"Actually, this is good," my editor said when my book got panned. "It's a long review by a well-known person. It's on a good page. It's even got a caricature of you."What she doesn't get -- and will never know -- is that many writers can't even get hold of their editors after a book is published. Your project is out the door, it's dead to them -- unless it sells unexpectedly well or wins an award.
True, the drawing made me look like a demented chicken -- a fat demented chicken -- but as he explained, art meant space and space meant respect and respect meant attention.
Update: Pollitt's op-ed came on the same day an interview with her appeared on Salon. In one part of the interview, Pollitt is asked about a negative review of her book that appeared in the NYT Book Review; she responds:
You know, to tell you the truth, I didn't study the review closely -- because I'd like to maintain my cheerful disposition!Hmm, could that be the one with the caricature that "made me look like a chicken?" -- since she seems to have spent plenty of time studying that one. Go to that article, and you'll find this picture:
Kind of looks like a fat, demented chicken to me.
Pollitt actually looks like this:
(Pollitt is at right, holding the, uh, orange juice. Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel is at left. Photo from this page.) Frankly, the caricature is not that far off.
2 comments:
Thought I had something on this in my own archives ... from Dec 2004 when the then-new NYT Book Review editor talked at the Small Press Book Fair:
"A slam hurts a book less than a bland review," he said, noting one book that was recently slammed and immediately moved to the No.1 spot on Amazon's sales ranking.
Full post is here:
http://amylangfield.com/2004/12/notes-from-small-press-book-fair.html
Wow, that author must have bought a lot of copies of her own book to move it to no. 1.
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