Tea with Wasserman

Current t-shirt: button-down, I'm afraid (went out today).
Current music: Haven't turned it on, yet, but am considering Gillian Welsh.

Had tea today with Steve Wasserman, formerly Book Review editor of the LATimes. Surely old curmudgeon and really refreshing. He's from the old school, where book reviewing means a literary discussion, ala Edmund Wilson, or at least Susan Sontag.

He's doing a new book review section for TruthDigg.com, and of course, I pitched myself. Trying to be helpful, I also suggested an acquaintance of mine, LS, who write for the NYT Book Review. He paused, and said no.

Inside, I jumped. LS publishes regularly for the NYTBR and for a lot of other places, as well.

Wasserman, whom I believe used to wear all white, but does so no longer, said that he found her completely competent, but that the day after reading one of her reviews, he could remember a damned thing she said.

Inside, I went hmm.

I asked him if, after reading something I'd read, he'd ever been able to remember it the next day. Wasserman is nothing if not honest. He paused, thought, and said no.

Inside, I withered a bit. Then went hmm again.

I told him how, in book reviewing, there was subtle pressure not to ever trash anything, or to have edgy conversations. That it felt as though it was no longer the done thing. I mentioned that I'd tried it within memory with the San Francisco Chronicle, over Karen Armstrongs "A Short History of Myth," which was full of a lot of the pro-Goddess bullshit that archaeologists and historians began to give up mid-century, and had gotten my hand slapped. (I'd also tried it dissing Shalom Auslander's first book, which I compared to writing the Torah on toilet paper, then using it, but didn't mention it. In both cases, I'd been taken to task for having unkind opinions.)

Therefore, I tended not to diss things or get edgy. I like my paycheck, you see.

This made him go hmm. Then he said he was angry. I agreed, but what can one do?

So I am going to try to write reviews that Wasserman can remember the next day. Be a bit more edgy. Take some risks. Life is too short to spend it with a mouth full of other people's words.

Love and Hard Tack,
The Red Pooka!