In this week's review of the New York Times Book Review, Intern Alexis discovers the joy of avuncular old men, the pain of old literary feuds, and muses on why, God, why the book review lacks many actual reviews. (Instead, the staff recommends Nickel and Dimed. Better late than never?) Because the review portion of the review is so sparse, there's room for Op-Ed columnist Frank Rich's spawn, Nathaniel, to tackle liberal white hypocrisy — he did, after all, learn about it at Dalton.

Where Shall I Wander and Selected Prose
 By John Ashbery
Reviewed by Charles McGrath

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McGrath writes that Ashbery, now, at 77, seems almost avuncular, the grand old man of American poetry Ah, if by avuncular (aka uncle-like) you mean like Uncle Creepo, well, sure. Check out this photo at right, in which Ashbery looks like he s getting ready to eat a small toddler for lunch.

But we were rolling along, digging the flow of Ashbery s block-rockin beats and McGrath s elegant prose, when we got to this part: Some of the poems from his 1962 collection, The Tennis Court Oath, were so dense and allusive, and so full of wild leaps and jarring discontinuities, that they should have come with a surgeon general s warning. [beat] Reading them gives you a headache. Bazzaam! This is the type of joke Uncle Joey used to make on Full House. Now, cut it out, McGrath! Seriously.

Letters to the Editor

Breaking! Breaking! Gawker readers more clever than Times readers! Hellooo Monica Ward of West Haven, CT, didn t you read Gawker a month ago? Back then, a reader pointed out It s hilarious that [NY Times writer] Julia Reed, et. al, review this book w/o mentioning one of the biggest reasons French women are thin: they smoke like chimneys. Ah, nicotine, the appetite suppressant of the tres chic.

Guess not! She writes, Julia Reed s review stresses the Gallic and ignores the Gauloise as factors in Frenchwoman s thinness it is disconcerting to be seated next to a slim, elegant, beautifully groomed Frenchwoman in a theater, say, or restaurant and be overpowered by the acrid odor of stale cigarette tobacco American women don t smoke. Yeah, smoking joke has been made already. Get some new material.

Oh, and the NYTBR tries to milk all it can out of the dying AJ Jacobs/Joe Queenan tiff as it displays two letters from conflicting supporters of the two men s mag writers/literary foes. Priscilla Kawakami of Salt Lake City writes, Joe Queenan s review of Jacobs s book remains one of the best reviews published by the Times in recent years. Okay, enough already. This is getting boring and that is just not true. Next literary feud please.

Essay: The Joy of Federalism
 By Franklin Foer
Roundtable: Left Behind

After reading Franklin Foer s Joy of Federalism essay and the hot threesome action that was Michael Tomasky, Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Peter Beinart s roundtable discussion on the fate of the American left, we were all, Where are we? Feeling a bit like a stranger in our own home, we wondered whether we had accidentally landed in the New York Review of Books. The NYTBR is pretty low on the straight-up book reviews these days, so let s not waste anyone s time regurgitating what s already in the New Republic. But these are some Troubled Times, and we suppose deep political thinking is pretty important But don t try to overcompensate for the book-less content by including a large Recommended Reading box at the end of the feature. There s something oddly condescending about a recommended reading box. We should read Nickel and Dimed ? Really? Now, not 2 years ago? Okay, when is the three-page book report due?

Angry Black White Boy: Or, the Miscegenation of Macon Detornay
 By Adam Mansbach
Reviewed by Nathaniel Rich

Nathaniel Rich God, that last name sounds familiar Hmm where have we heard it before? It s so weird, for some reason we associate that name with the New York Times Yup, Nathaniel Rich is Frank Rich s son. While working on his own book and living the good life as a freelancer, this Frank Richlet has somehow managed (we don t know how!) to weasel his way into these sacred pages. And we have to admit that it s a very well-written review and it s impressive because he s so young blah blah blah. We chuckled a bit to ourselves when we got to the part where he wrote, Macon has grown up as a Jewish kid on the leafy streets of the Boston suburbs, where he has witnessed liberal white hypocrisy first hand. How funny, because Nat went to Dalton! Oh, har har.