Memoirs of a Book World Editor

For those of you who can’t afford to shell out for a TLS subscription, Critical Mass is reprinting Michael Dirda’s recent series of missives about his career with the Book World. If this first one is to judge, they’ll be witty, understated, and very truthful.

I’ll even go so far as to say that if they’re all of this quality, someone should give Dirda a book contract to write his memoirs of editing the Book World:

Months went by. Then one Friday the phone on my desk at STSC rang. Could I produce a brief notice – 250 words – about a young adult novel, really a kind of fable or fairy tale, called In the Suicide Mountains? It was by John Gardner, best known for the novel Grendel, which tells the story of Beowulf from the monsters’ point of view. I had never read a word of Gardner, but did I pause to consider whether I was the right person for this book? Not for a second. With the aplomb that characterizes journalists the world over, I answered, “I could do that”. The book – delivered by courier – was waiting when I got home. Through some inadvertence, no review slip had been included with the package, and I could only guess when my brief notice was needed. I couldn’t even call to check, as the weekend had started. There seemed but one truly safe course of action. I read the book that night, spent all day Saturday crafting, as they say in writing schools, 250 words of sonnet-like perfection, then typed up the result on my Hermes portable with a fresh black ribbon. In those pre–Homeland Security days, the main DC post office near Union Station was open until midnight.

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