.
| Hearsay: |
A short piece in the WSJ looks at the use of reviewers going on beyond the simple opinion that a book is bad. Why do we kill the beast and then chop it into hamburger? they ask. My answer: because then we can have hamburgers. Duh.
Critics are especially useful when a book is published to great arm-waving fanfare, as “The Kindly Ones” by Jonathan Littell recently was. The novel was a prize-winning bestseller in Europe, and Mr. Littell’s U.S. publishers reportedly paid a seven-figure advance for it. I read several reviews of “The Kindly Ones” on the Complete Review Web site, which links to quality publications around the world. Reviewers loved and hated the book; based on their hamburger, I decided it wasn’t for me. The phrase “death porn” haunted me.
I’ve been thinking about this much lately. I recently received my first ever really bad review. Really bad. Ham. Burg. Er. My understanding is that it’s by a guy who’s quite intelligent, and perhaps even likable, despite his obviously poor taste in literature. But it really does add an element of “truth” to the whole process. Not the “truth” that the book is good or bad, but that not everyone will have the same opinion of it. And that there may be space, in some ways, for specific disagreement and skepticism within the general positive response of mainstream reviewing. Can a negative review, in the face of the many, many other positive ones, somehow validate the entire process of reviewing? (And, let me repeat: many, many other positive ones.)
January 2006
December
2005
November
2005
October
2005
September
2005
August
2005
July
2005
June
2005
May
2005
April
2005
March
2005
February
2005
January
2005
December
2004
November
2004
October
2004
September
2004
August
2004
July
2004
June
2004
May
2004
April
2004
March
2004
February
2004
January
2004
December
2003
November
2003
October
2003
September
2003
August
2003
Bookninja © Copyright
The opinions expressed on this site are those of individual participants
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the site owners,
organizers, or other participants.
[powered by WordPress.]
May 4th, 2009 at 11:05 am
This is a subject I’ve given a lot of thought to over the years. When I was books editor at The Georgia Straight in Vancouver many moons ago and assigning reviews, I felt I had to come up with a stand and I’ve pretty much held to it since. A review, no matter what length, shouldn’t be a consumer report or notes to the author or the book this should of been had I written it etc, but a conversation with your reader. And it made sense to me, and still does, that a complete pan of a first (or subsequent) book by an unknown author is really pointless and pointlessly cruel. Debut books that come heralded because of huge royalties or connections or buzz of another kind (example: Miranda July’s “No one belongs here more than you”) or because the author has made a name for themselves in another field, fair game. As are completely awful books by people who’d previously written terrific ones.
One example: DBC Pierre’s “Ludmilla’s Broken English” — a dog’s breakfast of the novel by a very talented writer )”Vernon God Little” (hideous in the same way that Amis’s “Yellow Dog” was hideous) There is a basis of “conversation” here and something interesting
to say to your readers. (I panned both the July and Pierre in the Globe — I have friends who adore the July book and we’ve had some interesting conversations about our love/hate reactions)
My pet peeve about reviewers (off topic here perhaps): People who review second, third, fourth, etc books by authors and haven’t read any of their other works (or at the reviews give the appearance that they haevn’t). That is completely lame.
May 4th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Apologies for typos above — I find the field goes off to the side and I can’t scroll back (or don’t know how?) to review comment before posting.
May 4th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
This is a question I think about often. The problem for me is the conflation between negative and critical. They aren’t the same thing. One can ask tough questions of a text and it can still seem forward thinking, if not positive. The polarized thinking of negative positive is extremely limiting and has very little to do with thinking about a book. It leads nowhere. A critical review asks questions, it opens up the text, and the experience of reading, whether it is the book under review or not. I would rather read an expansive treatment of a text than one that simply makes a given reviewers point–generally a point about what he thinks is “good literature.” And often reviews reflect the hostility or over-exuberance of a reviewer finding a text that makes his or her point. Now that’s what poetry is! Or, Now this is all poetry shouldn’t be!
Recent reviews of Anne Carson illustrate this problem, I think.
One might ask what the purpose of reviews are….but that’s another question.
May 4th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Ah, that would be the “conflation of.”
George, where is the do-over button?
May 4th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Nothing is more useless than a review by someone who only ever praises. I see reviewing as a way to engage in the discourse at large, and as a service to the reader.
May 4th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I’ll look into a plugin to let you edit your own posts, but it might require site registration. Perhaps that’s better than reading the work of you lazy typists…. :)
May 4th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
These are good questions and I was interested in the comments made. I was just thinking about this along slightly different lines, in terms of rejection letters [see link above]. Reviewers have the job of giving an opinion, but the opinion is just that–and in my experience literate and intelligent people have just as broad a range of opinions as anybody else. But it purports to be something other than opinion and that’s where the problem lies. If reviews could really be conversations, could really consist of critical thinking (rather than criticism) that would be very interesting…unless of course you’re the one whose work is being reviewed. What would it be like if doctors or lawyers or accountants had all of their work critically appraised for everyone to see? I doubt they’d put up with it.
May 4th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
A book should/must stand on its own. No way is it necessary to know an entire author’s oeuvre in order to review his/her book. If it’s good, it’s good, bad, it’s bad. Knowing or not knowing past works is irrelevant.
We need more negative reviews in this country. Too much back slapping and applause. Too many friends reviewing friends. No wonder a lot of our fiction is crap–no one dares say otherwise in case that person may, gasp, review the reviewer’s book! Without criticism, how can we grow as writers?
May 4th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Just a heads up: it’s complete-review.com, not completereview.com
May 4th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
I think an important component of any review of a literary work is acknowledging that it is opinion. In the realm of the aesthetic, of course you’re going to get widely divergent opinions. I think it’s important, as people have pointed out in a way, above, to reflect critically and that doesn’t have to mean negatively. Also, and this is the most important thing, as a reviewer one needs to take responsibility for one’s likes and dislikes and explain why one likes or doesn’t like a given work with explanations of judgments qua opinion, subjective stance. That way one doesn’t come across as a reviewer purporting to know the objective truth about the work under review….it might even soften the blow of a pan!
May 4th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Who is this fellow with the temerity to give you a bad review? We need to send some throwing stars his way to teach him a lesson!
May 4th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
George:
Focus on Lisa Loeb, not on bad reviews.
May 5th, 2009 at 12:06 am
There was an interesting article in the Globe and Mail a few weeks back about how finding independent book reviews is quickly becoming a thing of the past. The problem? Many book reviews are written by authors themselves, many of who are loath to write bad reviews for fear that someone will in turn write a bad review about their book.
The end result? A plethora of positive book reviews, many of which might not be truthful.
May 5th, 2009 at 9:19 am
I had a professor once who said he wouldn’t review a book he couldn’t be positive about. But what worse fate is there for an author than no press at all? A bad review may be damning, but no review at all is worse.
May 5th, 2009 at 10:12 am
I think there has to be something wrong, or lifeless, with any work of art that receives only good reviews. If there is nothing
contentious then there is nothing to discuss. I know George and I hold “Disgrace” in the highest esteem but I could perfectly
understand someone deeply disliking it. As for shitty notices from morons … what’s that expression? … oh yeah, “fuck them”.
May 5th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
I love it. George could run this header once a year for a hundred years and it would consistently attract more comments than other items. One would always be the “authors who write reviews live in terror that someone will exact revenge by saying something bad about their work!” line. The others would be familiar if not recurrng characters. Though I like ed’s conclusion.
May 5th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
“I love it. George could run this header once a year for a hundred years and it would consistently attract more comments than other items.”
So, if it was about the reviews of Leah McLaren books the huge amount of comments would break the internet.
Sometimes even bad reviews can be good. There’s a bad review of one of my books on Amazon (unlike George, I have many bad reviews al over the place) that I could pull a blurb from – the reviewer and I have very different tastes.
May 5th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Leah negatively reviewing Harper’s arts cuts?
May 5th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
As a reader, and not a published author, I can say this… If I’m buying a book (or, really, anything) online, I want to see reviews. If all the reviews are positive, then I assume the item has not been reviewed enough. Nothing is perfect. The bad reviews, when well written, are most helpful – they point out the extremes, or nit-pick, but at least they give me a range of what to expect. This particularly goes for nonfiction books.
Fiction, however… I don’t read reviews. I will generally read the review, want to read the book, and then promptly forget about it because I have such a long list of to-reads as it is. I go by word of mouth, and by scouring new bookstores for first time writers, or used bookstores for old forgottens.