Book Babes

Ellen,

Thanks for sending on Gene Lyons' piece about Beverly Lowry's huge blooper in her book review of Susan McDougal's "The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk." I'm amazed that Lyons' serious accusation about Lowry's mistake has received so little attention.
   
All errors, of course, cannot be avoided. You and I have made our own mistakes in reviews (or at least I have). A Washington Post reviewer once had the wrong side winning the French and Indian war. When newspapers print errors, they should admit it. The New York Times promptly did correct Lowry's mistaken assertion that McDougal had been convicted of obstruction of justice and criminal intent in its Sunday Corrections column on 2A. The Times admitted that  the reviewer "misstated the crimes of which (McDougal) was convicted in connection with the failed real estate scheme known as Whitewater."  But, Lyons isn't just pointing out a brain fart in a review. He is accusing Lowry of a far greater crime. "Yo, Beverly. Next time, read the damn book,"  he advises her, adding, "Assuming minimal competence, Lowry simply could not have done so.''

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Lyons contends that Lowry would never have made that mistake if she had read through to McDougal's climactic ending describing her acquittal on those charges. If that's true -- and Lyons makes a good case for it -- it certainly is disturbing in its larger implications. It's bad enough to have Michael Kinsley hint that he didn't read all the books he was supposed to read for National Book Award consideration. Are we really letting reviewers get away with pronouncing on books they haven't fully read? But perhaps a more important question is this: Do book review sections operate so far out of mainstream news concerns, that no one -- except maybe Joe Conason at Salon.com, who devoted a column to all the errors in Lowry's review -- even notices? Lyons and Conason, authors of "The Hunting of a President: The Ten Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton," may have their own agenda on this subject, but the concerns they raise strike me as important ones to air.  


Hi Margo,

Ellen Heltzel

Just got off the phone with Gene Lyons, and I got an earful. Lyons told me his background is in academia, and he found his journalistic footing via book reviewing, including reviews for The New York Times. As he puts it, reviewing "makes a good entree into the craft." And why's that? Because it's considered such a sideline event.  Which brings us to Lowry and The Times' huge blooper, and why it's been so ignored. 

The assigning editor, even at the country's most important newspaper, faces too many books and not enough time. He or she relies on free-lance critics of varying skill who either have an ax to grind or don't know enough about the topic (the latter being the case with Lowry). There's no fact checking. 

Low staffing means there are no redundancies built into a book section to prevent these kinds of mistakes, and low regard means it's not so surprising when they occur.

All these problems are known to one degree or another newsroom-wide, but in arts coverage they strain credibility (for the readers, if not those who write about these subjects).

And yet: Readers rely on book reviews as consumer advice. Basic accuracy  was the standard to which Lyons held the reviewer of the McDougal book, and she failed the test. What seems amazing is that a review about such a sensitive topic as Whitewater would scoot through the system without someone shepherding it more closely -- checking the clips or asking a national editor to take a look before it went to press. And one more thing: the Big Hair issue. With his front-row seat on the Whitewater affair, Lyons says he spent years trying to decide whether McDougal was a crook or just a fool. It didn't take nearly that long for big-city journalists to decide, which explains the condescending attitude that permeates Lowry's review. Lowry reflects the prevailing opinion among the educated elites that Susan McDougal, like Paula Jones, adds juice but no substance to a tawdry story.
  
Regarding why no one seems to be noticing the blooper, Lyons, a free-lance contributor to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, considers this chicken feed (he's from Arkansas, after all) compared to the standards now accepted in big-league journalism. Ambition tends to trump facts. "Journalists at the so-called highest level don't correct themselves and never criticize each other," he says.

Hey Ellen,

Margo Hammond

My take on Lowry's review of the McDougal book is that it's a much more charming piece than Lyons' attack of it would suggest. Lowry's identification with McDougal as a fellow "girl child from the Deep South" does at first seem hokey and beside the point (and, yes, a bit condescending), but Lowry makes a good case for her Freudian analysis of the woman whom she calls a "daddy's girl from Camden, Ark."  By connecting with McDougal as a fellow southerner, I actually thought Lowry gave us some insight into McDougal's character.

Lowry obviously approached this book as a personal autobiography, which is what it is, not as a political book, which it also is. She largely succeeds with the former -- although I do think she's wrong to say that if an autobiographer slants her story to fit her own purposes, the enterprise is doomed. How can any autobiography by definition be anything but slanted?

As for the political nature of the book, unfortunately, Lowry  seems not at all interested -- and not interested enough in getting the facts straight. But, no question, the editors of The New York Times should have been more alert on both counts. How did an editor let this sentence go by: "In the end, of course, Starr came up with pretty much of nothing, beyond a felony conviction for McDougal on charges of obstruction of justice and criminal contempt."  In my state, at least, a felony is pretty much of something.