101 Reasons to Stop Writing

New York — Reports have emerged that a ‘cabal’ of literary and film critics held a secret meeting in early 2002 to discuss ‘enhanced review techniques’ and other new initiatives, to combat the escalating threat of inferior film and literature, at home and abroad.

The conference room at the Best Western Apalachin, where the meeting allegedly took place – Photo by Gracey Stinson / Morguefile

Sources for The New Republic, which broke the story in this week’s issue, claim that the meeting was attended by many of America’s most highly-regarded critics and editors, including David Ulin, Editor of the LA Times Book Review, Sam Tanenhaus, Editor of the New York Times Book Review; and heavyweight reviewers and columnists including Michiko Kakutani, Christopher Hitchins, Roger Ebert and Joe Morgenstern. All have denied that any such meeting took place, but NYTBR editor Tanenhaus was quoted as saying, "the critical community in this country needs the authority to do what ever is necessary to prevent the proliferation of these fictions of mass dumbification."

The agenda for the meeting, it is claimed, was to discuss how far a reviewer could go in criticising a novel, film or purportedly-nonfiction work, to set limits on the use of ebullient language, and to devise a strategy for relocating the reviews of marginal or fringe books to so-called ‘black sites’ where they are unlikely to attract attention, such has the Weehawken Gazette and Operational Risk & Compliance Magazine. As a result of the meeting, critics at major newspapers allegedly must write at least seven negative reviews for every positive, with a maximum of three clichéd phrases per review, and no mystery, romance, science fiction, fantasy, horror, or young adult novels may be favorably reviewed unless the author has recently received a literary award previously won by William Faulkner.

"For decades, critics have been negotiating with authors and publishers, irresponsibly using and inventing twenty-point words like ‘corsucating’ and ‘unputdownable’ to describe books that definitely do not coruscate, and are easily put down," said NYT critic Janet Maslin. "The platitudinous hyperbole of our critical verbiage is typically transcended only by the conspicuous mediocrity of the literary subject. This softly-softly approach has reduced the ability of reviews to negatively impact sales, and has only emboldened the authorists. We need to strike preemptively, exposing their plots and taking out their deus ex machinas before they can hit our shelves."

According to the unnamed sources, most of the meeting was devoted to a detailed discussion of harsher criticisms reviewers would be permitted to use. These allegedly included a much broader definition of sarcasm, direct comparisions to the works of James Patterson or Uwe Boll, a new procedure called ‘waterbacking’, and for the first time, the literal use of vitriol.

The most controversial suggestion to emerge from the meeting is a plan for the entire publishing process be overseen by a new government agency, the Publication Safety Administration. Under the plan, every book would be carefully inspected by PSA agents at galley checkpoints, and books that failed to meet undisclosed criteria would be placed on a "no buy" list.

– Stephen Jayson Harris covers the White House on issues of print security and counter-publication for Fox News 2: Liberal Agenda channel. He was nominated for a Pulitzer for his investigation into Vice President Dick Cheney’s high-school poetry.