Narcissistic Drivel

Every Friday I receive the New York Times book reviews electronically.

 

I like good book reviews, and the New York Times Best Sellers List is legendary.  And they do review history books with good reviews that have caused me to occasionally buy the book.

Now, by a "good review", I should note that I mean a review such as the ones that The New Republic used to feature.  Those reviews were so in depth that by the time you read them, you could tell whether or not you'd like the book, irrespective of whether or not TNR did.  They were great.

And while the Times reviews don't measure up to the old TNR standard, the history ones are good.

The Wall Street Journal's are better, however.

Anyhow, that's why I get the emailed NYT book reviews.

But most of the reviews aren't on history books.  Most are on novels and autobiographies by people you've never heard of.  And there's come to be a singular feature associated with them.

The Times reviews, and likes, a lot of books that are pure narcissistic drivel.

There are piles and piles of books written by people who vomit forth their supposed revelations on their upbringing and how it hindered them in self awareness until they shed all that and became depressed, self focused,  hypernarcissitic adults.

Well grow up, and bull.

Indeed, this seems to be a New York Times things.  The New York Times has basically become the school journal for the self important 8th grader who shares his manufactured angst every day in Social Studies because he's pretty convinced that he knows more than anything.

Well, it seems to be a byproduct of our very wealthy and very secure age.  In spite of what we think, we have more, and are threatened by less, than ever before.

And as a species, it seems, we're engineered to worry, so a certain section of the well educated upper class that doesn't have much to worry about, and which has lost touch with everything real, is busy making up imaginary ancestral, cultural and familial ghosts to worry about.

Well, worry about the fake if you must.  But do you have to write about it?

And who actually buys these books?  Probably only members of this same class living in the same general American locations.

Of course, not all of this is new.  The dirty little truth of American literature is that there are entire lists of authors who are only read as English teachers and professors like them.  Nobody would read Sylvia Plath, J. D. Salinger, or Earnest Hemingway if they could possibly avoid it, and they'd all now be long forgotten but for reading assignments.

This isn't to say that there aren't classic authors of the past who are worth reading, indeed who demand reading. There are.

It just doesn't mean that somebody sitting around moping while doing well is really worth reading.