Artifex - Block Notes - Market, barons and mafia

Contents

Market, barons and mafia, by Lucio Lami

Davos, 15 - 16 - 17 June 2001.
A photographic memory: the annual meeting of the Swiss Ex Libris Club, by Giancarlo Nicoli.

Reviews.
All Consuming Images, by Stuart Ewen - review by Giancarlo Nicoli

Special feature
Memoirs of a Commodity Fetishist
Milestone Essay for Mass Communication & Society, by Stuart Ewen

The Media Monopoly, by Ben H. Bagdikian - review by Giancarlo Nicoli

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From the editor.

Dear reader,
this is the third issue of "Block Notes" (I stick to the Italian version numeration).

I'm very happy to have an article by Lucio Lami, well known journalist, war reporter, newspapers' editor, here writing as vice-president of the Italian P.E.N. Club.
This article is one of a series, started by the Italian P.E.N Club, regarding the so-called "death of the review".
On this subject, we try our best...

I'm also particularly proud about a contribution by Professor Stuart Ewen. From the USA, he knows very well the world of mass media and wrote many books on their influence on the public.

With kind regards,
Giancarlo Nicoli

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Market, barons and mafia, by Lucio Lami

Taken from “Scritture”, bulletin of the “Pen Club Italiano” nr° 4, May 2001. Under permission from the author.
The 2001 May issue of “Scritture”, bulletin of the “Pen Club Italiano”, was entirely dedicated to the so-called “Death of the review”. We asked Lucio Lami, vice-president of the “Pen Club Italiano”, to reproduce his contribution.

Different causes gave rise to the death of the review.

I personally identified at least seven.

1) - The cultural lowering of newspapers. Culture doesn’t make audience, ergo decipiatur. Newspapers disown the pedagogical input and, in the manner of television, adapt themselves to the tastes of the mass, considered as audience rating. Public doesn’t read much, even less a culture column, so it would be better - it is said - a six line report . Moreover, among those who read less, there are the editors responsible for culture, only beaten by foreign correspondents.

2) - The baronies of critics. Critics read only books written by the authors belonging to their entourage or those expressly advised by publishers, who are also the newspapers’ owners, for whom critics write or publish their books. Years characterised by mental laziness, justified by the fact that newspapers exercise their power over the spaces dedicated to reviews. This is the same phenomenon as the university career one: barons and protégés. Furthermore, newspapers often allow critics, who write after reading only the jacket flat, to review. But the reviewed authors realised it at once. For example, concerning one of my books about Isbuscenskij’s charge (1943), a well-known reviewer, praising me, wrote that he was able to realize I took part in it (when I was seven!).

3) - Do ut des. With certain exceptions, the review is considered as a favour you have to do to your friends. Friends only for their advantage, for political reasons or editorial brotherhood. Dozens of excellent books a year pass unnoticed because they are published by less well-known publishers and writers. I received hundreds of reviews, but the percentage decreased as soon as I stopped publishing the cultural page of my newspaper, exactly when they thought I wasn’t able “to return”. (“I sent my book to you, see if it’s possible to have it reviewed”).

4) - Overproduction. It’s difficult to disentangle when a publishing house produces too much, and newspapers are slow, always in arrears with the reports. In general a review, if there is one, is written when books have already been taken away from bookshops. So the review decreases in value. Moreover, after reviewing all the books owing to certain pressures from the top, it remains a great disproportion between the book production and the space devoted to reviews. Notice that spaces are managed by the editorial which commissions the reviews, using a method different from judgement and critical selection.

5) - The crisis of press offices. In the publishing houses even the most important, a press agent is responsible for a coming book for few hours, the following day there is a new book or more than one. This phenomenon (the lack of personnel responsible for informing the newspapers) comes from the declared conviction of publishers that “the review is useless to increase the sales”. The press office renounced to explain the quality of a new book to a reviewer. It is up to the author to press his friends, and the success in obtaining some space is always a business between the writer-reviewer and the writer-reviewer. In this way you can read excellent reviews for poor books . A review dies also for this reason: excess of corporatism.

6) - Politics. For many years a mistaken spirit of political corporatism prevented the reviews from reaching an acceptable level of independence. I remember what Rosellina Balbi, senior editor responsible for culture of “Repubblica” (a daily newspaper), told me one day. Not only will Montanelli’s books never be reviewed by my newspaper but neither read. The culture of review can’t have those restrictions otherwise public loses his interest. A book can’t be condemned “per se” as I read in “Borghese” (a weekly magazine) one time.

7) - Television. Publishers, after decreeing that the review doesn’t increase sales, discovered that television can obtain the opposite effect. So the position of reviewers was occupied by this of that second-rate television journalist who is looking for authors-characters, willing to play a part in his theatre. The unlucky authors replied. The following step taken by publishers was to commission books directly to comic actors in television. With excellent results of sale, comparable to those of comic politicians.

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