One Of My Lit Crit Prophecies (Almost) Comes True

Over a year ago, NY Times bookblogger Dwight Garner addressed a reader’s complaint about the lack of romance coverage in the NYT Book Review by asking, “Who is the Lionel Trilling of romance critics? Maybe we should hire that person, whoever he or she is.” Upon seeing that post, I immediately countered with Fordham English professor Mary Bly, who also writes romance novels under the pen name Eloisa James. “I’m just guessing,” I said at the time, “but she’d probably manage to come up with a decent 500-word review or two, if she has the time. I nominate her!”

As I say, that was over a year ago, so I didn’t quite grasp the full significance a few weeks ago when Andy posted an item here about James’s new monthly column for the Barnes & Noble website—it wasn’t until this weekend, looking at a batch of recent romance novels, that I connected all the dots. Taking a second look at James’s debut essay, which is nearly three times longer than I’d predicted it would be, it’s apparent that B&N’s gain is the NYTBR‘s loss, in that she is easily as illuminating a critic of paranormal romance as Terrence Rafferty is when he writes about horror for the Times, or John Hodgman on comic books. Frankly, if the Times had a critic as good as James covering science fiction, people who know that genre might actually take the paper’s coverage of it seriously—maybe they should have another look at the recommendation I made two years ago, before somebody else hires that writer away, too.

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