Earlier this year, the Washington Post announced a wave of changes, including the end of its books section, Book World. In the wake of the announcement, hundreds gathered at Politics and Prose, a bookstore in D.C., carrying their well-worn Book World tote bags to mourn the loss of a beloved source of literary discourse and criticism.
The announcement has prompted a series of follow-up articles about the state of criticism, including one at LitHub that got us talking here at The Show.
In a piece called “No Stars, or Are We Reviewing Ourselves to Death?”, writer Lucie Britsch pondered a post-critic artistic landscape. Among other things, she wondered if it might usher in an era of increased creative freedom for artists, and encourage readers to make their own choices and develop their own opinions.
To explore those questions and to get a better sense of why the Washington Post Book World mattered to so many readers, The Show sat down with resident book critic Mark Athitakis — who also used to contribute reviews to the Post — and asked what he thought about all this.
He didn’t hold back.
Full conversation
MARK ATHITAKIS: There is no lack of people on the internet who are eager to tell you what they think about what they’ve read, either an Amazon reviews or Goodreads, and those all have their place. And there’s also no lack of high end, thoughtful, essayistic literary writing.
In the London Review of Books, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Harper’s, and so on. Both of those ends of critical discussion are fine. What we’re losing is the middle.
The Washington Post was one of the best representatives I thought of the idea of a newspaper review where people who are not necessarily automatically attuned to reading about or learning about books can still find a way to discover them in a thoughtful way. And that’s what’s disappearing.
SAM DINGMAN: When you were writing for The Post, is that something you had in mind editorially as you were, you know, sitting down to to write your review?
ATHITAKIS: Absolutely. Because I have to assume when I am writing for the Washington Post or any daily newspaper, that anybody reading it needs a little bit of an introduction to who exactly are you talking about.
But I appreciated that because that’s what I grew up on when I grew up reading the Chicago Tribune literary section on every Sunday. And that was my introduction to just this world of books and how people talked about them and argued about them. So it was an idea that it was almost like reading the sports pages that you were, you know, you were keeping up on the latest debates, right?
DINGMAN: It’s coverage as much as it is criticism.
ATHITAKIS: Exactly.
DINGMAN: So another thing that I hear in what you’re saying and tell me if I’m not getting this right, is at a place like the Post or the Chicago Tribune, there’s also perhaps implicitly an invitation into this world. Whereas with those other publications, there’s an assumption that you’re already part of it.
ATHITAKIS: Right? You know, I think there’s a misperception for people who don’t necessarily engage a lot with criticism about what criticism is. And I think that it’s perceived as a thumbs up, thumbs down thing that we are either praising things to the skies or we are damning them, or we’re writing pans.
But I think more often, and I think the people I know and the critic I try to be is somebody who is, yes, rendering a judgment one way or another, but also providing some context. Also just trying to do a little bit of education.
And, you know, for a writer like me, and I think this is true for a lot of people like you, discover what you feel about something as you are going through that process of sitting down and thinking about it. And that’s part of the process that I’ve always really enjoyed.
DINGMAN: Yeah, this book didn’t appear in a vacuum. It is part of a continuum of this author’s life and of the cultural context in which it’s appearing.
ATHITAKIS: Right? You know, sometimes the question is not just how is this book? Is it good or is it bad, but why does it exist in the world? Is it part of a trend line of things where, you know, particular authors from particular places, uh, get privileged attention. Um, and what is maybe missing from that?
I think that’s the other thing too, that as we pare back the outlets for reviews to appear, there’s fewer opportunities for those books that come from independent publishers that, you know, kind of find their way through the cracks. The opportunity to put a spotlight on those books is disappearing as well.
DINGMAN: And I suppose someone might hear you say that and think like, well, that’s the niche that TikTok is filling now, or that, you know, social media outlets are filling where, uh something can kind of capture the algorithmic hive mind. … And come to the fore, even if it doesn’t come from a major imprint or press or something.
But I feel like what you’re describing is something that is being lost where one critic who had a deep relationship with their readers could surface something that they didn’t just personally feel like they were on a mission to, you know, get more people to read, but that they thought because of the interactions they’ve had with their readers would resonate and wasn’t getting, as you were pointing out, you know, maybe comes from a community of people who aren’t getting enough attention, that sort of thing.
ATHITAKIS: Yeah. And I think that’s one of those things that and I think we’re kind of almost a generation past the era where daily newspapers had staff, critics that were writing twice or once a week, and you knew what their tastes were, you knew what they were interested in.
So if they were going to suggest, hey, take a flyer on this thing that’s a little bit out of left field, it might be more encouraging for people to try it.
And what we’ve had in the last generation is a lot of people like, frankly, me, you know, an army of freelancers that may feel undifferentiated to a reader. You know, this Lit Hub essay that we may be talking about is talking about criticism as something that is almost uniformly negative. But I think in the worlds that I’m in, the main complaint is that reviews are too overwhelmingly positive that the real estate is so limited that if you’re going to write about a book, it has to be a rave or it has to be enthusiastic. Otherwise, why are you wasting the space on it?
DINGMAN: Right? One of the other arguments that the essay was making was this idea that by decreasing the influence of I don’t know if she was specifically saying referring to reviewers as gatekeepers, although I know many people do. But by decreasing the influence of critics, perhaps it will usher in this rediscovery for people of the joy of just reading whatever’s on your parents bookshelf, or just going to the movies and watching whatever’s showing that weekend, and kind of deciding for yourself whether you like it or you don’t like it.
And from this experience, which she which she remembers very fondly, one’s taste is forged and that there is a joy in doing that, and that there is an attendant joy for artists in feeling like, I’m going to feel more confident in putting my ideas out there without worrying that I’m then going to have to deal with this onslaught of reviews that may tank pre-sales and whatever.
ATHITAKIS: There’s a lot to be said about that. I think the first thing I would say is that I personally feel no particular urge to leap in front of somebody at a bookstore who’s about to reach for a book that I’m not particularly fond of. I think if you are reading and going through that process of discovery for yourself, that’s all to the good.
And I think it also assumes that, you know, people behave in this very sort of localized way that all I’m going to do is just free-float through discovery of books, and that will be pleasurable to me.
But I imagine that for a lot of people, if you read a book that you’re interested in, if you like it or you are mad at it, one thing that you might want to do is talk to other people about it, or find out what other people have to say about it. and discovering criticism that way.
That’s certainly what happened to me when I was young, when I was trying to puzzle my way through William Faulkner. And, you know, it led me to reading criticism of William Faulkner. So, you know, the internet no doubt toxifies a lot of things. And one thing that it can do is toxify criticism. …
I think people will misbehave in this culture, but I think they’re also still craving those sort of conversations. They’re still interested in sharing. I mean, that’s why you see something like booktok happening because people, you know, want, want to share what they’re excited about. So, you know, it’s not necessarily all bad. And it’s also not the end point of how we have critical discourse.
KJZZ’s The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ’s programming is the audio record.
