The regular and responsible gig

“The book critic with a desire to form himself in the older tradition,” John W. Aldridge said half a century ago, is faced “with a choice between occasional reviewing and even more occasional quarterly publication, but if he wishes to concern himself frequently and at length with contempo­rary work, to discharge in full his responsibilities to new writers and publications, neither will afford him the space he needs.”

How much has changed! Whether critics and writers realize it, this is one possible function of the book blog. For the first time—I mean the first time in literary history—critics have the means at their disposal to concern themselves “fre­quently and at length with contemporary work”: to provide a running total of “new writers and publications.” For the first time, the book critic can accept a regular gig that, like the movie critic at a weekly magazine, allows him to keep up. If he has long coveted such a gig he has now the opportunity to assign it to himself. Motivated neither by whimsy nor program, but by a sense of responsibility to contemporary writing, he might produce a first draft of literary history in the form, not yet widely recognized in the literary world, of the book blog.