Ken Auletta joined the ranks of authors disagreeing publicly with book reviewers, criticizing novelist Nicholson Baker’s NY Times review of his new book. Above, mediabistro.com published a MediaBeat interview with the author last week.
Here’s an excerpt from Auletta’s letter to the editor: “I know I should be grateful that he described my book ‘Googled’ (Nov. 29) as ‘engrossing,’ but I would have liked it better if he had not, as he wrote, ‘read the book in three huge gulps and learned a lot.’ Maybe if he had slowed down a bit, he would not have misreported its content.”
Baker responded with a short statement and an unexpected metaphor: “Auletta wrote a thought-provoking book, and I recorded several thoughts provoked. It’s a book review, not a bouillon cube.”