So, Is The White Suit Handed Down To Each New Editor Or Does David Have To Order One Special From Brooks Brothers?

LA Observed reports that David Ulin has been hired to replace Steve Wasserman as the editor of the LA Times Book Review, a mere 11 years after Wasserman left to collect 15% for a living.

Read the memo after the jump and then, yeah, I'll have some stuff about why I feel like it's a good hire and then I'll invariably turn it around until it's all about me...

To: The Staff
From: John Montorio--Deputy Managing Editor
Tim Rutten--Associate Editor

We are delighted to announce that David L. Ulin has been named Book Editor of the Los Angeles Times. His appointment concludes a search that involved an extended and careful consideration of highly qualified candidates from both inside the paper and across the country.

In David, we believe we have found a blend of talent, experience and accomplishment that is tailor-made for this vital assignment. As a literary journalist and critic, his work already is well known to Times readers, but what sets David apart as an editor is a uniquely intimate knowledge of writing from Los Angeles and the West and its place within the wider American and international literary context. The result is a sensibility that is singularly unafraid to appear parochial because it never is provincial.

Obviously, we aren't the only ones to share this view of David's work. In 2002, the Library of America chose him to edit "Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology," which received a California Book Award from the Commonwealth Club of California and was selected by our review as one of that year's Best of the Best. In 2001, City Lights, one of the state's leading independent publishers, chose David to edit "Another City: Writing from Los Angeles," which also was honored as a Best Book by The Times.

David also is the author of "The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes,
Prediction and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith," which was
published last year by Viking and selected as a Best Book of 2004 by the Chicago Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle. That same year, his essay, "The Half-Birthday of the Apocalypse," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. David's work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic Monthly, Newsday and the Nation, as well as on NPR's "All Things Considered." His editing experience includes a three-year stint as book editor of the Los Angeles Reader, and he is currently a contributing editor to the Bloomsbury Review and recently served as nonfiction editor of the Los Angeles Review.

As The Times' Book Editor, David will oversee the Sunday and daily
reviews, as well as assume an expanded role in strengthening coverage of books, publishing and literary news and analysis throughout the paper. He'll continue to write regularly.

David's appointment is another affirmation of The Times' deepening
commitment to providing our readers with book reviews and literary
journalism that continue to expand in volume, scope and quality. Please join us in welcoming and congratulating him as he takes up his new duties in October.

This isn't an all together surprising choice, but I believe it to be the right one. Ulin is a strong writer, a keen reviewer and, for lack of a better term, seems to get it, whatever it might be. And on a personal level, whenever I've been in his acquaintance, which has occurred a number of times over the last several years, I've found him to be nice, which, well, while not on the cutting edge of personal criticism seems like a worthy enough thing from my seat at the table. But beyond general platitudes, I think the one thing that distinguishes Ulin in my mind is that as an author and a reviewer, he knows both sides of the world he covers and that can only help in terms of improving what has been a frequently lackluster (and often downright sodden) form of literary criticism in the Sunday review (though, oddly, not such a problem in the daily reviews that appear in the Calendar).

The subtext of hiring Ulin would seem to indicate a more LA-centric view of books, or at least California-centric, based on his own writing and what he has typically reviewed in the Times, though of course I have no idea if this is true or not. Ulin has done a fine job of championing LA writers in his quarterly look at upcoming books,  which has run in the Calendar for the last few years, and while I don't think the Review should become a spotlight on local authors, tapping into the Southern California zeitgeist in a more cogent fashion than the previous editor does have a certain appeal to this newspaper subscriber.

What I don't expect is that the Review will suddenly become 35 pages of in depth reviews of every book in print -- with each review penned by only the finest critical minds in the world. It will still be 6 or 8 pages long, or whatever it is now and will probably remain that way until advertising dollars allow for something different. My hope then is simple: that those 6 or 8 pages make good use of their space by reviewing books I might want to read, or by reviewing books I might not want to read, but by virtue of the review itself, find myself compelled to purchase. Because at base I'm a big, dumb hominid and I need a little direction and inspiration from a book review (unless it's another review of a Churchill biography...) and anything that keeps me from getting my angry hands on Parade Magazine on Sunday morning would be much, much appreciated.

Comments

[Tanya]

You forgot to mention, and here I'll do you the service, that by reviewing more L.A.-based or California-based authors in the LATBR, the odds increase of your own writing getting reviewed for others to go out and purchase. This is where it's all about the Todmeister. :)