THE PRACTICAL WRITER Reviewers & Critics
Maureen Corrigan of NPR’s Fresh Air.
ONE of the familiar voices readers have grown accustomed to hearing on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross belongs to Maureen Corrigan, who has been the book critic for the show for the past thirty years. But Fresh Air is just one of the outlets through which Corrigan has been sharing sharp, smart literary criticism for decades. She has also been a book review columnist for the Washington Post Book World since 1990, and her essays and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Village Voice, the New York Times, the Nation, the New York Observer, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and elsewhere. Corrigan is also the author of So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures (Little, Brown, 2014) and Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books (Random House, 2005). In 1999 she won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Criticism, and on March 14 she will be awarded the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle.
Corrigan was born and raised in Queens, New York, and went to college at Fordham University in the Bronx. She earned her MA and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. While in graduate school she taught English at Penn, as well as at Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College. In 1989 she began teaching at Georgetown University, where she is currently the Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism.
Reviewing for radio is a different beast than reviewing for print—are there any particular advantages or challenges to the radio format?
Radio is about storytelling. I’m always conscious that I’ve got to catch the attention of my listeners as they’re driving, making dinner, walking the dog. I try to begin with an anecdote from the book I’m reviewing or a telling comment that will make people pay attention. (Mine was one of the early reviews of Amy Chua’s blockbuster, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. I began with a stark judgment to stoke listeners’ curiosity about this author and her book that most hadn’t heard of yet. I said, “Amy Chua may well be nuts.”) My review of Greg Grandin’s great 2014 nonfiction book,
The Empire of Necessity, which is about the real-life slave revolt that inspired Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, began with a description of the boarding of the ship, which the slaves had taken over:
Shortly after sunrise, on the morning of Feb. 20, 1805, sailors on an American ship called the Perseverance, anchored near an uninhabited island off the coast of Chile, spied a weird vessel drifting into view. It flew no flag and its threadbare sails were slack. The captain of the Perseverance, a man named Amasa Delano, decided to come to the aid of the ship, whose name, painted in faded white letters along its bow, was the Tryal.
If I had begun that review by talking about the connection to Benito Cereno, I would have lost listeners who’ve never read the Melville story. By beginning with an eerie anecdote, I’m hoping to draw listeners in and prompt them to go on to read both the Melville and Grandin accounts.
I also think there’s a lot to be said for short reviews, which radio reviews necessarily are. My reviews average about four minutes, which is a surprisingly long time to listen, uninterrupted. Too many reviews that I read in print or online are puffed out with plot summary. No one wants to hear the plot of the book. People want to hear why the book may or may not be worth reading. The images and scenes I describe from the novels and nonfiction I review for Fresh Air help answer that crucial question: Why is this book worth my time? Or not.
Does reviewing with a radio audience in mind alter the way in which you typically approach a book, or in your process of reading or taking notes?
I read and take notes the same way, whether I’m reviewing for Fresh Air or for the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal, where I also contribute reviews. I read with a legal pad and Post-it notes at the ready. When I finish a book, I use a neon-colored magic marker to circle the best quotes and most important notes about my responses to the book so that they stand out as I’m writing my review. It’s lowtech, but it works for me.
Your taste in literature is admirably wide and varied—from mysteries to high-end literary fiction and nonfiction to the social sciences and well beyond. How do you decide which book to review in any given week? Other than your interest in a particular author, what sorts of things, if any, influence you in your decision-making process— relationships with editors and publicists, starred pre-pub reviews, big-name blurbs, large advances, social media buzz within the literary community?
I try not to know editors, publicists, authors, and people in the publishing world. I don’t go to book parties or publishing events; I’ve only attended BEA the years my own books have come out. I stay home and read, which is what I most like to do.
I receive at least twenty e-mails a day from publicists pitching books. I pay attention to a few publicists whose track record is good (i.e., they e-mail me only when they seem genuinely excited about a book and they obviously listen to Fresh Air). I don’t read reviews of books I’m interested in until after my own review has been written. Blurbs are iffy. Some folks blurb all the time, so their words of praise on the back of a book don’t mean much. Other folks are more selective, so I’ll pay attention to those blurbs. I also check in with trusted sources at my local independent bookstore, and I pay attention to Publishers Weekly and the other pre-pub sites online. And my producer, Phyllis, often will make recommendations for books I may want to check out.
I am aware of the “hotly anticipated books,” and I do check many of them out. I also try to follow the work of writers I’ve admired in the past to see what they’re up to. I’m always on the lookout for something—whether it
be fiction, nonfiction, or other—that seems freshly thought-out; something that seems to be written from a writer’s deepest and most authentic place.
I usually give a book fifty pages; if there’s not something about that book that grabs me—voice especially, situation, language, plot—I’ll probably put it aside and pick up something else on my list or something unexpected that’s arrived on my porch.
Where do you stand on the value of negative reviews?
I’m a critic, not a publicist. It’s ludicrous to think that the state of literature is so fragile that it can’t withstand negative reviews—while film, restaurants, television, and music are able to hardily shrug them off. I think negative reviews, especially of books by well-known authors, are an important contribution to the conversation about art and ideas. The only instance in which I would decide not to write a negative review after reading a book is in the case of an unknown first-time novelist or nonfiction writer. No one knows the book anyway, and the only reason to review that book would be to recommend it to potential readers.
If a writer has a solid reputation and if the book is well publicized, so that our listeners are going to be curious about the book, I will go ahead and write a negative review. I also write negative reviews when I feel that an author is getting lazy, relying on the same devices, or insulting the reader. See my review of Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth; I’ve had it with him.
Which book critics, past or present, do you particularly admire?
I admire so many of the women Michelle Dean wrote about last year in her terrific book, Sharp—Dorothy Parker, Susan Sontag, Janet Malcolm, Mary McCarthy. I’ll read anything by James Wolcott, Walter Kirn, and William Deresiewicz—I wish they were writing more criticism. I also pay attention to Rebecca Mead, Parul Sehgal, Laura Miller, Walton Muyumba, and Dwight Garner, which doesn’t mean I always agree with them, but they make me think.