The Danger of the Literary Lament

Dwight Garner is the most prominent book critic at the New York Times which makes him, arguably, the most influential book critic in America. Book coverage has declined drastically as newspapers have shrunk or shuttered altogether, and the Times is one of the very last newspapers to maintain a standalone book review section. It is, as the critic Jan Harayda has argued, a flawed enterprise, and it has lost some of its intellectual heft. Garner, in my view, isn’t to blame; he writes with discernment, and his prose is muscular. I might not always agree with him, but I will read him.