I’ve been trying to write a book review of Ron Currie’s Everything Matters! for the last few weeks. I’ve been trying and failing splendidly.
In fact, more than writing anything, I’ve been doing a sort of literary circuit training—pacing around my apartment and slugging absurd quantities of coffee and snarling to myself about slinging postmodern bullshit all over the page when all I was trying to do was talk about Everything Matters! which, by the way, no matter how far I stray off topic, is a really good book and you should read it. Phew, at least that’s on the record.
Guess what I’m saying is this: Why does peer review suddenly feel like a total violation?
Ever since my first novel came out a couple months back, I’ve been having a hard time seeing why I’d want to publish something that might impede another writer’s ability to find the biggest audience that she/he can. So that leaves me only a couple options:
1. Only review books I love and will therefore write glowing things about (seems sort of boring).
2. Don’t review books.
Problem is, I like book reviews. I like the dialogue they have the potential to incite; I like the idea that they help people weed through the glut of material that exists in the marketplace. We need responsible sources—publications that have proven themselves over time to be thoughtful, forthright, and fair—to inform the public about new books.
Since this all started with an attempt to discuss Currie’s Everything Matters! I decided to contact him directly, despite the fact we don’t know each other, and ask what he thought constituted a good book review.
“A review should discuss whether or not a book succeeds at what it set out to accomplish,” he said, “and then explain why it did or did not.”
I like Currie’s idea that a review should be an organic response to the narrative itself, the reviewer attempts to decode the book’s conceits, its subtext and “message.” In doing so, she/he might hopefully use direct evidence from the text to bolster an argument on the successes and failures of the author’s execution.
This was a helpful point, but because I agreed with him, my confusion morphed a bit. It isn’t that I’m against deconstructing the tactics a writer has chosen to use; my concern is more about the legacies of publishing such a discourse. I’d hate to think that my words might dissuade a potential reader from engaging with a writer’s work herself/himself.
So that was my next question to Currie: Why would one writer want to openly criticize another writer’s book?
Currie: “Often I think it manifests as professional jealousy… Writers tend also to be sophisticated and, by definition, good with words, and so are able to wrap this jealousy in the sheep’s clothing of protecting the language or standing guard at the gates of the canon.”
The obvious caveat here is that I’m asking Ron Currie, a total stranger, to comment on an abstraction, the motivation for peer review, an issue that of course has a multiplicity of answers. There are hordes of reviewers, all with different reasons and values and rules for doing what we do. So I recognize I’m asking him to comment on something he really can’t comment upon: my very personal crisis regarding peer criticism.
Currie mentions jealousy—but for me, that isn’t quite it. Certainly, I come across phrases or sentences, scenes and chapters that others have so beautifully written that I wish I’d penned. But I don’t want to “punish” the writer by lambasting her/him in a review. If anything, I want to make sure more people find out about these accomplishments by helping in any way that I can. I want there to be camaraderie among authors, peer support, not peer dissension.
Thus, my problem comes from the other side of the spectrum (I think). I’m not worried about envy, I’m worried about putting obstacles between an author and an audience. The old adage feels true to me: If I don’t have anything nice to say, I should probably just shut up. At the end of the day, what’s the point of hurtling epithets at another writer’s book?
Yes, I like to read book reviews, and in the past I’ve enjoyed writing them. Right now, though—and who knows if it will change—it feels like a violation, a petty way to throw a wrench into someone else’s artistic career. A publishing career is hard enough without people who should be on the same team wielding criticism like a weapon.
Other writers and reviewers will disagree with me—and, obviously, that’s fine. I just think it’s interesting that only since my novel has come out I do feel intimidated and ashamed and malicious at the prospect of peer review. The best reviews are neither hatchet jobs nor blow jobs—the best ones talk about a book’s strengths and weaknesses (every book has both). And after a thoughtful analysis, the readers of a review can make an informed decision about whether they want to spend the money to experience the ride for themselves. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that.
Currie gets the last word: He says that reviewers are “contributing to what should be a serious conversation about a particular book’s importance, its place, if any, in American literature. No mean task, and one that should be approached with care and fellow-feeling.”
10 responses
Joshua: It’s obvious you love books, so keep reviewing them. Criticism is healthy.
I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to warn people if a book sucks? You’re not damaging the author. They did it to themselves. That’s what I’m looking for in a book review—a shit filter. Hard covers are expensive.
I’ve read reviews in which the reviewer didn’t care for the book, but I still went on to buy the book and loved it. That’s not to say that the review should be mean and nasty (take note Michiko Kakutani). Even an unfavorable review is helpful to me (and the author, potentially) if it includes not just the reviewer’s negative opinion, but lots of information about the text, such as quotes and relatively factual descriptions of the subject matter, tone, structure, and style. A bigger problem in my mind is the fact that popular reviewing venues all seem to review the same book. It’s disappointing to see one book get three reviews, while other worthy contenders are left uncommented upon. If you’re getting reviewed at all, that’s probably good news.
I totally agree with what you’re saying, Anonymous, especially regarding the lack of latitude and diversity in coverage. Hopefully, the web (spots like the Rumpus, The Nervous Breakdown, 3G1B, etc.) offers not only alternative venues for books that “sneak” under the radar of the larger, elitist hubs, but might (hopefully) signal a change: will new media level the playing field a bit between the conglomerates and small presses, at the very least in terms of opportunities for review?
It’s too soon for us to know how new media will effect all this, as it’s so nascent still, though the rate with which print reviews are folding/ decreasing in size points to a huge shift in how opinions are disseminated. I found out about the Christmas Day/ Detroit fiasco on Facebook, for god’s sake!
I like this review. Keep writing them.
Great and honest piece, Josh.
Yes, some great dialogue can come out of a “negative” book review, and I admit that sometimes they can be fun to read if you kind of agree with the snark, or even fun if you feel outraged and don’t agree. But these days, with shrinking review venues–newspapers folding their Books sections, Kirkus Review dead, lit magazines going under, etc.–it seems to me that the general public needs far less the “shit filter” function of book reviews and far more the “undiscovered gem” function. More and more, I find myself sympathetic to the idea that, yeah, if you don’t have anything nice to say about a book, why say anything? Unless we’re talking about Dan Brown, you can probably rest assured that if you happen to read a book and it happens to suck, even if you don’t shout that from the rooftops in a review forum, that book will probably languish on the vine of obscurity anyway unless it’s picked by the Today Show Book Club–that its editor was probably fired last month, its imprint has folded, and the Books section that first touted it is part of a newspaper facing bankruptcy. I mean, it’s a brutal world out there in publishing right now, and my purpose as a reviewer has become more similar to my purpose as an editor: actually trying to help GOOD books find their way into the world and into people’s hands, when the odds seem so constantly stacked against them.
Josh,
It’s nice to know that you take it so seriously. I have been reviewing books myself recently and struggle with giving a bad review. I think the trick is not to give a good or a bad review, but rather an “honest” one. You know what it takes to get a book published. A lot of people had to believe in it. But there are times when, as a reader, you won’t agree with them. I appreciate reading reviews where I know that the writer is looking at the big picture. He/she considers the piece objectively, not personally. I like that you contacted the writer directly. What constitutes a good review for one writer may be inconsequential to another. But, I think that ultimately, one review won’t (shouldn’t) make or break a book. Anyone who bases their decision on what to read (or not) on the basis of one reviewer’s opinion is probably not a very sophisticated or prolific reader anyway.
Really interesting insight. Sometimes I think reviews have to include something negative just so as not to like kiss-assish (there’s a good word for that but my kids are yelling for lunch) and my wife is staring daggers.
f, look not like
I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but Lemon Hound has been doing an interesting series on reviewing and the nature of reviewing.
http://lemonhound.blogspot.com/
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