatives, and his comments show that he was profoundly uncomfortable with their vulgar populist tendencies.
3) "The Enlightenment did not fail us; we failed the Enlightenment." This is nonsense, a non sequitur, because The Enlightenment was not a person or entity with the agency to fail anyone. C'mon, George. The left made a lot of disastrous, almost willful mistakes. Don't join the New York Times Book Review in harping on them. I am happy to have scourged both sides -- a longer discussion for another time.
September 18, 2007 8:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: The Nazis did not conceal their hatred for Enlightenment rationalism, and Stalinism owed infinitely more to Tsarism and Russian Orthodoxy than to Enlightenment rationalism.
Huh? Maybe tsarism as a model of heavy-handed government: one can see Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible in Stalin, yes. But Russian Orthodoxy? Unless you are referring to the fact that the rather superstitious dictator lifted his restrictions on the Church after the German invasion and directed them to pray their butts off for Mother Russia, there nothing remotely religious about Stalin. (Yes I know he was once a seminarian. He was also once a cute and cuddly baby, but that didn't last either). And yes, Marxism (Stalin's baseline creed) does owe a lot to the Enlightenment, via Hegel and Kant and Rousseau.
Also, a pet peeve: the adverb "infinitely" needs to be retired since it is (almost) never true. Very few, if any, things are truly "infinite" in the real world.
September 18, 2007 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
JPF:
The political culture and social psychology of Stalinist Russia reproduced that of Tsarist Russia in all essential respects: a highly centralized, harshly oppressive state ruling an impoverished population with no experience of self-government by means of an official church (the Orthodox Church; the Communist Party)that preached an unworldly, dogmatic, superstition-ridden state religion(Orthodox Christianity; Marxism-Leninism). Yes, of course, Marxism owed a lot to the Enlightenment. But Marxism-Leninism owed very little to Marxism. Marxism-Leninism has about the same relation to Marxism as Russian Orthodoxy (or Roman Catholicism) has to the Gospels.
September 18, 2007 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can I go back to the original question and put it to Jim for insights? How do we reclaim some honesty, and I'd include the magazine section (Caldwell, Rosen, Bai) along with the book section? People always point to the Times as symbolic of the liberal media on account of its editorials, as if that were the whole story, as if the other two papers of record weren't the Post and the WSJ, and as if the other papers in my city weren't the Post, the News, and the Sun. And now that we're less bound by the kowtowing of Judith Miller and even Michael Gordon, we've seen key organs go over to the right. Can you suggest any hope?
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
September 19, 2007 11:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jim--
I agree entirely with what you say about how, as the country moved to the right, and the corporation replaced the cathedral as the architecural model for high culture, the entire idea of a liberal education was trashed. Suddenly, the value of an education was measure in terms of how much you might earn if you majored in economics. How much you might learn if you read widely and deeply no longer mattered.
September 19, 2007 5:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
The NYT as most of the media laid down for the Bush administration.
They have withheld stories and, in my opinion, the reason they put their special section
behind the pay wall was to grovel even lower for this administration of Neocons.
They used every trick in the book to control us by limiting our reality
to only the propaganda from their operatives.
The NYT's reputation has suffered nationally and abroad.
World wide there has been a loss of credibility and readership.
Unfortunately there is not a recognized Universal God
the American people and institutions can build
a High Temple to and thus obtain absolution
to become righteous.
-----------------------------------------------
Today, are we searching for I deals or Ideals?
-Thinking
September 19, 2007 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, the instrumentalization of college educations is a big challenge. On the one hand, it was ever thus: Elite colleges like Yale turned out lots of dray horses of the financial and legal establishments; and some would argue that the GI Bill brought millions of veterans onto campuses seeking only "the main chance" to make a great living.
But I would argue that in those times, colleges -- not just the Ivies but the colleges within many state universities, and many small liberal arts colleges -- had a more coherent sense of themselves and that something of this rubbed off. My Dad, for example, a child of immigrants, got out of the army after WW II and majored in Romance Languages at Clark University; a child of the Depression, though, he put all that aside and became a small businessman to provide for his family. But something of his reverence for education rubbed off on me, and I have to credit some of this to Clark, as well as to him.
Some say that the new student demography at Ivies bodes ill -- that too many first-in-their-families college students and immigrants lack the experience, grounding, etc., necessary to make proper use of a liberal education. But it was said of my father and the returning veterans, whether Catholic white-ethnic or Jewish, yet look at all the civic idealists and leaders they produced, because, again, something rubbed off.
The question now, I think, is whether colleges can again muster the coherence and pedagogical dedication necessary to be crucibles of civic republican leadership, not just career factories and cultural galleria for a global ruling class accountable to no polity or moral code. I worry about both market pressures against humanistic studies and, on some campuses, a conservative funding surge in programs that skew the humanities toward militarism and illiberal nationalism.
September 19, 2007 9:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
This broad and important question about media honesty applies not only to the Times but even more to the Post and the WSJ. One could track my columns here on Murdoch's bid for the latter, especially
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/jun/18/rupert_vs_the_republic
The civic-republican mission of journalism as a profession or craft -- to make "public life go well" by facilitating information sharing and dialogue, as Jay Rosen argues in his book, "What Are Journalists For?" -- has always been imperiled by its being housed in and dependent on media businesses, whether owned by moguls of yore (including Rupert now) or by bland corporate bottom-liners who look more at Wall Street quarterly returns than anything else. It is only a matter of time before we confront similar pressures on the internet.
So the odds are daunting. This reminds me that, as the American historian Gordon Wood put it, republics like ours have no guaranteed adhesives, no enforceable ties of religion, tribal loyalty, aristocratic tradition, etc.-- no civic glue but their own civic faith. Liberal capitalism has to rely on virtues and beliefs which the liberal state itself cannot nourish or even defend, because it has to protect individual rights and autonomy in the narrow political sense.
It comes down to the depth of republican faith in the people; it's they who must keep newspapers and other media honest; it's they who raise up some civic and business leaders who will insulate their news corporations from mindless market pressures and even their own personal prejudices.
The best such leaders of the past, from families like the Bancrofts (WSJ), the Chandlers (Los Angeles Times), and, perhaps, the Grahams (Washington Post) seem to have abdicated this trust as their descendants succumb to the market lures of personal gain over the more distant rewards of dedication to civic purposes. It's yet another sign that the residual WASP aristocracy that did provide this country with some continuity and standards from the Puritans onward (and a lot of narrow, exploitive hypocrisies, too) is really kaput. What will replace it? That's a question journalism itself can't answer.
September 19, 2007 9:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can I throw in a really naive question? Presumably news questions and reporter hirings are ultimately down to Bill Keller. How and by who does new management for the magazine and book review get chosen?
I can see that plenty of things are business decisions. The Circuits section is there to get advertising from electronics dealers, so mostly it's going to be about Jim Pogue's never finding a new, costly gadget he doesn't like. (Exception today.) Sunday Arts is going to aim for advertising and also for a national audience, so it'll generally have puff news rather than reviews by daily staffers. Even the space in the magazine for, say, Lynn Herschberg or Daphne Markin to make an extension of the endless parade of style sections is explicable for a desired advertising base. But the political make-up of the two sections, at odds with that of the editorial board and apart from the news staff, is worth tracing, I bet.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
September 20, 2007 7:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Corvid
Excellent discussion, Mr. Sleeper. I would add only that multiculturalists are hardly confined to a few academic departments here and there. The Democratic Party has a pretty heavy infestation, wouldn't you say? While it's true that a particularly corrosive form of capitalism dominates all our politics and our lives, too much of the supposed political counterweight to this is taken up with identity politics and related themes--most of it far removed from campus. And that, of course, is no counterweight at all; counterculture, multiculturalism and their attendant paraphernalia offer terrific profit opportunities for hip corporations and private equity.
September 20, 2007 7:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's late in this discussion but I think
that if we set out to criticize the Book Review (and Magazine) we should critize the Book Review and Magazine rather rather than Globalism , capitalism , or multi national corporations.
For example if the Magazine seriously wants to examine the performance of the left how about Katha Pollitt as well as Matt Bai ? If the subject is the legal system , how about Ronald Dworkin ?
September 20, 2007 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wrote "the book" on the Democratic Party's infestation which you mention. Actually, two books. Liberal Racism (Viking, 1997, Rowman & Littlefield, 2nd edition, 2000) barely treats the academy but goes into many of the dimensions you mention. It's also, though, a deeper meditation on race and America, including in Amerian public disocurse.
The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York (Norton, 1990) said to fellow left-liberals, We're really blowing it on identity politics, multiculturalism, and racial strategizing. Not that these things don't have their place; but they'd been miscarried by leftists and liberals, defensively, in reaction to the frustration of other hopes concerning class and capitalism. So, I agree with you.
September 21, 2007 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
The short answer to your question about how Book Review editors are chosen is: I don't know.
While I'm sure that the executive editor and even the publisher are involved, I imagine that the long process of feelers and interviews wends its way up through the culture editor and others, and that even some of the long time Book Review staff may have some input. But I've never asked, and no one has ever told me!
As for commercial motives, the Book Review is revamping its best-seller lists starting this Sunday, I think, and perhaps making other changes, undoubtedly to try to keep readers and advertising. Here, I sympathize with the editors, because -- as we've seen with newspapers that have crimped or closed their Sunday book sections -- the upheavals in publishing make the whole enterprise highly volatile. More and more people tell me they've stopped reading the Times Book Review, but I think that this is less because of the deplorable politicization I've described above than because fewer people are reading serious books.
Many people do read the reviews as a substitute for reading the books, and then argue about the books as if they'd read them, which is bad both for the culture and for the advertising, since the Book Review isn't actually selling the books by discussing them.
That's what leaves the Times Book Review open to more facile, dangerous politicization in the hands of people like Tanenhaus. The sad irony -- and I have just been invited to say this at length in another venue -- is that he knows and has written too much good history (his biography of Whittaker Chambers, and now one on William F. Buckley, Jr.) not to realize that he has taken a wrong historical and professional turn himself. But, then, as his choice of his subjects and reviewers suggest, he has sometimes been drawn to that kind of darkness.
September 21, 2007 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink