[Publib] Catalogers as literary critics

[Stephen Sposato]

Did anyone else spot the amusing ode to catalogers in this week's NY
Times books section? (This is the first paragraph in a review of the
novel Kockroach by Tyler Knox, written by Matt Weiland.)

"Our finest literary critics hold no endowed chairs and never win
prizes, yet their work has the poetry of truth about it and there's
nobody better at answering the fundamental question about any book, a
question always more interesting and always harder to answer than
whether it's any good: what is it really about? I mean, of course, the
anonymous librarians who prepare the Cataloging in Publication data for
the Library of Congress, the brief descriptive classifications that
appear on the copyright page of most books. Is there a more succinct
description of John Updike's "Rabbit, Run" than "Middle class men -
Fiction"? What writer doesn't envy the economy and force of "Massacres -
Fiction" for Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" and "Industrial
accidents - Fiction" for Don DeLillo's "White Noise"? And will there
ever be a finer gloss on Marilynne Robinson's "Housekeeping" than
"Eccentrics and eccentricities - Fiction"?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/books/review/Weiland.t.html

-Steve Sposato
Chicago Public Library