LitMinds Blog and Interviews

Jerome Weeks, former Book Critic for the Dallas Morning news, has recently recast himself a la "mock journalist" Stephen Colbert on a blog he launched late last year: book/daddy

We thought he had an interesting perspective to share on the state of the newspaper business and making a transition to the web.  LitMinds asked him about his writing life as "a newspaperman turned blogger" and his  budding aspiration to land a spot on cable TV.

1. The name of your weblog on ArtsJournal, book/daddy, is perhaps a bit unexpectedly cheeky.  Can you share the inspiration for this name?

It was a gang nickname I picked up while doing a stretch for armed robbery.

Actually, our DSL service switched from Comcast to Time-Warner -- that was the armed robbbery -- leaving us with that common, rather irritating task these days: devising a new e-mail address. By this time, all the good ones are usually taken; at least, all the good ones that are memorable variants on the name Weeks. It was my wife, Sara, who came up with "book/daddy."

As explained on the site, the name puns on both hip-hop and blues slang:  "mack daddy" -- meaning a top pimp -- and "bone daddy" -- meaning an erection. It's all very swaggering and phallic, which is probably why Sara thought it was hilarious for me. Just think of it as the male equivalent to Bookslut or Bookbitch.

But what about "LitMinds"? Surely someone has pointed out the implication that all your members are merrily sloshed?  [LitMinds Editor's note: Yes, it is a third meaning that does occasionally apply.]

2. You were the book columnist at The Dallas Morning News for 10 years. Your departure from DaMN resulted in some public outcry, in particular about the newspaper's decision to not run your farewell column, which was ultimately published on the National Book Critics' Circle blog, Critical Mass.  What message did you hope to convey in your final column?  How did you feel about the public's response to your departure?

I was very fortunate in the attention my leaving The Dallas Morning News received. To be asked to write for Artsjournal.com, which has thousands of arts administrator and journalist types reading it, and to have my departure covered in Publishers Weekly and protested by Pat Schroeder of the Association of American Publishers: Most first-time bloggers aren't greeted with such fireworks.

With the column, I hoped to convey the pleasures and frustrations of a book critic's job and of working at the News -- and to do this without rancor or sucking-up to the head office, while still slipping in a little of why I was leaving. Because of the newspaper's proposed cutbacks, because of the downward direction cultural coverage is headed at the paper, there was no way my position would remain the same. I'd be book critic, book editor, second-string theater critic, third-string movie critic and probably have to pitch in stocking the salad bar. Not a prescription for quality work. And these cutbacks were coming after years of thoroughly demoralizing changes -- the management flailings that every newspaper seems to be enjoying these days.

In short, the head office lost faith in what we do as cultural journalists, so we gave up any hope in their leadership: Nearly half the arts writers and editors left. Before we left, though, the departing writers were told we could pen a farewell column. But it would have to be approved. The past decade, the office atmosphere at the DaMN hadn't been as uptight as it was for years before, following hallowed tradition. As ad revenue skidded and the paper underwent a circulation scandal, though, it got rather Bush administration-like: unpleasant and beleaguered.

So I was pretty certain the column would never appear in the paper, no matter how restrained or modest it was. When Critical Mass kindly ran it after I left, the column got a tremendous response. And several bitter outbursts -- people saying I was gutless for not sticking it to the News, that sort of thing. Other readers did pick up on my ploy, though: If even this gentle farewell couldn't get in the paper, just how godawful paranoid is this place?

In an e-mail exchange months later, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the marvelous Nigerian novelist, mentioned that she thought it was perfect. Very gratifying, that was.

3. You have voiced support for the "big-city newspapers" and what they do.  In this increasingly crowded world of media, can you highlight the unique benefits of a big-city newspaper?  What publications do you feel emulate these qualities?

I've often been told by happy webheads that the internet is replacing the daily newspaper and is better at the job, anyway. Supplanting the newspaper, yes, replacing it, no. When it comes to cultural discussion, the internet is heading down two paths, more or less. One path includes all the solo sites or user collectives: the blogs, the YouTubes, the Wikis, etc. The other path is the corporate website, which is primarily a marketing engine. These needn't be the Sony-Viacom-Time-Warner mega-sites themselves, even much smaller outlets are essentially extensions of promotion campaigns. The method for mass-marketing media products these days is to flood the cultural outlets: The new movie or reality show or video game seems to be everywhere, including the internet. It's the giant, pop-culture version of the water-cooler chat: Gee, this must be important, everyone's talking about it.

Nowhere do I see on the internet something of a 'middle way' that does what the big-city paper does: Provide a reasonably competent level of cultural discussion, a discussion that takes the measure of local arts efforts but also puts them in the context of national and even international scenes, does this across the spectrum of the arts, does it all in one place, does it for a general reader, does it at relatively low-cost for that reader, does it with paid professionals who stick around a city for awhile, gain a feel for its history, become part of its cultural make-up. All of this is especially crucial for the live arts (theater, music, dance) and what I call the slow-impact arts (museums, books) -- arts that do not come with sizable ad budgets, high-speed delivery systems and the billion-dollar conglomerates that run them.

Artsjournal.com, for instance, is a terrific site, a must-read for most arts journalists. But it has no commitment to covering the arts in, say, Philadelphia or Miami. That's not what it does. On the other hand, if you're in Philly, it's easy enough to find a blogger who posts about the art museums and galleries there. If you go to her website, though, she's not likely to have an equally knowledgeable critic on local theater. Or classical music. Or local TV. You have to hunt and find those elsewhere, and how reliable and knowledgeable and convenient are they? You have to assemble what a daily newspaper used to do as a basic practice. And the critics still aren't paid. Good, consistent content costs.

This doesn't mean individual bloggers aren't tremendous critics or fine reporting services. I check GalleyCat for publishing news almost every day, and I read Scott McLemee (blog and weekly column)  and to humble myself with how little I remember about literary theory. But the only sites that offer all of what I detail above tend to be newspaper websites -- unfortunately so, because newspaper websites, on the whole, are dreadful, they're particularly dreadful when it comes to accessing or promoting their arts sections and the arts sections -- here we are, back with my departure -- are precisely what newspapers have been gutting lately. Driving away serious, educated, affluent readers must be a major goal of their business plan.

I'm not saying the internet can't eventually provide this kind of service. But if LitMinds' readers know of a website that does all that I've described, I'd like to hear about it. Otherwise, for the most part, what we have for thoughtful, local, cultural discussion in most American cities nowadays is, on the one hand, fragmented and narrow-focused no matter how intelligent or passionate (blogs) while, on the other hand, it's increasingly non-existent (PBS, NPR, commercial TV and radio, disappearing daily art sections, alternative weeklies that mostly cover the club scene and city magazines that cover restaurants and society celebs). This is pretty wretched.

4. When you started book/daddy you spoke of your desire to "return to the original motivating pleasures. To a level of discourse, lively inquiry and irreverent humor."  Do you feel that you have accomplished  this in your shift from newspaper columnist to blogger?  What have you discovered during these first months in a new medium and position?

It's not entirely what I expected. Because I'm not getting paid to blog, so the least I thought it could be is fun. Which it is. People think blogging is liberating (gonna be honest at last, gonna let it rip) or it's imprisoning (gotta feed the beast every day). It can be both those things, but that's not what's signally different about it. Blogging tends toward a brief, punchy, conversational style. And although that is fun, ultimately it's not nourishing, it's not the kind of writing I thought I'd also be doing: more involved essays or interviews, the kind of ruminating pieces that our increasingly pop-culture-obsessed, anti-intellectual newspapers and magazines are abandoning.

But those essays are hard work and, recalling Dr. Johnson's remark about blockheads, I like to get paid for hard work. Meanwhile, it's so much easier to find some news item to quip about. Partly, it's me -- I've realized that some of my better writing at the newspaper was done because I had to. For instance, I really don't care about Oprah. I don't despise her or think her influence on literature is entirely pernicious. Some of her picks have been fine. It's just that she really has little effect on my experience of literature, what literature does, what it means, how I think about it. In 20 years, people will wonder what all this was about. People already have to be reminded who James Frey is. But because there was such a tsuris over Oprah and Frey, the News wanted me to comment, comment on it now. Yet it wound up being one of the smarter things I wrote at the News. Multiply that by several dozen books over the years that I didn't want to read but had to, and you get the idea.

One accidental solution for this dilemma has been to break up a big essay topic into smaller chunks, keep returning to the issue in new posts -- as I did with literary thrillers, for instance. But for the most part these days, when I start reading something, and I don't like it, I stop. Why bother? I don't have to finish it. I pick up something I do want to read instead. Delightfully, this return to "original motivating pleasures" has led to a small orgy of fiction reading. Newspaper editors incline heavily toward non-fiction, especially political books -- they want to Ponder the Great Issues of the Day. But if all you do is tout the novels you love, you become boring; you're not thinking, you're a sales pitch.

So sometimes, what Ishmael Reed said is right: Writing is fighting. Sometimes, anyway. I just need to find a way to be irked into writing. It's a Zen marraige I seek: love on one side, aggravation on the other.

5. You are a member of the National Book Critics Circle, which gives awards every year for books in fiction, general nonfiction, biography/autobiography, poetry, and criticism.  Can you explain the process for selecting the book finalists and winners for these highly regarded awards?

There's this big lottery wheel in the secret NBCC casino that we spin.

Actually, there's little mystery to it. The board of directors splits into committees for the different fields (biography, fiction, poetry, etc). All members, whether on the board or not, can send in their own suggestions. If a book is nominated by 20 percent of the members who write in, it's automatically a finalist. Each of the committees then pick the other finalists. When they meet for the third and last time, they thrash out a winner (more info here).

I have profound objections to awards, but the NBCC's choices have generally been worth it, giving attention to books that merit it, certainly sharper, more challenging choices, on average, than what the Pulitzers or National Book Awards have given us. Eleven years ago, the late Gina Berriault won the fiction prize for her story collection, "Women in Their Beds." Although admired by critics, her work never got much ink. Or book sales. At the award ceremony, this intelligent, mature woman broke down crying. Other than grants or fellowships, it was the first major book award she'd ever won.

A moment like that makes up for a lot of crap that goes with awards.

6. In a previous interview, you shared an idea for a book-oriented television show.  Can you explain this project and what has happened with it recently?  How has this project helped you to consider reaching new audiences about the pleasures of books and reading?

It's "in development." Which, of course, is Hollywoodspeak for it's "in a dumpster." I had a very enjoyable lunch with an agent, discussing the idea, and that's it. But he did pay for lunch.

The inspiration came partly from frustration over the less than zero that commercial radio and cable TV do with arts and literature in America -- compared to European media. You can target educated, affluent viewers, but once channels like A&E and Bravo get bought by bigger media companies, they start aiming for the same wide, illiterate, American Idol audience everyone else does. You could probably make money with such a book show, but for the media guys, it'll never be enough money.

It is true that literature does not lend itself to video -- for obvious reasons. Particularly novels. What are you going to shoot? The most common solution -- Oprah does it, even PBS' American Masters and American Experience do it -- is making the author the story and not the book. As Yeats said, "All knowledge is biography." I don't think he was happy with that idea, though.

But what if the show were something of a tongue-in-cheek arts show? A spoof Charlie Rose show that managed to talk about arts and literature without being ponderous? I was watching Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, and he was interviewing some author, and the last time I'd seen him, he was interviewing another author. Many of the guests Stewart and Colbert have are authors -- a fact the New York Times figured out many months later.

So that became my model. Why not remove some of the politics (not all of it, of course), make it about both fiction and nonfiction and the arts, but keep the humor? You know, Studio 360 but with better gag writers?  Literature does not always have to be treated as a  BookTV snoozefest. Books and wit and rewarding journalism are not incompatible it would seem. Canadian TV has Open Book, an amusing show with an actual comic actress, Mary Walsh, as host to a weekly ad hoc book club. Sort of Bill Maher but with guests who've done the required reading.

OK, so perhaps books and humor and American media are incompatible. Because I don't live in Manhattan or LA and I don't lunch regularly at the Four Seasons with the big media dogs, no one's paying attention. I may have to try shooting a no-budget prototype with a webcam or something.

Great. More unpaid work.

But fun, right?