What Happens When Books Aren’t News
With this week’s announcement of massive cuts at The Washington Post, the paper’s Book World supplement earned a dismal distinction: It may be the only newspaper book-review section to have been killed twice. The first time was in 2009, when papers across the country were slashing books coverage in an attempt to stave off budgetary apocalypse. So when the Post relaunched Book World in 2022, readers and writers reacted with the same mixture of amazement and trepidation inspired by the dinosaurs at Jurassic Park. The rebirth of a dead species was wonderful to see, but how would it end?
Now we know. The new Book World was just as good as the old Book World; the editors and critics who lost their jobs this week, including John Williams, Ron Charles, and Becca Rothfeld, followed in the tradition of Jonathan Yardley and Michael Dirda, the Post’s Pulitzer Prize–winning stalwarts. But quality had nothing to do with the decision to cut book reviews, just as it had nothing to do with cuts in the paper’s sports and international coverage. Rather, the Post was making the same business decision that most other publications have made. People don’t want to read book reviews—at least, not enough people to make publishing them worthwhile. It’s a vicious circle. As people feel less of a need to keep up with new books, they stop reading reviews; publications respond by cutting books coverage, so readers don’t hear about new books; as a result, they buy fewer books, which makes publications think they’re not worth covering.
As someone who has been writing book reviews for decades, including as a staff critic for several publications, this is a bitter pill to swallow. It’s tempting to react by blaming the decline of literature, of literacy, of society itself. And there’s plenty of evidence that those things are in fact declining.
But the disappearance of the book review does not mean the end of criticism or of critics. There are still many places to read smart, insightful writing about books—starting with The Atlantic, of course. There are venerable magazines such as The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and Harper’s, and newer ones such as The Metropolitan Review and The Point (where the Post’s Rothfeld published a review-essay just this week). The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal still have excellent weekly book sections. And there’s an embarrassment of riches on Substack, though you have to know where to look. If you tried to keep up with all of the good criticism out there, you’d have no time left for reading actual books.
There is also no shortage of enthusiasm for talking about books. Just look at BookTok, Goodreads, Reddit, Amazon, or anywhere else people gather online to react, share, rank, and ask questions about the books they love or hate. Even 4chan, the notorious message board, has become a home for literary omnivores and autodidacts. Many of these readers don’t think book reviewers deserve to be mourned any more than other kinds of “gatekeepers.” If people no longer trust experts to tell them what vaccines to take or what stocks to buy, why do they need book critics to tell them what to read?
In a sense, the decline of book reviews, like the decline of newspapers themselves, is a story about disaggregation. Newspapers used to bundle several functions together in a way that made them both useful and profitable. A daily chunk of newsprint told you about world and local events, but also about stock prices, movie showings, potential romantic partners, and where to buy washing machines on sale. When the internet made finding that information easy and free, many people decided against paying for just the news part of the newspaper.
Similarly, book reviews used to play a number of roles in the literary ecosystem. In addition to informing readers about newly published books, they offered analysis to learn from, opinions to argue with, and, at their best, good writing to enjoy. (Certain critics, such as John Leonard and Elizabeth Hardwick, were usually better stylists than the writers they were reviewing.) All of these functions are now served in different ways online, or by different kinds of publications.
But as with the newspaper, the whole was more than the sum of its parts. The most important thing that a daily book critic or a weekly book supplement does is bring a literary community into being—the kind of community that exists when people who don’t know one another are all thinking about the same thing at the same time. Concentrated attention is indispensable for civic well-being and meaningful political debate. It is just as important for literary life—maybe even more important, because people who take an interest in books are fewer in number and need more help finding one another.
A book critic, or a newspaper book section, is a convener, bringing people together around a new book or writer, a literary trend or controversy. This agenda-setting is, of course, a kind of gatekeeping: Not every book can be reviewed, much less praised. That’s why one of the responsibilities of a good critic or editor is to have a broad definition of what matters and what’s interesting.
When such critics and editors disappear, every part of the literary ecosystem suffers. Readers don’t discover new writers and new kinds of writing they might love. Publishers find it harder to connect with audiences, so they publish fewer and less adventurous books. Writers don’t get the public feedback they need to develop their talents (even if they don’t always like getting it). And of course, the odd characters who actually enjoy writing reviews find it harder to make a living—this week more than ever.
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