September 26, 2022 Isssue

Marius Kociejowski’s The Serpent Coiled in Naples sounds like the kind of book I might be interested in. I want to thank Claudia Roth Pierpont for bringing it to my attention. But there’s one disappointing aspect of her review. It fails to provide a sufficiently long quotation from the book that would allow me to judge the quality of Kociejowski’s writing for myself. John Updike, in the Foreword to his great Picked-Up Pieces (1976), listed five rules of book reviewing. Number two is “Give enough direct quotation – at least one extended passage – of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.” 

New Yorker book reviewers should always keep in mind that readers like me want to know not only what the book is about, but also how it’s written. James Wood knows this in his bones; he’s a generous quoter. That’s why he’s the magazine’s best reviewer. Too bad his focus is on fiction.