Published 1 October 20091 October 2009 · Main Posts Reviewing in an age of change Jeff Sparrow Another cheery story about the emerging literary landscape. Columbia English professor James Shapiro’s undergraduate seminar, “The Book Review,” which teaches skills necessary for students to make it as freelance literary critics, is on indefinite hiatus. “There are intellectual reasons to teach the course again,” Professor Shapiro wrote in an email, when the Transom asked if a rumor that he’d discontinued the class was true. “But what’s no longer there is the possibility of training a generation of book reviewers, since, as you know, newspapers around the country are shedding their book reviews, or shrinking these sections.” He added that because so many reviewers are now blogging, freelancers are having a harder time than ever earning anything substantial from their work. “It’s depressing—in large part because I see a lot of talent pass through my classrooms, and little opportunity for those talented students to have the opportunity early on … to review and get paid for it.” In some respects, Shapiro’s is a funny kind of argument. You could make the same case against creative writing. Why teach poetry given that most students will never have the opportunity to get paid for their verse? Still, that’s not really the point. People don’t think about the infrastructure of literature but without a public reviewing culture literary fiction simply won’t function in the same way. Yes, we’ll still have books but literature will no longer perform the same social role, as an art form publicly discussed and debated. Next year, Overland and Meanjin are running a yearlong joint project entitled ‘Reading in an Age of Change’: a series of essays and events examining the massive challenges facing literary culture today. The state of reviewing is part of that. Jeff Sparrow Jeff Sparrow is a Walkley Award-winning writer, broadcaster and former editor of Overland. More by Jeff Sparrow › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 28 March 20249 April 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. 5 March 2024 · Main Posts Andrew Charlton’s school assignment Alex McKinnon Australia's Pivot to India exists for three reasons: so that when Andrew Charlton is interviewed on the radio or introduced on Q+A, his bio includes the phrase "he has written a book about Indian-Australian relations"; to fend off accusations that he is another Kristina Keneally engaging in electoral colonialism in western Sydney; and to help the Albanese government strengthen economic and military ties with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.