The Life of a Book Review Editor
Sam Tanenhaus of the New York Times Book Review answers readers’ questions. As a literary editor at TAC, I didn’t worry aobut whether we were reviewing enough nonfiction by women (why doesn’t Tanenhaus simply point out that much more nonfiction is written by men anyway, which at least seems to be the case), but otherwise much of what he says applies to what I was doing at TAC, particularly the bits about which books don’t qualify for review (self-published ones, for starters).
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December 17th, 2006 at 8:37 am
I presume, Dan, that under your successors, The American Conservative will retain its long-standing, and wholly admirable, policy of not printing poems?
Words cannot convey what a relief it is to know that the talentless verse equivalents of Jackson Pollock are prevented from gaining a foothold within TAC’s pages. Would that more publications could say the same. As far as I can determine, the only folk who read such effusions are (a) their perpetrators, (b) colleagues/rivals/significant others of same.
December 17th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
I don’t think there’s much danger of a poetry section emerging any time soon. Oddly enough, although the department wasn’t able to use them, I did receive a couple of moderately good poetry submissions during my time as literary editor — not enough, though, to warrant giving regular (or even occasional) space to poems.
December 18th, 2006 at 2:24 am
Speaking of poetry, I wondered if you knew the answer to this question about one of your rival magazines, about which I have long speculated: Is “W.H. von Dreele” an actual person, or he is a pseudonym adopted when Buckley or Lowry or the editors collectively get in a poetical mood?
December 18th, 2006 at 7:14 am
I’ve wondered about von Dreehle myself, James. A quick googling doesn’t turn up anything about him. I’ll ask around a bit and post something if I turn up anything interesting.
December 18th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
William Henry von Dreehle is a real person. I’ll post some info on the front page later on.
December 19th, 2006 at 12:47 am
He does fill a function at NR similar to the (undoubtedly real) Calvin Trillin at The Nation, but the name is (my apologies to him) so comical-sounding and I have never heard of him (quite unlike Trillin) doing or writing anything else, so I wondered. Thanks for taking the time to make inquiries.