Pubspeaks
Behind the Critical Eye: A Closer Look at Book Reviewing
NPR Book Reviewer Tells All!
By Doug Hecox, WIW Member
Philadelphia is known for a many things. It's the birthplace of the
cheese-steak sandwich and the Declaration of Independence. At WIW's April
27 Pubspeak, members learned the City of Brotherly Love is also the birthplace
of the longest radio book review series in America.
For the last 17 years, Maureen Corrigan has shared
her love of books with millions of listeners each week on Fresh Air
with Terry Gross, NPR's third-most popular show.
Corrigan, who now lives in Washington, D.C., said she has always loved
reading. Her first book, a literary memoir titled Leave Me Alone—I'm
Reading! (Random House, 2005), showcases the obsession she shares
with serious readers everywhere.
Enthusiasm is not the Enemy of Intellect
While in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, Corrigan
began writing book reviews for The Village Voice.
"I loved writing book reviews," she said. "I loved being able to talk
about literature to an educated audience of non-specialists. I loved
being able to be funny or enthusiastic in book reviews.
"Enthusiasm was not a quality prized in graduate school," she said,
laughing. Even though "it was a quality that was looked down upon in
scholarly writing," she explained that enthusiasm is not the enemy of
the intellect.
While studying in Philadelphia, Corrigan became a fan of Fresh Air—then,
a local radio program. After reading that the show was going national
and needed more commentators, she assembled clippings of her writings
for The Village Voice and sent them to Fresh Air.
"To his credit," she said, " Danny Miller, the executive
producer of Fresh Air who has been there from the beginning,
actually called me and said 'No thanks.' He said 'We think you're too
academic.'"
Months later, Corrigan wrote a story for The Village Voice about
her experience grading advanced placement English exams for the Educational
Testing Service, a fast-paced job she likened to the famous candy factory
scene on I Love Lucy.
The piece caught the eye of Fresh Air 's producer, who called
Corrigan to ask her to shorten the 2,500-word story to 600 words and
read it on the air. "It took me weeks to do this," she said, "because
I wasn't used to the form."
John Leonard, then NPR's book critic and overwhelmed
with books, gave Corrigan her big break by inviting her to be Fresh
Air 's second book critic. He later left Fresh Air with Terry
Gross to write for Harper's and New York magazine,
making Corrigan the show's resident literary expert.
"It's the usual story," she added. "Part luck, part work...part generosity
from someone who didn't need to be generous."
The Challenge of Book Reviewing
Corrigan explained that her reading tastes are wide-ranging. While she
strives to read books from publishers of all sizes, she follows a few
rules of thumb. "I'm not going to pan a first novel," she said. "The
only reason to [review] a first novel by an unknown author is to say
'Hey, this is a great new voice!'"
Though she said there is pressure to do favorable reviews, she confessed
to not necessarily giving in to it. "I am probably one of the few critics
out there who didn't think E.L. Doctorow's The March was
the greatest thing since sliced bread.
"I did not give it a favorable review," she said. "Now it's gotten all
the awards, [but] I think he got the award because nobody could understand
what his last novel City of God was about. I love Doctorow—The
Book of Daniel is one of my all-time top five favorite novels—but
this one just didn't work for me."
Corrigan added that she avoids self-published books, because they haven't
gone through the rigorous vetting process of traditional publishing and
books for specialized audiences.
"I can't be a specialist. I'm not the person who's going to find [factual]
errors in the book," she said, "but I am the person who's going to say
'Are there internal inconsistencies in the book?' That's one way I evaluate
it. What about the writing—is it substantive and engaging?"
"Part of the problem we have in contemporary culture is that the scholarly
books have gotten too 'inside' and the popular press books have been
too dumbed-down," she added. "So what about the general readership that
is educated but who aren't specialists?"
Becoming an Author
When not preparing reviews for NPR or teaching literature at Georgetown
University, Corrigan writes a column about mystery books for the Washington
Post. Her writings attracted the attention of Kate Medina, a
vice president at Random House who's edited books by Tom Brokaw,
Truman Capote, E.L. Doctorow and others.
"She wrote me two letters," Corrigan said, "about reviews that I had
published in The New York Times about her authors. She
said, basically, 'I like the way you write—let's talk sometime
about a book.'"
Corrigan's initial desire was to write hard-boiled detective fiction. "I
love the form," she said. "It's modern-day social criticism. I still
don't think it's gotten its due, and I wanted to write a book about mysteries." After
meeting with Medina in New York City to discuss the project, however,
she was told it sounded too academic.
"This is my constant plague," she laughed. By the end of the meeting,
however, Corrigan had been encouraged to consider writing something more
personal.
"So I wrote a book proposal doing that," she explained, "but I began
by talking about a genre that I'm calling 'female extreme adventure tales'—like Anna
Quindlen's novel Black and Blue, about a woman fleeing
an abusive marriage. It made me think about the possibility of a female
version of extreme adventure tales that would be heavy, not on physical
derring-do but emotional fortitude."
For inspiration, she turned to 19th century British novels. "I'm convinced
that the Bronte sisters are the queens of the female extreme adventure
tale," she said, citing Louisa Bronte's The Vallette
Heritage and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. "Tales
about extreme solitude and emotional endurance—I wanted to talk
about those kinds of stories."
She also cited Marie Killilea's Karen, a best-seller
in 1952, which she said fits in the "secular martyr stories" genre, as
an inspiration and referred to it—and the Bronte sisters' works—in
her own book.
"Since I've written the book and written about these stories," she said, "I've
gotten letters—mostly from women, and from Anna Quindlen herself—saying
'Oh my God, I thought I was the only person who read the Karen books.'"
The Importance of an Agent
"Without getting into details," Corrigan advised, "Don't agree to anything
without an agent... I didn't have the background to know what I could
push for, and what I couldn't push for, what I should agree to and what
I shouldn't agree to. You need an agent, I think."
Surviving Criticism
Once it was published, Corrigan explained that the first to review her
book—Publishers Weekly—gave it a bad review. "They
said it was a feminist diatribe," she said, adding that she felt bad
at first. "Ultimately, it didn't matter. I got great reviews in other
places, but the blogs, the book groups and the word of mouth really matters."
And on having her own work critically reviewed, Corrigan said it is
important for writers to take it in stride. "I think we now live in an
age where it is not Edmund Wilson or H.L. Mencken," she
said. "We don't have that one critical voice that will make or break
a book."
Managing the hundred or so books she gets each week from various sources
is daunting, even for Corrigan. "I'm not a speed reader," she said. "That's
why I get up at 4 a.m.," she laughed.
In addition to teaching, Corrigan is the associate editor and contributor
to Mystery and Suspense Writers and is the winner of the 1999
Edgar Award for Criticism presented by the Mystery Writers of America.
She is also a reviewer and columnist for Book World and The Washington
Post. In addition to serving on the advisory panel of The American
Heritage Dictionary, Corrigan has chaired the Mystery and Suspense
judges' panel of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
For more information about Corrigan, visit http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/corrigam/
WIW member Doug Hecox is a syndicated humor columnist
and teaches journalism at American University. He is currently writing
biographies of Marshall Berle, the man who discovered
the Beach Boys, and Governor John Osborne, a 19th-century
politician who wore the hide of a train robber he'd skinned to his own
inauguration.
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