Q: How did you get involved in the New York Times Book Review? (re: Is working for the New York Observer as creepy as it seems?)
A: Sam Tanenhaus asked me to join the Book Review in August 2004, when I was working at the New York Observer, where I covered publishing and New York intellectual life. I loved working at the Observer and wasn't looking to leave, but I knew that a chance to define my own beat at the New York Times Book Review was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as indeed it has proven [to be].
Working at the Observer wasn't creepy, it was fun! Most of the reporters were in their 20s (as was I at the time), and the editor, Peter Kaplan, is a genius. I've always preferred working for small, boutique newspapers where even the most novice reporters can sink their teeth into big stories. The cubicle farms at the big glossies pay better and offer a more professional work environment, but they edit all the life out of your copy and it's extremely hard to rise up the totem pole. At the Observer, my computer ran Windows 95 - nearly a decade after 1995 - but I did some of the best writing of my life there.
Q: What's it like working in the NYTBR?
A: It's great! I love it. My colleagues are terrifically smart and well informed. We have first-rate office banter about books, ideas and world affairs, but also pop culture, New York real estate and sports. In fact, as a total sports ignoramus, I sometimes joke that I've never worked at quite such a sports-obsessed office than at the New York Times Book Review. Our work routine involves editing book reviews - line editing and fact-checking page references - but since I'm a reporter/editor, I also spend a lot of time writing and on the phone reporting. We have our own weekly production cycle and are fairly removed from the Times newsroom.
Q: You just had a great piece on the current state of African literature in the New York Times Magazine. What was Africa like?
A: I'm glad you liked that article. Africa is a vast and incredibly diverse continent, and I wouldn't dare generalize. I spent about two weeks in South Africa, specifically Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg, and in the end wrote a very specific story about the generational differences between two black novelists: Zakes Mda, who's in his late 50s and lives most of the time in Ohio, and Niq Mhlongo, who's in his mid 30s and lives near Soweto. South Africa blew my mind. I had never been to a country so complicated, so full of energy and pathos. Until then, Europe had been my cultural reference point. But Europe is over, its intellectual class engaged with the past. In South Africa, the writers and intellectuals I met were deeply invested in charting a future for their country, one that's both politically stable and morally viable. It's not an easy task. I'd go back in a heartbeat.
Q: We spoke to Sam about originality and the current, somewhat sorry, state of literature in America and we brought up your last article for the New York Times Magazine about African literature, so we were wondering ... What are your thoughts about the current state of literature in Africa and what do you think of its role in the global scene?
A: My official position on today's culture is general bewilderment. I tend to shy away from generalizations, but I think a few things are going on: In America and everywhere else, the novel does not have as central a role in the culture as it did fifty years ago. Technology has ruined our attention spans, celebrity culture has crept into publishing and placed impossible demands on what's called mid-list fiction, which makes it difficult for American novelists - let alone African ones - to find a foothold in the crowded marketplace.
Just as the same films play in multiplexes worldwide, people around the globe are reading the same few books. But on the literary scene, globalization seems to work in one direction: American culture spreads everywhere, but in America we read few books published in Africa or other faraway places. When I was in college in the 90s I was always skeptical about "Post-Colonial studies," finding the whole thing too faddish. Today, I think some of the most exciting and morally complex writing is coming out of Africa and other post-colonial societies.
Q: Do you read any lit blogs? Do you find their praise or criticisms constructive?
A: If I have time - and the main problem with blogs is that they take way too much valuable reading and writing time - I often browse lit blogs to see what people are getting exercised about. I think they're good for literary culture, which thrives on debate, no matter how petty. I turn to blogs like galleycat.com or maudnewton.com to guide me to interesting stories in the world press that I might otherwise have missed. I find some blogs lame and sub-literate, fueled more by spite than insight. Not long ago, one blogger called me an "establishment hack," which I'd like to have printed on my next business cards! Having spent many years working for boutique papers aimed at outsmarting The New York Times, it's bizarre for me to find myself a kind of institutional figure. But I suppose it would be na've of me to deny I'm not. I have become blogger fodder. So be it. Bring it on.
-Michael Orbach
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