On Poynter.org the Book Babes take Daniel Mendelsohn of the New York Review of Books to task. What for? His "Backlash" article on Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones.

Their point is the oft-made one that whenever a book becomes a popular success, there is reflexive backlash which seems to come less from a standpoint of honest critical evaluation and more from a glee in taking to task mass tastes. They also air the notion that first novels, in particular, should not be subjected to the potentially career-damaging ire of demanding review; the idea, with which I have some sympathy, is that it is too easy to blight a young writer's career by condemning the faults of early work -- far better to focus on the strengths of good early novels, let the less accomplished books alone, and only really take on writers in a challenging way after they've established themselves.

I have some sympathy with both ideas. Certainly it's easy to sneer at a book or a film that catches the popular imagination -- such things often do so because they're "easy" and critics as a rule don't like books (particularly) that are easy. This can pretty obviously collapse into a prejudice for a certain kind of "high" literary style, and any writer who earns popularity without providing something of a intellectual challenge for the critic risks being dismissed as shallow. But there is great writing which is simple in style, and popular, and writing which is praiseworthy which does not meditate on lofty ideas, but simply tells a hell of a compelling story (which, I would say, is the strength of Lovely Bones, at least in the first half of the book).

The second notion is more fraught, but it's still valid; my friend Gary has suggested that, in an era where reading is an increasingly uncommon pastime, and the relentless consolidation of the publishing industry makes breaking in as a writer a brutal and unforgiving challenge, reviewers (particularly of early work) have something like an ethical duty to do more than dispense negative judgements. If a book lacks something, the critic should indicate a writer or book which excels in it. And by the same logic, the beginning novelist should be handled with care -- it's too easy for a potentially great career to be cut off because of the impatience of a seen-it-all reviewer with the first novel's likely weaknesses.

And so these Book Babes (a particularly bad name for a column, I think) are p'o'd at Mendelsohn for his lengthy dissection of a book that made one of 'em cry. But I think this is neither a case of predictable "backlash" nor a shameful drubbing of an untried young contender. In his lucid and considerate piece, Mendelsohn makes not just one very good point about the problems with Lovely Bones, but more like sixteen of them. He spots the way it turns aside from the very subject (pain, grief, loss) it purports to explore, and very responsibly works through the problems he has with the emotional response it demands from the reader without providing much in the way of thought, or, in the end, consistency or wholeness in character or action. He's lucid, convincing, and not at all pulling a Dale Peck or anything like that.

Now, I disagree with some of Mendelsohn's argument (his September 11 thesis strikes me as off), and think that the story works well enough for the first hundred pages or so (thought it falls apart completely at the end, and there's lots of overworked images and undercooked fantasy along the way). I get that it speaks to a lot of people, regardless of its infelicities, and I'd have been the last to suggest that Sebold shouldn't be encouraged -- the idea of the book alone is pretty compelling, and worthy of interest and praise. But this book has been "the publishing event of the year." Not only can it (and we) withstand a little scrutiny about its problems and the question of why people find it so affecting, but, indeed, it would be the height of critical dishonesty to avoid taking on a book just because a lot of people find it uplifting.

Margo Hammond writes, "Book critics gripe about the publishing houses neglecting good literature and then we punish them when they promote, god forbid, a new author." Fer cryin' out loud! If she thinks a negative judgement expressed by the New York Review of Books over six months after the book in question has sold 2.1 million+ copies is going to in any way effect how publishers see the success of that kind of first novel, she has not merely rocks in her head, but particularly stupid rocks.