And in addition to hiring good literary folk, Granta‘s online initiatives are pretty cool, including the new series highlighting important contemporary poets, which includes from Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska.

He looks to the quality of the fiction shortlist for the National Book Award, pointing out that this year’s list is littered with international interests and backgrounds. Such as Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project (misspelled earlier because of Frankfurt—it’s always Frankfurt), Rachel Kushner’s Telex from Cuba, and Salvatore Scibona’s Halldor Laxness-influenced novel The End.

All that’s fine, good, and true, but maybe John has it flipped. It’s not that the NBA shortlist is a snapshot of American literature as a whole, demonstrating the general international flavor of our authors, but that the best American works, the ones deserving of the NBA, are the ones written by authors steeped in other cultures, literatures, and backgrounds . . .

National Public Radio has expanded the book coverage on its website, adding weekly book reviews, and has hired six new book reviewers—including a graphic novel reviewer—and added more features to an already existing lineup of author podcasts, critics’ lists and other book-focused content. Among the new slate of reviewers joining NPR.org are Jessa Crispin, founder of the literary blog Bookslut.com; John Freeman, book critic and a former president of the National Book Critics Circle; and Laurel Maury, freelance comics and graphic novel reviewer and a longtime contributor to PW Comics Week. (via )

Freeman, Jessa Crispin, Laurel Maury, and Lizzie Skurnick!! Sorry for the over-excitement, but holy shit—NPR actually went and hired three very smart, very discerning reviewers. I’m generally suspicious (and dismissive) of NPR’s just-to-the-left-of-center mediocrity, but in my opinion this is a huge coup that will add a lot to NPR’s website.

I know NPR is the sacred cow of liberal thinkers, but broadly speaking, its book coverage has always been pretty sub-par. I know people love Terry Gross (in my opinion, books are totally incidental to Fresh Air—what’s more important is the personality and backstory of the artist. Of course, Curtis White has put this in much more eloquent terms than I ever could), and Alan Cheuse tends to review odd, interesting books, but that’s about it. At least in my opinion.

This new initiative changes the game though. First off, assuming NPR doesn’t force these reviewers to write about the typical over-promoted drek (or force them to write in a NPRish style where every review begins, “yesterday, my daughter said something about Mexicans. Which got me thinking about racism in today’s world. So I picked up XXX’s book . . .” Sorry—it’s just so easy), the target audience age is going to drop by about a decade.

In terms of the greater cultural impact though, it’s very interesting that NPR is stepping up to fill in some of the void left by the decline in newspaper book coverage. Sort of a natural evolution though, since for a lot of people, Morning Edition has replaced the morning newspaper as the primary source for news. And with rumors constantly circulating about soon to be dismantled book review sections, its great to see someone step up and help fill in the developing void . . (A similar thing is going on with Bill Marx’s at PRI’s The World. PRI’s The World has OK books coverage on the actual show, but nothing even close to what Bill Marx is doing. There aren’t many places in general doing what Bill Marx is doing for international literature. Especially not on public radio.)

Of course, the RSS fee for the NPR books section is still a bit f’d up and finding these pages isn’t all that easy, but you know, it’ll get better, I’m sure.

In terms of links, here’s the general , here’s the section, the feature, and the section which currently features podcasts of readings at Politics & Prose, and supposedly will expand to readings at McNally Robinson in the near future.

Both the article and the interview are worth checking out, and although bloggers will inevitably attack John Freeman for some of his questions, I found the stuff about reviews on the internet to be quite interesting.

Q: It seems if anything, one of the largest impacts the web might have on reviewing is the pushing forward of an even more subjective model of reviewing (with blogs, etc). I suppose you could argue that any review which pretends toward objective is telling you a lie. Still, what do you think the impact of this will be on literary conversation?

A: Good writing (which is to say, good thinking) will always triumph over bad writing (which is to say, bad thinking). The problem here is the technical ease with which the web dignifies shoddy thought by presenting it in a way that aesthetically (justified margins, graceful fonts, pleasing format) confers an unwarranted gravitas upon even the most coarse and supercilious of opinions. Thus, the web permits a thousand flowers to blossom as well as a thousand stinking roses. In the end, however, content rules.

America has always had one of the lowest literacy rates in the western world. The former book review editor of the LA Times, Steve Wasserman put it bluntly. “Reading has always been a minority taste in America,” he said, “and that’s OK.” But I think what we’re seeing now is something new which has to do with how a culture operates when all values become subservient to that of making money – when reading is not supported either from on top and from below.

I like Freeman’s take—and the aggressive way he points out the flaws in the overall system.

At the same time, the industries which support reading have been ground up and fed through the increasing corporatisation of American life. Book publishers and newspapers have been bought up by giant conglomerates. Publishers, once mildly profitable, have been forced to keep up with blockbuster driven media; newspapers, once wildly profitable, have been used as cash cows. And now that the media companies are done with these newspapers, those same owners are cutting back on all forms of news, including book pages.

This is something I completely agree with. To go a bit further, the rush for sales, for money, for readers, is, in my opinion, resulting in the production of a lot of craptastic books. Books I’m happy no one is reading. Great literature is out there, but you have to wade through mountains of shit to find it, and if people who don’t read a lot get caught up in the shit, I can’t imagine why they’d want to continue spending their time reading. TV is way more entertaining. . .

OK, I’ll get off my soapbox and let Freeman point out some of the good things going on:

In fairness, some attempts are being made to counteract these trends. The National Endowment of the Arts has started up a program called The Big Read, which turns entire cities into book clubs. Online sites and journals like The Complete Review and the new and improved Bookforum have started up to counteract the loss of book coverage in the media. On television, shows like the Colbert Report and the Daily Show dedicate half of their entire program to conversation with an author. And Dave Eggers has turned his McSweeney’s journal into an empire of generosity, starting up drop-in tutoring centers like 826 NYC and 826 Seattle. Visit one of these and it’s hard to doubt the lure of reading and writing.