Jennifer Howard’s Washington Post review of Nell Freudenberger’s Lucky Girls is written with more conviction than any reviews I’ve seen of a very attention-getting book. She’s politely underwhelmed by it–I mean, if you consider this polite:
[Freudenberger] excels at evoking the wistfulness that’s a poetic version of low-grade depression.
But what’s most remarkable about this review is neither Howard’s critical acumen nor the persuasive way she pegs the stories as New Yorker Lite. The real news is here:
Some publishing history: The story “Lucky Girls” first appeared in the New Yorker‘s Summer 2001 “Debut Fiction” issue. This splash earned Freudenberger some nice buzz and the envy of many other twentysomething writers, but that’s another story. Check any of your favorite literary blogs for the details.
In the same week that found the New York Times tech section looking down skeptically at the blogosphere from on high, asking “more fizzle than sizzle?” Howard takes blogs’ existence, and her readers’ familiarity with them, completely for granted. This sounds to me like a new level of absorption into a mainstream cultural discourse whose center is gravitating away from the print media more quickly than many corners of the print media would like to admit.
When I read the above I had two instant reactions: Wow, she and her editors didn’t even feel the need to explain that it’s short for “web log”; and, more tellingly: Hey, no links? Which goes to show not just what my reading habits have become, but why blogs are gaining ground.