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John Mark Eberhart BJ '83

What does your job as a book reviewer entail?
I'm half editor and half writer, although the editing seems to be taking more time as newspapers get more and more visual. My duties, basically: Assign book reviews to freelancers and any staff members of the paper who express interest, schedule and edit those reviews, oversee payments to those folks, and so on. On the writing side, I do some reviews myself and I interview authors. Oh, yes, and then there's all that reading ...

Is this what you thought you'd be doing when you graduated from J-School?
Not at all. I did think I wanted to try critique at some point, but most people don't just jump into a job like this. I was a news reporter for seven years and a copy editor for 10. In 1996, I went to grad school to pursue a master's in English from UMKC because I thought I might want to teach. I soon realized I was a better writer than lecturer, but I still wanted to finish the degree, which I did in December 1998. That experience of being immersed in literary studies, combined with my undergraduate journalism degree, proved to be a good foundation for being books editor. I took over the post in March 2000, 17 years into my professional career. It was worth the wait.

How many books do you read in a month?
It varies according to what I'm doing, but I would guess it remains at a dozen or so a month. I've tried to cut it down, but I can't. I do read some books for pleasure, although even those books tend to filter into my writing somehow. I also read a few books per month because I am interviewing the people who wrote them, and it's horribly rude to quiz a writer when you don't know that person's work.

How did your journalism studies prepare you for your career?
My journalism studies taught me to be accurate. That's as important in writing a review as it is in writing a news story. If you get something wrong, the prettiest phrasing you've ever written has become worthless. Mizzou always stressed that, and so did my editors early in my career. I hate making errors; I hate it more than anything. I also learned to meet deadlines. The paper will come out, with or without you, and my second-worst fear is seeing that Sunday edition hit the pavement without a key element I was supposed to provide. Work accurately, work quickly, and write as well as you can in the time frame you have. That's life.

What is your favorite book, genre and/or author?
I cannot name one favorite book; it changes frequently. A rundown of my recent obsessions: Not long ago I re-read Melville's "Moby Dick" and was transported by the power of his imagination. That novel alone, with its strangely digressive style, puts him among the great American novelists. In poetry, I love Emily Dickinson and W.B. Yeats; they write so richly that one is drawn back to them again and again, but so cleanly that reading them is a pleasure. And their rhythmic gifts are profound; experiencing them is kind of like listening to a great jazz riff. I continue to think that Missouri-born writers Langston Hughes and Mark Twain/Sam Clemens changed the way we look at ourselves as Americans, particularly, of course, in terms of our shared racial identity. As for living writers, I find myself returning to the great realists: John Updike, John Irving and Margaret Atwood. I also delved into Chuck Palahniuk recently because I had not spent enough time with his work. For some reason I find him both annoying and charming.

Of all of the reviews you have written, is there one that you're particularly proud of or has resonated with your readers in a special way?
That's a two-part question. Part one: I'm probably proudest of my review last year of John Irving's "Until I Find You," because I stood up for the book even though I knew it was getting quite a few bad reviews (none of which I read before I wrote mine, but the headlines told the tale). I, too, had problems with the book; it's too long, for one thing. But I also think time will prove its worth, and as a reviewer I had to say so, even though I was in the minority. Part two: The reviews that have elicited the most reaction from my readers are my pieces on the Harry Potter books. The first three came out before my watch, but I really panned the fourth and fifth books, and got more e-mail than I'd ever seen, including one from a preadolescent girl who started her electronic epistle to me like this: "Well hello, you RAT," which I loved. Hey, at least she's reading the newspaper. I did like the sixth Potter book quite a bit, but got very little e-mail about that review, which didn't surprise me. Critics hear noise when they write something that irks people.

What are five adjectives that describe you?
Dedicated, organized, energetic, moody, cantankerous (note the arc from positive to negative; good thing you asked for just five!)

What is the best professional lesson learned at the J-School?
One of my professors at the time -- I think it was Rusty Todd -- told us something like this: "You people are going to leave here, if you're lucky, with one and only one ability: The ability to tell a story." That hit me hard. I wanted to be the best storyteller I could. But it also drove home to me that readers care about only one thing, whether they're reading international news or book reviews: They want to be able to pick up the paper and read it without unnecessary difficulty. That isn't to say they are unwilling to be challenged; they do want to think, to be part of an ongoing dialogue, to experience the world vividly. But if you don't tell a good story, they'll stop reading you. They have other things to do, and, these days, many other options as far as getting informed and being entertained.

What would be your advice to current students?
Accuracy is paramount. Even fiction writers do research, or at least the good ones do. Recently, a memoirist got in some trouble for embellishing his own story; I thought what he did was a terrible breach of integrity. Whether it's a case like that, of deliberately fudging things, or of making a mistake, it's not really excusable. You ARE going to make mistakes, but you should strive for accuracy, and also to admit mistakes when you do make them. Second, please realize that your writing is something that is going to develop over a long period of time. After 23 years of getting paid for this, I'm still learning. Writing is tough, and getting better at it takes time. Your progress tends to be incremental, not dramatic. Don't worry about that; just persevere.

What is something about you that might surprise people?
Oh, how manipulative, saving the embarrassing question for last! But it worked: OK, several people in my life recently have been surprised that I've taken up golf. I've played for just a few weeks and I'm awful. Everyone who knows about this is shocked that I'm doing it, but my response to them is that the darned game is so complicated that when I'm out there on the course, I can't think or worry about anything else. It creates its own kind of stress, but that stress (missing a four-foot putt, blasting a tee shot into a water hazard) wipes out, at least for awhile, the stress of writing and editing. Most people apparently thought I didn't have the patience for golf, but it's like what I said about writing: Your progress is incremental. I must say I don't care for a lot of golf outfits, though. I promise one thing: You'll never catch me in a pair of tangerine pants.