GalleyCat senior editor Ron Hogan flew down to Charlottesville, Virginia, last Friday to take part in the 15th annual Festival of the Book, where he led a discussion on the state of the book review with Washington Post columnist Michael Dirda, NPR correspondent Alan Cheuse, novelist and former Salon columnist Louis Bayard, and Bethanne Patrick, host of WETA’s “Author, Author!” and longstanding book blogger.
Because we were busy peppering these four with questions, we didn’t have much time to take notes, but we understand that the whole conversation was recorded for a future podcast. We can tell you that during the question-and-answer period, novelist Susan Gregg Gilmore confronted Cheuse about his review of her debut novel, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, which he described last year as enjoyable, but light; “[it] reads like meringue (when you really want pie),” he said. Well, confronted is probably the wrong word—Gilmore celebrated the positive aspects of Cheuse’s review by offering him a gift-wrapped box with a slice of that lemon meringue pie he’d rhetorically wished for. “He kiddingly asked if I was going to throw it at him,” she blogged a little later. “Truthfully, I was never offended by his comment, only honored that he had started a conversation.”