Years ago, Bill McKibben gave a reading at Black Oak Books, a Berkeley bookstore. After the reading he chatted with a friend. The grade of B his book had received from Entertainment Weekly came up. “It settled arguments around the house about who’s the better writer,” McKibben said. His wife’s most recent book had gotten a B+. McKibben and his friend then decried the EW practice of giving grades to books as if they were term papers. Perhaps they called it “simplistic”.
Whereas I think EW has exactly the right idea. I liked Ha Jin’s Waiting. I respect Walter Kirn. I was pleased to see that Kirn reviews Ha Jin’s latest book, A Free Life, in the current New York Times Book Review but I became a little dismayed as I read Kirn’s review: What exactly was he trying to say?
Volatility, after all, is a measure of health in a free market, and the elementary algebra of Jin’s narrative pace — as slow, implacable and steady as interest accumulating in a savings account — implicitly promises that his dimes and quarters of mundane description and petty conflict will result in a full piggy bank for all. Neither does Jin give his people flaws or problems grave enough to threaten their well-being. Pingping’s chronic fretting is not disabling, and Nan’s nascent ambitions as a poet aren’t the kind that lead to leaps off bridges if they go unattained.
Huh? Kirn seems to be saying the novel is too predictable but I’m not quite sure. I would really have liked a grade at the end so that I could have figured out what Kirn thought overall.
Kirn wrote for Spy; I met him there once and told him I loved his article about “The First 100 Lies” (of the Bush pere presidency). Where is Review of Reviewers, one of Spy’s best features, when we need it?