Sam Tanenhaus, a well-regarded but not widely known writer, has been named to head the New York Times Book Review. The announcement came after a three-month search to succeed Chip McGrath, who announced in the fall he'd be leaving the job to take a writer-at-large role with the New York Times.
Times executive editor Bill Keller told PW that when Tanenhaus first submitted a critique of the book review section in December, it was clear that "he was the guy to beat."
The biggest concern Keller and others on the committee had after reading that critique concerned experience, not ideas. "The question became: 'He writes a great essay but can he make that stuff happen?' Our time since then was spent talking to a lot of people and trying to answer the basic question. Can this guy pull it off? And where all that reporting got us was that he was the standout in quite a crowd of people."
Tanenhaus, said Keller, displayed particular proficiency at matching reviewer to book along with other skills that further "reassured us this guy was quite impressive and could hold his own against anyone." Keller added that Tanenhaus "has a tremendous amount of energy, which in a small operation is a lot of the battle." In both a conversation with PW and in a memo to staff, Keller cited Tanenhaus's past experience at the Times (he was an op-ed editor for about a year and a half).
The new editor will take over April 1 and will be putting aside his writing for Vanity Fair as well as temporarily suspending his long-running project, a William F. Buckley biography for Random House, which was scheduled for 2005.
The selection may have surprised even Tanenhaus, according to editor Bob Loomis, for whom he was writing the Buckley biography. Loomis said he had gotten the feeling from Tanenhaus that, with so many seasoned book and publishing people in the mix, "they wouldn't go so far afield."
Loomis expressed serious admiration for his author. "He's so smart, energetic and well-read. I think it will be beneficial for all of us," said Loomis, who also edited Tanenhaus's NBA-nominated Whittaker Chambers biography. He described Tanenhaus, who has written about a number of conservative figures, as "a conservative with a liberal's heart." Loomis said that while he had no firsthand knowledge of his author's discussions with the Times, his take on how Tanenhaus might implement a new vision is one of moderation. "The Times is not a radical publication. It's innovative, but it's not going to take someone who is a revolutionary, and I don't think Sam underneath is really that way."
While Keller did not describe specific changes, he said that Tanenhaus "inherits a pretty fine structure and a group of editors who are eager to try new stuff," despite some recent rumblings in the industry that the entrenched staff might make change at the book review difficult.
Keller also continued to emphasize timeliness and relevance, in both fiction and nonfiction, for the Times Book Review. "I think [Tanenhaus] can bring a bit of a news sensibility to the reviewing of fiction," said Keller. "By that I don't just mean that he'll get excited by a book that is a new discovery, but that the Review will write about fiction in a way that ties into the modern world. People who write fiction don't live in seclusion from the world."
Keller emphasized Tanenhaus's news sensibility, but also wrote in the memo, "To anyone who might have fallen for the notion that we were looking to dumb down this precious franchise: take that," adding to PW, "To those who are obsessed with these things, I think this gives some idea that we're not going to lower the I.Q."
