My weekend subscription to the New York Times is an outlier in what is a staid and predictable week by week routine. Mining the weekend Books section for words, phrases and advertisements (and sometimes books) can consume hours, or, as the unread Book Review sections pile up in the attic, hours of longing glances. Today's experience disappointed. At the same time that NYT has raised prices for the weekend edition, the content volume has declined. And yes, the quantity of advertising inserts -- usually so voluminous that it's necessary to open the (unrecycleable?) bag-wrapped newspaper over the recycle bin, typified perhaps by glossy Epson, Canon or Nikon brochures along with color Best Buy and Target promotions --has also decreased.
In a certain way of thinking, this fate puts pressure on the remaining content to raise to a higher quality. Call it a less-must-be-more squeeze. This hasn't directly affected the Book Review section, but, perhaps coincidentally, the Book Review section is also weaker today. The advertisements seemed more compelling (see ads for Eva Hoffman's Apassionata, P. Miller's Human Landscapes, and, it must be admitted, one most likely to summon a tongue-lashing from Garrison Keeler, an ad for the Sewanee Writers' Conference).
The week's most memorable review, by the way, is by Robert Pinsky's take on Elmore Leonard's Road Dogs, though it did not tempt me to commit reading the book. Here's my weekend ore:
◦Having characters think about fine details of speech before engaging in sex or violence isn't merely a prank or indulgence. In a story about trust and betray, the hper-intense attention to nuances of dialogue not only fits: it's a matter of survival.
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