Pearl River I swear I don’t have a chip on my shoulder, but I can’t be sure. It’s more a kind of a love-hate relationship. I read the New York Times daily when it shows up on the front stoop. I read it on-line when on the road, and then go page-by-page, when I hit home base or catch up to the paper copies.
I’ve got issues with the Times. Recently, I questioned their reporting emphasis on small nonprofits and their mistakes, rather than mammoth operations and their more extensive problems. Their role in pushing and fabricating issues in national politics, based on their allocation of space and articles, shows profound bias sometimes. Again, I couldn’t help commenting on their smart aleck way of dealing with former Senator and vice-and-presidential candidate John Edwards.
I am often confounded when I compare the paper editions to the online displays and offerings at what they choose to promote or overlook. For example, I believe I am more likely to find articles about labor in print and not online, which is a marketing decision about its readership profiles more than what is news. I think they pander on arts, theater, style, food, and the like even as they skinny the paper and cut the news hole down. For me, that doesn’t square with “all the news that’s fit to print,” because most of it is not news, just sizzle without steak. Don’t misunderstand me, I scour the Times. I don’t find the Journal, the Post, the Guardian, or others any better. I just have come to depend on them all, and trust none of them.
All of this brings me to their recent trumpeting of the “100 Best Books of the 21st Century.” I read it online weeks ago, and received it in print the Sunday before the US Labor Day. It’s a bold claim to say such a list really is the best of the best, but that’s just typical of Times’ arrogance and marketing. I found the list interesting, because it alerted me to some books and authors that I wanted to check out, had overlooked, or passed over. But, the more I looked at the list, the more I felt the deck was stacked. There was an overwhelming bias toward fiction, and prejudice against nonfiction. By my amateur count, it was an 80-20 split, which is a bad whipping when you reckon that year to year, there was only an average of one “best” nonfiction, while four fictions came on board. Fair is fair, the introduction to the list acknowledges in a blithe and breezy, gee-whiz style, this imbalance, claiming it is 2 to 1 on their count. The difference between one-third and one-fifth leaves me scratching my head, but doesn’t distract me from my point.
How did this happen? The Times claims this distills “the opinion of more than 500 novelists, nonfiction writers, librarians, poets, booksellers, editors, critics, journalists and other readers polled by the Book Review….” Of course, we don’t know the distribution.
The industry claims that fiction has outsold nonfiction over the last two years. Kindle claims that fiction on their platform bests nonfiction 30 or 40 to one. BookScan says fiction sales are rising to 40%, but through November of last year more nonfiction sold almost 90 million more in print than fiction and that’s 75% of the market by some measures.
You can see where I’m going. I suspect that there were some fingers on the scale. The Times introduction writer whined about not enough poetry books making the list, which was his personal preference, but had no thoughts on the drubbing of nonfiction. I think s/he was OK with that.
So, are these really the 100 best books of the 21st century? Who knows? Under any circumstances, this is a Times effort at clickbait for its readers. Publishers and booksellers were no doubt happy to add volumes to their inventory if they made the list. This is still really about business, not quality.
The “voters” on this survey are random and undisclosed, even as their preferences are clear. My old high school Latin teacher, the esteemed Dr. Romeo, would repeat daily the phrase, “de gustibus non disputandum est,” which he translated as “about taste there is no agreement.” Google claims now sixty years too late for me, that it should be “about taste there is no argument.” Six of one, half-dozen of the other. There is no agreement here, and the Times will assert there’s no argument, their way or the highway, but once again, why not have a little accountability and make an effort to make sure there’s something a bit more real when making a case for the “best,” like 50 nonfiction and 50 fictions, and so on.
A friend caught me this spring when of the 100-odd books that I had read, none were fiction. I had read about a quarter of the Times “best” list, including some of the fiction, but at least I’ll admit my bias.