Last week, while bemoaning the miserable quality of the NYTBR sci-fi column, I issued a heartfelt plea for another contribution from Terrence Rafferty, who had been appointed earlier in 2006 as the Review’s go-to man for horror fiction. Well, my wish was granted (sorta) over the weekend, as Rafferty reviewed Hannibal Rising, in which Thomas Harris squeezes yet more story (and profit) out of his most famous literary creation, Hannibal Lecter. It’s a fine enough review, by all means, but by noting “the character’s utter impossibility, his pure does-not-occur-in-nature absurdity,” I wonder if Rafferty is bringing a necessarily unique perspective to his subject.
See, for example, the novel’s other NYT review, where Janet Maslin damns the “hairball of a story” as a “final (please!) effort to cash in on a once-fine franchise that fell from grace.” Or Anthony Lane‘s New Yorker review, observing that if what happens to Hannibal in this book were at all plausible, “then anyone who witnessed or endured savagery in the Second World War would be doomed to revisit its terrors on the peacetime world. Half of Europe, even now, would be dining off the other half.”
It’s true that Rafferty goes out, ever so tentatively, on a critical limb here by offering the book more grudging respect than either Maslin or Lane. But is that enough to truly justify this review, especially given the recent declaration from Review editor Sam Tanenhaus that “we don’t review a book because it’s already a bestseller,” or in this case an entirely expected bestseller? Part of what made the first installment of Rafferty’s horror column such a welcome addition to the Review was the genuine effort he put into moving beyond the obvious to find books and writers you probably hadn’t heard about if you didn’t read horror already. I’m looking forward to seeing him do that again in a few months…as I said before, this was fine as far as it goes, I’d just like a little more of it.
And, yes, I know other online critics have complained because they don’t think Tanenhaus gives popular fiction enough space. I don’t buy that argument; to me, the problem isn’t the quantity of coverage the Review has given major commercial successes, but the too-often condescending quality of that coverage—here, too, Rafferty has proven a breath of fresh air. Especially given, as Lane amply demonstrates, how easy it is to fire off zingers at this particular novel.