The New York Times Book Review, Jason, the Prize Writers and the Golden Fleece

For an unknown writer from an unknown background to make it to the overrated New Times Book Review is like Jason in the quest for the Golden Fleece.

Getting a book reviewed by the highly coveted reviewers of The New York Times is determined more by the names of the publishers than the qualities of the book. An ordinary book published by Random House or a scrap book from Simon and Schuster will most likely be reviewed, but a masterpiece published by a small and unknown publisher will never be noticed by these so-called first class reviewers whose literary criteria for selecting books should not be the sine qua non of literary excellence in contemporary fiction and non-fiction, because it is more of playing to the gallery of the American publishing syndicate than intellectual pedantry.

The New York Times standard for Making the Cut is no literary benchmark for the best works in prose, poetry or drama, but simply another capitalist tool of the American mainstream media to uphold the social hierarchy of their hypocritical American intelligentsia.
They stage-manage the whole process and they dictate what makes the cut or not.

What makes The New York Times Best Selling List is not the quality of the book, but who wrote it and who published it. Even a collection of nonsense by a noise making American celebrity and published by any of the elitist publishers makes the list.
What an American intellectual sham!



Here is the question on the literary criteria of The New York Times Book Review and the smart answer from the Book Review Editor.
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Q. How do you decide what books to review — out of the thousands you receive every week? Perhaps this is just the classic journalistic question of what constitutes news, but beyond picking the obvious celebrity authors, what subtle criteria do you use to choose from among the many unknowns? Do reviewers you've used before ever suggest books to you? Thanks again. Love the Review.

— Steven Ager, M.D.
Philadelphia, Pa.


A. The first thing to say is that the Book Review has space, in any given week, for some 20 to 30 reviews, which sounds like a lot but in reality means we cover only a fraction of the books sent our way. Once the books reach us the process is rather simple. Each week three of us — the deputy editor, Bob Harris, our senior editor, Dwight Garner, and I — sort through the many galleys or advance reading copies that come in and distribute them, setting aside some for ourselves but passing the great majority along to our five preview editors, who all have specialties (in areas ranging from experimental fiction and poetry to history, science, philosophy, sports and popular culture, among others). A couple of weeks later, after the individual previewers have had a chance to evaluate all the books they've been assigned, they meet with the three of us and advise us which books should be reviewed. We then discuss possible reviewers. The previewers also write up brief reports on each book they've "skipped." Now and then Bob, Dwight, or I will take a second look at a skipped book and suggest that it be reviewed, after all. But most of the time we accept the verdicts of our colleagues, because they know the book best and also are so well versed in the area or field the particular author is working in.

Sometimes reviewers do suggest books, but since we see just about everything, and see it far ahead of time, it's not often an "outsider" knows about a book before we do.
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But the fact is, 90% of the titles never make it to their desk, except the few ones recommended by the errand boys or publicists of the major publishers in the US.

Who is fooling whom?