When we started The New York Review in February 1963 we asked some of the writers we admired most to send us book reviews within three weeks, for no payment, in order, as we said, “to suggest the qualities that a literary journal should have.” Norman, whom we all had known in New York, was among the first we turned to, and he soon delivered a review of Morley Callaghan’s That Summer in Paris, which he found to be “a modest bad dull book which contains a superb short story about Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Callaghan.” And by telling that story, about how Fitzgerald, acting as timekeeper in a boxing match, had allowed Callaghan extra time to knock out Hemingway, Norman made a brilliant review out of what he called Callaghan’s “dim writing.”
more from the NYRB here.