In an
older piece from
The Atlantic, Maria Popova meditated on the ease of making, and finding, criticism of the arts in an online world. As someone whose opinions, strongly held, are often enough mistaken for and attacked for being Statements Of Inerrant Fact, I was struck by midcentury monadnock
John Updike's reasonable requests of reviewers as quoted in Popova's article:
My rules, drawn up inwardly when l embarked on this craft, and shaped intaglio–fashion by youthful traumas at the receiving end of critical opinion, were and are:
1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.
2. Give him enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.
3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.
4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending. (How astounded and indignant was I, when innocent, to find reviewers blabbing, and with the sublime inaccuracy of drunken lords reporting on a peasants' revolt, all the turns of my suspenseful and surpriseful narrative! Most ironically, the only readers who approach a book as the author intends, unpolluted by pre-knowledge of the plot, are the detested reviewers themselves. And then, years later, the blessed fool who picks the volume at random from a library shelf.)
5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?
To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. (emphasis added because damn, this is important!) Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in an ideological battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never (John Aldridge, Norman Podhoretz) try to put the author 'in his place,' making him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.
While I will never at all understand the spoilerphobia of so very many people, I will do my best to honor it. Someone, I promise you, will *al*ways* find fault and screech "spoiler" at the most innocuous-to-my-eyes things. They, being Gravely Injured, feel free to vent copious spleen upon the perp of the heinous crime. I'm tired of hearing their collective mouth, so I am making ever more serious efforts not to give away important points. I accept that I will, from time to time, fail in someone vocal's eyes. C'est la guerre.
Here's a funny thing about writing about someone else's writing: Who cares? Why read reviews? Who
asked you, as a former friend snarled at me once. I am not an academically trained critic; I follow no school of literary theory in writing about the books authors, publishers, and librarians give me, or that I buy with my very own United States dollars. What I do is called
"reader response" criticism, a school of thought that has at its heart the silly idea that the reader, as opposed to the writer or the writer's intent, or the writer's execution, of the work is central to understanding the value of it.
I think of the reader as the source of the value a book has, not the writer or her unknowable (in my eyes) "intent." So I tell you what I felt about the book. I almost always use extended passages of the author's own prose in making my points. In short works that is sometimes impractical; in some cases it's simply impossible, like the extremely long single sentence that is
Ducks, Newburyport (which I adored five stars'-worth but was unable to figure out how to review). I judge a book's success or failure based on how well it did the job of involving me, entertaining me, educating me; sometimes all of those things (and more) at the same time. Why is that valuable, I've been asked ("Who
asked you" as mentioned above); yeah, so? seems to be the sneering tone I'm meant to hear.
There are, without exaggeration,
hundreds of thousands of new, newly translated, newly re-translated, revised editions of books made available each and every year. I don't mean to alarm you, but the inescapable conclusion one must reach from that datum is that there are a whole helluva lotta books you will never hear about, let alone read. So let my biblioholism and seven-decade and counting lifetime of eclectic reading help you identify one or two you really shouldn't miss. I don't use affiliate links; I am unpaid by anyone; there's no advertising here. You'll get my opinion of a book's success or failure at its job, which is to impact me positively in the manner I procured it to do.
That opinion, being mine, is only of value to you if you know what it is; thereafter you can judge for yourself if your taste is close to mine, far from mine, on a different plane of existence from mine, and weigh your purchases or library holds accordingly. Hey, it's free! No ads to ignore, no secret commissions to cynically smirk about, zip zero nada rien requested or required from you. I hope you'll find my writing amusing as well as informative. I always love blog members leaving notes about what they agree or disagree with, but it's not required since you don't need to join up in order to read up.
So take what I'm freely offering with whatever sized salt measure suits you, strap on your anti-sarcasm armor, sharpen your Fork of Facetiousness, and ride!
