Tannenhaus agonistes

NYT Book Review editor San Tannenhaus continues answering questions from readers this week -- each day one or two more questions and answers are added. The cumulative effect is numbing. From his statements, Tannenhaus treats the Book Review -- one of the most influential publications for readers and writers in the country -- like a slaughterhouse, where the most essential thing is to keep the flow of reviews moving lest he and his staff be overwhelmed by the weekly avalanche of new books coming in. All are treated humanely, though things get nasty sometimes, and in any case, they've asked for it. ("I'm an author myself and know what it's like to have my work treated roughly by reviewers. In one instance, I sent a note to the editor of the publication where a negative and, I thought, unjust review of my work had appeared. The editor replied that as an author I had offered my work up to the public and had no business complaining because I had been criticized. It was good advice.") Then there's his dissembling:

Is it a big deal to have a book included in our "10 Best"? I suppose so...

Earlier this week I noted Tannenhaus's facial expression in the photograph printed with these exchanges "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." (I thought that was clever, so I just pasted it here.) As the week goes by, his expression seems to become increasingly tortured, like the famous Kuleshov demonstration of film editing where a shot of an actor's neutral face was intercut with various scenes (a wedding, a funeral, an attack, etc.) and the viewers perceive subtle, insightful changes "reacting" to the scenes. By Friday there may be miraculous tears coming from the picture.