So What IS the Best Book Review, David?

Everybody with a literary blog seems to have read David Kipen's "welcome to the working week" letter to incoming NYTBR chief Sam Tanenhaus already. Here's a passage that leaped out at me:

Let's stipulate from the outset that, ideally, nobody should care who edits the New York Times Book Review. It's one book section among many in the English-speaking world, and not even the best. There are several underrated Sunday book review sections, including one just down the hall apiece. But even if the Times book review were the best, it helps no one to make a fetish of it, the way some otherwise intelligent people do. That consolidation of clout can only inhibit a healthy biodiversity of literary opinion. It's also weirdly tiresome to read about in a competing newspaper -- rather like listening to your date talk about other guys.

Excuse me, but aren't you the one writing this "tiresome" tale? Then again, this is someone who refers to the Book Babes as an "indispensable literary column," which means he's batting 1-for-3. Which strikes me, upon reading the rest of the column, as about right--claiming that a book of literary criticism published in the 1980s indicates a likely tendency to assign reviews of novels in the 21st century is, as far as I can tell, an unwarranted stretch. Of course the focus of Literature Unbound is on fiction: it's a book of literary criticism. Nor do I think the easy assumptions Kipen makes about a connection between the literary traditionalism Tanenhaus espouses in the book and his political beliefs necessarily hold water--although Tanenhaus' approving citation of Ayn Rand does certainly make one wonder.