In its long and distinguished history, The New Republic is again about to break new groun: the first four fold table in a book review. (I am feeling the same pangs of achievement as when I invented the "illustrated footnote" while writing a history of American political cartoons.)
The purpose of the following table is to establish some distinctions for reviewing a novel that is not by Saul Bellow and does not pretend to be.
Since the four categories of writers have employed the same genre, some reviewers like to lump them together, obviously to the calculated detriment of the Popular and the Amateur. Thus the reviews cues the reader that he has "standards". He knows the meritorious from the meretricious. If the Amateur is exceptionally skillful (as is Safire), the reviewer can report his "surprise" and still maintain membership of the guild.
The lumping can produce some uneasiness among readers, who do not make the same mistake of equating mysteries with metaphysics. It also produces some unhappiness among writers. The Serious Professional bemoans that he is not popular, i.e., that his books do not make money. The Popular Professional bemoans that he is not taken seriously, i.e. that his books do not receive critical acclaim.
Sometimes, of course, the Serious Professional does make money, often when he sells himself rather thatn his product, viz, Norman Mailer. Sometimes the Popular Professional is taken seriously, usually after he is dead, viz, Dickens and Dostoyevsky.
In general, however, the system works to reward the good Professional who strives to be Popular with the coins of the popular, money, and the good professional who strives to be Serious with the coin of the serious, states (measures in honorary degrees, a festschritt, and the admiration of Benington students.)
The Amateur, on the other hand, is responding to a different drummer. Being a novelist is not what is he trained for, not how he spends most of his time, nor how he would describe himself. If he is a Serious Amateur, his design may be to "educate’ (B.F. Skinner, Leo Szilard); he chooses the form as a way of reaching a mass audience. If he is a Popular Amateur, he simply wants to tell a tale, and sometimes to cash in on notoriety acquires elsewhere (Spiro agnew). He often knows something—presidential politics of iontrigue in academia of aviation—that he think he can explain most usefully in fiction. He is usually a one-book noelist, though not always (Disraeli, C.P. Snow).
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