I Had a Leon Wieseltier Joke Here,
But I Couldn't Write It Snappy Enough

Dale Peck turns up in the Gothamist interview section, commenting on the condition in which our republic of letters finds itself:

I think anyone who wants to write a book should do so; and anyone who can get a book published should be happy. It’s a fine thing to get paid for, and anyone who does it seriously can at the very least learn something about themselves. The problem with contemporary writing isn’t the number of third-rate books being published, but the number of third-rate books that are being passed off as first-rate by a publishing and literary community that’s so terrified of losing its place in “the culture,” as Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace would put it, that it has to resort to special pleading to sell its wares. Used car salesmen are able to get away with selling lemons because they think they can bank on the ignorance of their customers—most of whom don’t know what a carburetor is—let alone that most cars don’t have them anymore. Most contemporary readers are equally unknowledgeable, especially when it comes to the esoteric vagaries of haute fictional traditions—and so have to rely on some kind of endorsement that such-and-such book is good.