The man in the paper suit

The editor of the NYT Book Review, Sam Tannenhaus, answers readers' questions today as part of a continuing series of appearances by NYT editors.

Tannenhaus' picture, with its strained, disbelieving grin, makes him look like an exhausted high school department chairman who has just been told the school district wants him to nominate a teacher for a coming layoff. Presumably it wasn't taken while he was responding to readers' questions, but he looks beleaguered enough. So far, most of the obvious questions are up there: How do you choose and reject books for review? What's the deal with those strange pieces where the reviewer talks about everything but the book? Why so few books from foreign shores?

In most cases, when asked "Why aren't the reviews more x?" Tannenhaus answers "Well, some of them are." He doesn't really seem to have a guiding vision of what the NYT Review should be. The main feeling you're left with is that he is bailing as hard as he can just to keep up with the avalanche of books each week, and we're lucky the section is as good as it is. Perhaps, or maybe he's just a sort of functionary in a post meant for an aesthete.