Gatsby Remains Great, says Levin - No, not that Levin

A short time ago the Globe and Mail's new Books Editor, Jared Bland, took a roundhouse swing at The Great Gatsby, the novel not the new movie from Baz Luhrmann - which may turn out to be the Australian director's Heaven's Gate judging from the reviews I've seen. Anyhow, back to Bland. Among other matters, he deplored Gatsby's flabby phrasing and nebulous imagery, and cited several instances where F. Scott Fitzgerald's prose was fat and fatuous. This, I suppose, he considers insight. Has Bland read anything else Fitzgerald wrote? Tender is the Night? A Diamond as Big as the Ritz? Babylon Revisited? Absolution? In everything he ever put on paper - including his letters to Zelda, his first love Ginevra King, his daughter Scottie, as well as editors and creditors - there is flabby and nebulous phrase-making, but in most cases, certainly in his fiction, it is counterbalanced by some of the most exquisite and compactly written sentences I have ever read or expect to read. Reason enough, then, to read Gatsby and the rest.

That's a point Bob Levin, a Globe editor, makes in his May 10 rebuttal of Bland's assertions.  Good for him. And the fact that his name is Levin adds just so much welcome vinegar to the exchange. We all know, of course, that the Globe dumped long time Books Editor Martin Levin a month or so ago, and sought someone with a "robust constitution" and talents rather like those ad agencies hire. Where this little episode of literary contention may lead is anyone's guess. But it augurs well for the Books Section; one may say - and forgive me because I did resist the urge to crack wise until the last sentence - its future won't be bland.             

Can Jeeves Explain the Disappearing Globe Ad?

I don't believe in extra-terrestrials, worldwide conspiracies, El Dorado or that Hogtown's own Maple Leafs will win the Stanley Cup in my lifetime. And I'm similarly dismissive of coincidences (Sigmund Freud would argue I shouldn't be). So I'm sure that the disappearance of the job ad for a Books Editor at the Globe and Mail that was posted on the Media Job Search Canada website amounts to nothing more than an advertiser's time limit being up.

I can hardly believe that this puny blog of mine would prod the Globe into removing the advertisement, posted January 30th, because I speculated here yesterday about why the paper had dumped Books Editor Martin Levin, and was on the lookout for someone with a "robust metabolism" and who had the sorts of skills more usually found in ad agencies than in the Book Sections of newspapers. I mean, Canada's National Newspaper couldn't be that sensitive to an outsider's comments, could it?                

Levin Out: What Would Plum Say?

The rumour mill had it that Martin Levin was out as Books Editor at the Globe and Mail. The rumour mill was right. The Globe posted a Books Editor job vacancy at the Media Job Search Canada website January 30. Why the paper dumped Levin I don't know. I've never met him,  although he does pass through my neighbourhood occasionally and I've seen him at one or two literary nights here in Hogtown. Perhaps he was more book maven than gladhander. Consider the job specs: The Globe wants someone with a "robust metabolism". Code for getting out and chatting up advertisers at endless industry events? "Creative packaging instincts" and "display-writing chops" are also required. Hmmm. Sounds more like the talents advertising agencies hire.

Perhaps, if you believe David Allan Stein (DAS the  Toronto Star columnist and sometime author? That DAS?) that the Globe is being "run into the ground" by its "dim bulb" publisher - see his post at www.straight.com - then it could be Levin was just too bookish to hold the job any longer. Or, as I like to think, he was just too whimsical for a paper that continues a rightward drift into the waters of incredulity. After all, and to his everlasting credit, Levin is a huge fan of P.G. Wodehouse.