Becoming a book reviewer (1978)
During the most somber stretches of television when the screen was disfigured with panels, quizzes or the news, I was frequently saved by New York Magazine.
To find out if it was feasible for me to work for such as illustrious magazine, my agent took me to Second Avenue to call on a certain Miss Koenig who rules the paper's book page. She not only found the idea acceptable but allowed me to write almost anything that came into my head and further indulged me by giving an office tea party for me just before I left America.
I also became involved in a curious subdivision of the profession of book reviewing of which until recently I had never heard. Publishers sent me uncorrected proofs of forthcoming books not exactly for criticism but rather in the hope of cajoling me into making a few favourable comments which could be woven in with the other blandishments on the dust-jackets of their first editions.
. . . I always try to find something nice to say . . . Even when on one occasion I was sent yet another survey on homosexuality, this time so gross that nothing commendatory could be written about it, I tried to turn my disapproval to account. After all there are many quarters where my disapprobation is considered to be praise.
I once heard someone complain that my critiques of books are less about what I have just read than about myself. . . When working for Mr. Kington of Punch, I do this because he has said that, from any book review, he hopes to learn something about the critic as well as about the work under discussion.
To find out if it was feasible for me to work for such as illustrious magazine, my agent took me to Second Avenue to call on a certain Miss Koenig who rules the paper's book page. She not only found the idea acceptable but allowed me to write almost anything that came into my head and further indulged me by giving an office tea party for me just before I left America.
I also became involved in a curious subdivision of the profession of book reviewing of which until recently I had never heard. Publishers sent me uncorrected proofs of forthcoming books not exactly for criticism but rather in the hope of cajoling me into making a few favourable comments which could be woven in with the other blandishments on the dust-jackets of their first editions.
. . . I always try to find something nice to say . . . Even when on one occasion I was sent yet another survey on homosexuality, this time so gross that nothing commendatory could be written about it, I tried to turn my disapproval to account. After all there are many quarters where my disapprobation is considered to be praise.
I once heard someone complain that my critiques of books are less about what I have just read than about myself. . . When working for Mr. Kington of Punch, I do this because he has said that, from any book review, he hopes to learn something about the critic as well as about the work under discussion.