Book report.(The Straggler)(literary criticism)(Column)

I NOTE from my work logs that in 2003 I published 17 book reviews; a total of over 30,000 words (there are a couple of long literary divagations in there), with gross remuneration--I mean, not augmented for the value of the free books--of $5,860. That is an average fee of 20 cents a word, though spread across a range from 11 to 42 cents a word, depending on the periodical commissioning the review. It is, as Cockneys say, not a bad little earner.

As a book reviewer, however, I am not my own best friend. I take the whole business much too seriously, actually reading a book all the way through--this is by no means a universal practice in book-reviewing circles--and then, if the subject matter has some moment, or catches my interest in some way, or if I believe myself inadequately informed about it, reading a couple more books for background before forming my thoughts. This reduces my hourly remuneration to something below that paid to illegal-immigrant fruit-pickers. I console myself with the thought that I am wiser, or at least more knowledgable, for the effort, and that knowledge has no price.

Currently, for example, I am reviewing Volume Two of Roy Foster's biography of W. B. Yeats for another magazine. Since I had not read Volume One at the time of accepting the commission, I thought I had better, so I did. That raised my total page-count commitment to over 1,400. I then realized I didn't know the poems half as well as I had thought I did, so there was another 435 pages--which should really count as 870, since a page of poetry requires twice as much attention as a page of prose. I have also done some heavy browsing in Douglas Archibald's Yeats, Donald Torchiana's W. B. Yeats and Georgian Ireland, and William O'Donnell's breezy but excellent The Poetry of William Butler Yeats. Oh, and I am trying to set up an interview with Maureen Murphy of Hofstra, the only academic-class Yeats expert within easy geographical range. Fruit-picker? My hourly rate for this review is probably going to be down below that of the crossing-sweeper in Bleak House, not adjusted for inflation.

Why on earth do I bother? Mostly it is just vanity and greed, the normal human motivations for doing anything. I am aware of secondary forces, though, both lower and higher in moral standing.

Chief among the lower is the vituperative urge. Every book reviewer's dream is to get a thoroughly bad book for review, a real stinker, and to comprehensively trash it, and get the review published. This very high level of spiritual fulfilment is not often vouchsafed to humble drudges like the Straggler. Most periodicals will not publish negative reviews by anyone not an accredited academic or a literary celebrity.

It occasionally happens, though. NATIONAL REVIEW, bless their hearts, once let me loose on one of Tim Pat Coogan's books. Coogan writes about recent Irish history. He is much read by the fiercer kind of Irish American, but ...