When we read a review of a book, we simultaneously react to two texts: the article about the book, and the book the article is about. A good reviewer must be aware of this fact.

I am pleased to find a review of Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer by Tim Jeal on the cover of the latest New York Times Book Review, but I quickly find myself repelled by reviewer Paul Theroux’s mushy, overcooked treatment. Theroux certainly can write better than this, and he knows the subject matter well, so I can only guess that this review assignment caught him uninspired. He calls Jeal’s book “magnificent” and tells us that this biography “has many echoes for our own time” (as a book about a 19th Century African explorer certainly should), but that’s as far as Theroux goes in terms of social relevance, and most of the review features limp psychoanalytic summaries like this:

In Livingstone, the fatherless Stanley found a powerful (and idealized) father figure, whose stated mission to explore Africa could be his own. Importantly (and this is one of the many modern dimensions of Jeal’s book) he found a continent where he could transform himself. Africa gave a man who had experimented with multiple identities a name, a face, a notoriety, a mission, problems to solve, and it confirmed his greatness as an explorer.

Echoes for our time? Exactly, because Paul Theroux makes this book sound like a James Frey memoir. We hear nothing at all in this review about the actual confrontation between Euro-American and Central African culture that Stanley spearheaded (no pun intended). But we hear that “Nobody knew who [Stanley] was, and he didn’t want anyone to know” and that he was “shy” and “diffident when pursuing a woman”. I can just imagine Barbara Walters doing the follow-up interview:

“Tell me … what scares Henry Morton Stanley?”

In contrast, let’s look at Pico Iyer’s similarly speculative review of Orhan Pamuk’s new Other Colors: Essays and a Story. Like Paul Theroux, Pico Iyer doesn’t hesitate to guess about his subject’s mental state. But Iyer’s subject is a coy, metaphysical novelist, not a bold African explorer, and Iyer’s multi-layered psychological treatment seems not only appropriate but essential for a consideration of Pamuk’s work. I like this review very much, and I agree with points like this:

His books are, really, celebrations of multiplicity (“My Name is Red” is told in the voice of 19 narrators) which makes them celebrations of unfinishedness; the mysteries they set up are always more delicious than any attempt to solve them.

and this:

What “Other Colors” makes most clear is how seriously committed to playfulness Orhan Pamuk is.

I’m excited to read this book. Getting back to the main point, please note that one of the two reviews discussed above is an ugly mess, while the other is a good brisk read. The difference is in the critic’s ability to find a voice and approach for the review that corresponds to or harmonizes with the voice and approach of the book being reviewed. A soft, kittenish critical voice is just right for Orhan Pamuk, but completely wrong for explorer Henry Morton Stanley. These two examples show this as well as any two ever will.

Like last Sunday’s issue, today’s Book Review is packed with good stuff and I fear I can’t do it all justice. Liesl Schillinger writes elegantly about Anne Enright’s The Gathering (though, based on her description, this review is as close to the book as I’ll ever get). A. O. Scott increases my eagerness to read Junot Diaz’s The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, especially now that I’ve learned the “Oscar Wao” of the title refers to Oscar Wilde. Jeremy McCarter’s brief review of Alan Bennett’s royal fantasia The Uncommon Reader makes me eager to read this book as well.

I was slightly bored with Leah Hager Cohen’s review of Ann Patchett’s Run when it started off like a worshipful puff piece, and then I almost got whiplash when Cohen started pointing out what she doesn’t like about the book, which turns out to be a lot. Finally, I’m not completely down with Stephanie Zacharek’s extended “pants” metaphor in reviewing Irvine Welsh’s new If You Liked School, You’ll Love Work, but when she’s not talking about pants she does a fine job of expressing the excitement a new Irvine Welsh book always seems to bring.

The endpaper space is well-used to reprint Stephen King’s provocative introduction to the newly-released Best American Short Stories of 2007, in which he speaks of the indignity of our current literary scene as represented by wan stacks of literary magazines invariably tucked into the bottom shelves of bookstore racks. He points out that:

What’s not so good is that writers write for whatever audience is left. In too many cases, that audience happens to consist of other writers and would-be writers who are reading the various literary magazines (and the New Yorker, of course, the holy grail of the young fiction writer) not to be entertained but to get an idea of what sells there.

Stephen King speaks the truth.

I see some Phillies fans are poking their heads out of the dirt. I wish them well in the playoffs. Though I won’t be reading the sports sections, so it makes no difference to me.