Manual Labor of the Mind
An award-winning book critic approaches the great ideas as if they were familiar friends. But it wasn't always that way.
By Ellen E. Heltzel Hi Margo,
Let's talk about winners -- and losers. In the first category, there's Scott McLemee, a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education and someone who has written and reviewed for outlets from Salon to Lingua Franca. A week ago, McLemee <http://www.bookcritics.org/2003Finalists.htm>was announced as the latest recipient of the Balakian Award, given annually for outstanding book criticism by the National Book Critics Circle. As for the losers, well, that could include consumers of mainstream media. Let me explain.
In his present perch, McLemee looks like a guy on top of the erudite worlds of academia and book reviewing. But that's not the story you get looking at <http://www.mclemee.com/id3.html>his website. And, talking to him, you start to see what a pivotal role regional newspapers and general-interest magazines play in this country's intellectual life.
McLemee's roots are small-town Texas and a family whose members never went to college. He himself didn't stick around the ivy halls long enough to earn his bachelor's, but that didn't mean he was turned off by learning. Quite the contrary. As McLemee tells it, his course was set by reading magazines like Time and Newsweek in the high school library. Because of them, he found Susan Sontag, and once he read her work, he decided, "I want to write that stuff, too."
"If you grow up in a family that reads The New York Review of Books, well, fine and good for you," the 40-year-old McLemee says. "But if you grow up in Podunk, Texas, you depend on Time and Newsweek to learn about the world of ideas. The thing that I'm struck with when I pick up those magazines now is that it's just not there. What gets covered, instead, is not even high middle-brow stuff. Only books with massive buzz."
There's a lot of talk about real poverty in this country, which is, no doubt, a serious problem. We also hear a lot about the importance of education, and benchmarks, and No Child Left Behind. But the issue that McLemee raises is one that the Fourth Estate ought to consider. Given McLemee's example, what responsibility does the media have in nourishing the nation's intellectual resources? What role can and should book coverage play in cultivating an interest in serious ideas? How are we contributing to the so-called ladder of opportunity, or has it become a reality that the gifts of mind are reserved for those with either the background or the money to pay a fortune in tuition?
In McLemee's case -- he remembers this clearly -- it was a Time or Newsweek review of Susan Sontag's book, "Against Interpretation and Other Essays," that sent him to her book, and her book that inspired him to become a writer. That, and the collections of Dwight MacDonald and John Leonard's "This Pen for Hire" -- now out of print, McLemee laments -- were the building blocks for a career that started slowly but evolved through persistence and hard work.
"Being a freelancer is the least freelance thing in the world," he says, recalling the six years before he went to work at The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2001. But that rugged period after he quit his job at the Library of Congress to write full-time allowed him to hone his writing skills -- and, he says, his ability to growl into the phone, "Where's my check?" (He credits Newsday editor Laurie Muchnick in particular for believing in him.) Now he's got the perfect job for a writer with his intellectual curiosity: His role at the Chronicle allows him to range widely, from spoofing the Modern Language Association to digging deep into the work of a largely unknown leftist writer of the post-World War II period, L.J.R. James. For McLemee, the most compelling topics are cultural history and political philosophy, weighty subjects he tries to approach without getting lost in the clouds.
"My dad is a craftsman. If you need shelves installed, he can do it," McLemee says. "I do the same thing. John Gregory Dunne called it 'manual labor for the mind, like laying pipe,' and that's how I look at it."
Margo Hammond
Hey Ellen,
I certainly can relate to Scott McLemee's experience. When I was growing up, my hometown of Kenosha, Wisc., didn't have a major bookstore (now, with the city's population at nearly 91,000, there are several new and used book dealers in town). Back in the '50s and '60s, my parents subscribed to The Chicago Tribune, the Milwaukee Journal, and the Kenosha News, and I, too, devoured Time, Newsweek -- and Life -- at my local library. These publications were my lifeline to a wider cultural experience than my blue-collar town afforded me.
Of course, the print media of today has to compete with a lot more distractions, from video games to the Internet. But I wonder in all its rush to appeal to Generation X (or is it Y now?) if mainstream newspapers and magazines are not losing sight of the fact that the single most important contribution they can make to that demographic is to inspire young people to read more. Important not only for this country's intellectual life -- but also for their own economic survival.
Congratulations to McLemee.
Meanwhile, my candidate for winner -- but only just barely -- is Louisa Solano, owner of Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, Mass. The postage-stamp-size poetry-only bookstore, which was founded in 1927, has been a favorite of such illuminaries as e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore — and more recently Robert Creeley, Marie Howe, and Donald Hall. But now it's in deep financial trouble. According to <http://www.publishersweekly.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleId=CA376817&text=grolier+poetry>PW Daily for Booksellers, to save the place, Solano has raided her IRA and used credit cards to pay bills. She hasn't paid herself since September 2002 and her rent hasn't been paid for a month-and-a-half.
In September 2002, The Poetry Society of America sponsored a reading which brought in $5,000. A recent piano recital raised $6,000, and customers have pitched in by placing large orders. But, $3,400 worth of books recently were stolen by a shoplifting ring and Solano is on credit-hold with some publishers. Solano, who can be reached at <mailto:grolierpoetrybookshop at compuserve.com>grolierpoetrybookshop at compuserve.com, is looking for more creative ways to stay alive. She's had offers to buy the place, but doesn't want to sell. Do you get the feeling that poetry in this country is hanging on by a thread?
<http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=59822>