For the big-money book publicity machine to wield its influence on behalf of a novel about the Mexican immigrant experience written by a non-immigrant, non-Mexican author-when books by Mexican and Mexican American writers often struggle to see daylight-is another reminder of what the industry deems valuable. All of which makes Cummins’ fears-stated in the New York Times!-about being “silenced” seem a bit silly. In addition to those reviews, the Times also published an excerpt for some reason. These days it happens only to the most newsworthy or most highly anticipated books-which often happen to be their publishers’ seasonal lead titles, the ones that get the biggest publicity budgets.
Once upon a time, books frequently received reviews from both the daily Times and the Book Review, but that’s much rarer now. I wrestled like a beast with this review, the morals of my taking it on, my complicity in the white gaze.”
Obviously I finished my review long before I knew of Parul’s-anyone who has gone through edits knows the editing timeline-but hers is better and smarter anyway. Groff seemed to agonize over the review in public, eventually tweeting, “I give up. Soon after Groff’s review dropped, it was linked from the Book Review’s Twitter account with a line more complimentary than any that exists in the published review: “ ‘American Dirt’ is one of the most wrenching books I have read in the past few years, with the ferocity and political reach of the best of Theodore Dreiser’s novels.” Groff responded, “Please take this down and post my actual review.” (She added, “ Fucking nightmare.”) The tweet, according to Groff and, later, New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul, had mistakenly been pulled from an earlier draft of the review-one that perhaps started out more positive about American Dirt than it ended up. What’s literary drama without the Gray Lady? The differences between Sehgal’s and Groff’s reviews were noted as soon as the latter published on Sunday.
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