We Call to Your Attention

Robert Birnbaum interviews Jonathan Lethem, who calls the tendency towards lateness in the New York Times Book Review “a good thing.” He explains:

“I myself actually turned in a very late piece—I reviewed the Kafka study K by [Roberto] Calasso three or four months after it was published. It’s not a bad thing. It breaks the spell of everyone necessarily hanging on that review, at the instant of publication, to set the tone for everything else. It might free us and also free up the Times from any sense that it’s somehow in charge.”

He adds that “review” isn’t even the right word to describe those articles: “The word that the theater trade uses is the right one—notices. People were last Sunday put on notice that my new book was to be found, if they hadn’t spotted it already. That’s all that matters.”

20 October 2005 | interviews, uncategorized |