National Review

[Peter Petto]

Admitting first that I have not read *any* of the review, except as
mentioned in John Fazli's posting,

At 06:14 PM 6/24/97 -0500, John Fazli wrote:

>Reviews of M & D hit a new low in the 30 June issue of National Review
>in which one James Gardner (NR "art critic") admits to reading just 50
>pages of the book which he then trashes as "unreadable" and "plotless". 

I suppose I can't argue with calling a reviewer who's only read less than
7% of a book on the claim that it's plotless. But I don't have a problem
with reviewers who don't read the whole book, especially when they admit it
and declare the book unreadable. Would you rather someone read the whole
thing and then claim it's unreadable.

I think it's OK for people to dislike something and go at it tooth and
nail, even if they're dead wrong.

Recently I was really excited to find out that David Kahn had a second
edition of _The Codebreakers_. A lot of reviews soft-peddled the truth with
statements like "mostly old material" or "not much new material." It was a
breath of fresh air to read a review submitted to Amazon.com (brave souls
to leave it up, too) that said: "If you have the first edition, don't
bother with this one. He covers the last 25 years of cryptography with a 17
page addendum. Nothing else has changed." What a breath of fresh air!

I think James Gardner is entitled to dislike Pynchon, and would rather see
him admit how far he got, than read someone like Harvey Pekar gloss over
that fact.

PS - if I run into to Harvey (who I see from time to time but have never
had reason to speak to ) I will certainly needle him for sharing opinions &
attitudes with the National Review crowd.


Peter Petto		|  ppetto at apk.net
Bay Village, OH		|  public key available