Commentary

Pages

Darting through the aisles of Barnes & Noble the other day, it dawned on me that gaggles of publications exist for people who love music, showbiz, theater, television, and just about anything else that can vaguely be considered an artistic medium - except mass-market literature. Sure, there are plenty of artsy-fartsy literary journals for which the intellectual price of admission is the ability to complete the first chapter of "Ulysses" without losing consciousness. But lovers of books that bear the dreaded "mainstream" tag have comparatively few places to look for a magazine quick fix.

Clearly there's an entertaining, practical publication to be crafted for those readers; Pages, however, ain't it. Alternately prosaic and cloying, the mag reads as if book publicists oversaw its production. Few of the stories venture into criticism more severe than "the story entertains, but it fails to impress," and nearly every feature seems designed to encourage marketing types to excerpt the mag's rapturous praise on the covers of paperback editions.

To wit: apparently James Frey writes "short, punchy sentences that threaten to break the confines of the page"; I have no idea what that means, but it sure sounds impressive. And in the editor's letter, where one might ordinarily expect high-minded critical thought, John Hogan waxes blurbily over "the fantastic John Irving," who has just written a novel that "resonates with meaning, for both the writer and the reader." If you're thinking The New York Times Book Review after a particularly thorough lobotomy, you're not too far off the mark.

Where Pages seems to struggle most is in its clear aspiration to offer something more than a rote set of book reviews. To this end, the magazine's July/August issue offers "In the Club" (suggestions for book clubs), "Promising Debuts" (quick featurettes on newbie scribes), and single-page sections devoted to mystery, sci-fi/fantasy, romance, and inspirational tomes. The problem? Each section offers little beyond glorified reviews. The main stories present more of the same half-feature, half-review dawdling... and then, when we turn to page 111, we're met with a 20-point "Reviews" header and seven more pages of punchless reviews. No mas! No mas!

When the publication tries to get a little creative, as it does in "In the Club" and on the two pages devoted to film adaptations of current novels, it falls hard on its face. The former's suggestion that book clubs might hold their meetings outdoors doesn't exactly inspire cries of "eureka!," while the latter doesn't do much besides rehash news reports aired long ago in the trades.

If Pages looked snappy, maybe the mag's, um, "uniformity of content" wouldn't feel so numbing. But the publication sticks to a safe, blocky design, with most of its editorial offerings occupying two pages and few of them illustrated with anything beyond a simple head shot. The one departure is a colorful calendar that lists author birthdays and other literary events, notable if only because I had no idea there were so many writers' get-togethers: 20 in July alone. Silly me, spending all my time with friends and family, rather than devoting my precious free hours to honing my craft.

When I finished perusing Pages, I attempted to find evidence that maybe it wasn't a legit magazine after all - maybe it was affiliated with a book-of-the-month club or something like that. My investigation, however, turned up nothing too incriminating. The mag's publisher, Creation Integrated Media, is a subsidiary of Advanced Marketing Services Inc., which offers "customized services" to book retailers and publishers; however, the company clearly identifies Pages as a consumer publication. I also unearthed a partnership with the National Center for Family Literacy, which describes itself as "an innovative non-profit organization dedicated to improving literacy levels through the design and advancement of family literacy programs."

Hey, I'm on board with that, man. So here's hoping that the group doesn't represent Pages to its minions as anything more than what it is: a lazy, obvious primer. Save your time and check out Entertainment Weekly's bulked-up books coverage, which offers more substance and pluck in a prettier package.

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