"Not one of them'll be missed. . . "

Why the Death of the NYT book review online is GOOD for literature

via James Russell Ament

Technically, from what I've read, it isn't really a "death"  nonsubscribers to the NYT can still get up to 20 articles a month gratis, after which access would be blocked.  But the points made in the articles are at least interesting discussion starters.

Lovely supporting quotation with which I could not agree more:

If we believe that literary taste in America today is debased--weighted toward the transitory and derivative, rather than original advances in writing--then the Times bears its share of responsibility for propagating the collective delusion: for example, that Philip Roth is a writer worthy of the Nobel Prize, or that Jonathan Franzen is a writer in the league of Balzac.

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