The letters column of yesterday’s NY Times Book Review had a very familiar ring to it, but it took a tip from a reader to pinpoint exactly what was jogging my memory: Dinah Lenney‘s reaction to being reviewed, in which she says that Tara McKelvey‘s description of her memoir, Bigger Than Life, “misrepresent[ed]” the book in ways that, in at least one instance, were “purposefully inaccurate and snide.” McKelvey accuses Lenney of being more interested in herself than her father; Lenney points out that this is how memoirs work. “Is she dismissive of me because my father was wealthy? Disgusted because I had the gall to use his murder as a catalyst to introspection?” Lenney wonders. “Who knows, but contemptuous she is, and condescending to boot, and that’s what’s hard to swallow.”
It’s not the first time McKelvey (left) has gotten under an memoirist’s skin. Back in February, John Dickerson wondered why McKelvey’s capsule review of On Her Trail “suggests I set out to ruin my mother.” A year earlier, Mike Wallace took exception when McKelvey “[reviewed] a book I failed to write.” Nor are the complaints limited to memoirists; biographer Lita-Rose Betcherman skewered McKelvey in early 2006 for getting facts wrong that were “laid out in detail in Chapter 14” of her Court Lady and Country Wife.
Of course, it’s worth keeping in mind that McKelvey’s written a whole bunch of other reviews for the NYTBR during this timeframe that haven’t resulted in angry letters to the editors, at least not ones that they saw fit to print. As such, she’s not as consistent a harbinger of controversy as William Logan, whose every poetry review is good for at least two rounds of squabbling. Still, it’s an interesting pattern to observe as it unfolds.