Web Hype
Vanity Fair or Unfair?
At The Rumpus, Vanessa Garcia reviewed Kathleen Rooney’s new essay collection, For You, For You I am Trilling These Songs. Garcia’s consideration was highly ambivalent, and she ultimately rendered a verdict against. Then all hell broke loose in the comments section. Daniel Nester, Kyle Minor, Elisa Gabbert, and Tim Jones-Yelvington are just some of the local (to us here) luminaries who weighed in with complaints against the review. Rumpus Books editor Andrew Altschul has responded several times; he and Nester are particularly aggressive with each other. What makes this more interesting than a flame war is that the vitriol seems not excessive, but central and perhaps necessary, to an earnest conversation about how nonfiction–memoirs in particular–ought to be read and discussed. My one critique of said discussion is that there seems to be an undercurrent of umbrage–palpable but pointedly not articulated–at the fact of a negative review having been written at all. Critics who pan things should expect to have their prerogative cross-examined, their biases speculated upon, their motives questioned, etc.–which is not to say that Garcia’s critics are wrong, only to point out that a positive review is never reprimanded for its angle, however wrong-headed or idiotic that angle might be. If we are willing to court and accept facile praise, do we have the right to demand anything better from our detractors? (Again: not to suggest Garcia’s piece is facile, or “wrong”; having not read Rooney’s book I withhold judgment on both it and the crit of it.) Anyway, the comment-thread is still active as of this morning, and the whole thing is worth giving a look to.
Tags: Kathleen Rooney, The Rumpus, Vanessa Garcia
I have been following the thread on Garcia’s review with a great deal of interest. For me, my greatest concern is not that the review is negative. The rampant culture of positive reviews only is very troubling and does nothing to forward the critical reflection of modern letters. That said, I do think Garcia’s review is short-sighted and she doesn’t seem to address the text as directly as I would have liked.
I have been following the thread on Garcia’s review with a great deal of interest. For me, my greatest concern is not that the review is negative. The rampant culture of positive reviews only is very troubling and does nothing to forward the critical reflection of modern letters. That said, I do think Garcia’s review is short-sighted and she doesn’t seem to address the text as directly as I would have liked.
It’s totally hot in there. People are about to get naked.
I wanted to clarify that I didn’t lodge any complaints about the review in my comment. I just remarked on the 21st century phenomenon of authors and friends of authors responding directly to negative online reviews.
I personally think the vast majority of reviews (including positive reviews) are pointless and crappy and too easily published. But I guess the majority of any genre is crap.
It’s totally hot in there. People are about to get naked.
I wanted to clarify that I didn’t lodge any complaints about the review in my comment. I just remarked on the 21st century phenomenon of authors and friends of authors responding directly to negative online reviews.
I personally think the vast majority of reviews (including positive reviews) are pointless and crappy and too easily published. But I guess the majority of any genre is crap.
I’m with you on the last part Justin. It seems to be a problem particularly unique to book reviews. It is quite easy to find negative reviews of music or films and it is only every fanboys that get mad, yet it does seem that almost any negative review of a book is lambasted as being unfair.
I’m with you on the last part Justin. It seems to be a problem particularly unique to book reviews. It is quite easy to find negative reviews of music or films and it is only every fanboys that get mad, yet it does seem that almost any negative review of a book is lambasted as being unfair.
I agree. I don’t know how many essays are in the book, but the review only deals with like 3. I mean, I don’t need a rundown of every essay in it, but, like you say, I would have preferred it to deal more directly with the text. Less extrapolating from a couple of essays, more of what she didn’t like from various essays.
I agree. I don’t know how many essays are in the book, but the review only deals with like 3. I mean, I don’t need a rundown of every essay in it, but, like you say, I would have preferred it to deal more directly with the text. Less extrapolating from a couple of essays, more of what she didn’t like from various essays.
If I had known it would be a conflagration of this order, I probably wouldn’t have responded, or, if I did, I would have written my own 2,000 word review of the book, which is something I probably don’t right now have time to do, anyway. But I don’t like the way the comments got so heated and personal, and I also think that while the reviewer probably could have done a better job, she’s probably a bright, smart person who dashed one off quickly and for free, and she isn’t due the level of derision that got whipped up in the comments section. Bottom line seems to be that she didn’t like the narrative persona, and she made her review mostly about that, without making any kind of serious argument about narrative persona in conjunction with the complaint. So the review feels knee-jerk and half-formed, and since I’ve published my share of knee-jerk and half-formed reviews, I implicate myself while implicating the reviewer. (I’ll go cross-post this at the Rumpus, now.)
If I had known it would be a conflagration of this order, I probably wouldn’t have responded, or, if I did, I would have written my own 2,000 word review of the book, which is something I probably don’t right now have time to do, anyway. But I don’t like the way the comments got so heated and personal, and I also think that while the reviewer probably could have done a better job, she’s probably a bright, smart person who dashed one off quickly and for free, and she isn’t due the level of derision that got whipped up in the comments section. Bottom line seems to be that she didn’t like the narrative persona, and she made her review mostly about that, without making any kind of serious argument about narrative persona in conjunction with the complaint. So the review feels knee-jerk and half-formed, and since I’ve published my share of knee-jerk and half-formed reviews, I implicate myself while implicating the reviewer. (I’ll go cross-post this at the Rumpus, now.)
I’d prefer to read only seethingly negative reviews for every book published. The better the book, the better the evil reviewer would open holes in its craft to sink the ship. In this way, knowing in advance what potential flaws of a book might be, I’d approach it like a wounded bird. Laudatory reviews, even semi-intoxicated ones on goodreads or blogs or by someone who might know an author and thereby bites the integrity bullet to half-truthfully hype it up (and pretty much all blurbs) undermine the endeavor of fiction, which is to tell the truth through lies. I propose that all future reviews be exagerratedly relentlessly insightful with regard to how much someone might think something might potentially suck. In this way, and maybe ONLY in this way, will readers ever love new lit without feeling they might’ve just been had by hucksters.
I’d prefer to read only seethingly negative reviews for every book published. The better the book, the better the evil reviewer would open holes in its craft to sink the ship. In this way, knowing in advance what potential flaws of a book might be, I’d approach it like a wounded bird. Laudatory reviews, even semi-intoxicated ones on goodreads or blogs or by someone who might know an author and thereby bites the integrity bullet to half-truthfully hype it up (and pretty much all blurbs) undermine the endeavor of fiction, which is to tell the truth through lies. I propose that all future reviews be exagerratedly relentlessly insightful with regard to how much someone might think something might potentially suck. In this way, and maybe ONLY in this way, will readers ever love new lit without feeling they might’ve just been had by hucksters.
I really don’t agree that positive reviews never get reprimanded for their angle. Sorry, Justin, but that’s such baloney. Classic ‘subject supposed to believe’ stuff. Intense, often insulting discussion and debate about the curious elements of people’s likes happens here, and all over the internet, all the time. Look at just one approving review of Tao, anywhere. Moreover, this whole community is almost founded (as one of its pillars) on a certain mode of problematic eulogistic reviewing that replicates mediocre literature as a literary gold standard. Which is why it seems to me that your critique here of the apparent hypocrisy of people who take ‘umbrage’ at the existence of a bad review (I think I didn’t get out of this at all) is an implicit approving nod toward the comment made by Andy (the other one, not Altschul) in the comment thread that the critique of bad critiques on the web is actually some symptom of “this childish friend- and self-defending in online book reviews in general.”
I find that to be a really irritating diagnosis of both this particular dust-up and the overall dynamic of aesthetic support that emerges on the web. It’s such a psychologization and totally non-analytical. Chalking critiques of bad reviews up to friend-defending and self-defending does not tackle the arguments made. It’s almost like saying, “my valid opinion is being ruined in its validity because you bring round all your theory friends to use big words that make me look dumb and wreck the common sense of what I’m saying”. The resentment is rank and palpable and it’s a last line of defence for shitty thinking, basically, a kind of culture relativism where the “rightness” of my own ideas (or the ideas I like and agree with) is conflated with the fact I have the same right as any other person to say them. Mixing the right to make a bad review (not in dispute at all by any of the anti-Garcia commenters, their very engagement indicates their recognition of this person’s opinions as meritorious of their attention, though, acknowledged, not of their respect) with the “rightness” of what’s said in the exercise of that right becomes a way to beat off impassioned objections as nothing other than a kind of ganging up, to malign them as a bully tactic, basically, rather than a ensemble of criticisms about what they see as bad reading or bad ideas.
The self-noblilty of Altschul’s statement that the Rumpus will “take people at the word, however naive that makes us” is so irritating precisely because it assumes that people cannot be at their word in a multivalence of sensibility and explication of themselves – that performance is not genuine and that people don’t get that – and also the flagrantly condescending assumption that the much-ballyhooed ‘average reader’ believes in some one-dimensional true self rather than relates to a self that relates its quite sincere reality in a complex give and take with its relation of itself in the frame of the memoir. To make my point more concrete (and again, acknowledging I haven’t read the book), take Garcia’s remark that “Rooney seems always be avoiding one food or another, always dancing around eating—a possible disorder that goes begging to be touched upon.” What if the drama of possible disorder that Rooney apparently ‘fails’ to give us the goods on is in this very borderline dance that is about the compulsive addictivity of and recoil from hunger, need, self. I believe the ‘average reader’ can understand such a concept just fine, if not necessarily in the terms I have just explicated it. In fact, I would argue the very point of memoir as literature is to convey such thoughts in a language other than the analytical unpacking above, which is only a mode of concept transfer that, while claiming a certain authority, isn’t the only possibility for complex ideas to be transmitted. What’s curious to me is the assumption, basically, that average readers are just to, well, ‘average’ to think about the honesty of what they’re reading on many levels and as a thing involving many levels, or that the self has a formal, thematic dimension that they, as average people reading, will not conceptually understand and aesthetically engage with. To me, what sucks about the Garcia review on the face of it is precisely that it’s punted to a plain-talkin’ reading audience in a way that’s condescending (if unintentionally) because it assumes (without explanation) that the book isn’t being ‘level’ with an audience that only thinks of candor as this one non-complicated thing. That such a ‘dumb’ audience does not exist in that way is, essentially, what the critics of the review are saying that Rooney gets and Garcia doesn’t.
I really don’t agree that positive reviews never get reprimanded for their angle. Sorry, Justin, but that’s such baloney. Classic ‘subject supposed to believe’ stuff. Intense, often insulting discussion and debate about the curious elements of people’s likes happens here, and all over the internet, all the time. Look at just one approving review of Tao, anywhere. Moreover, this whole community is almost founded (as one of its pillars) on a certain mode of problematic eulogistic reviewing that replicates mediocre literature as a literary gold standard. Which is why it seems to me that your critique here of the apparent hypocrisy of people who take ‘umbrage’ at the existence of a bad review (I think I didn’t get out of this at all) is an implicit approving nod toward the comment made by Andy (the other one, not Altschul) in the comment thread that the critique of bad critiques on the web is actually some symptom of “this childish friend- and self-defending in online book reviews in general.”
I find that to be a really irritating diagnosis of both this particular dust-up and the overall dynamic of aesthetic support that emerges on the web. It’s such a psychologization and totally non-analytical. Chalking critiques of bad reviews up to friend-defending and self-defending does not tackle the arguments made. It’s almost like saying, “my valid opinion is being ruined in its validity because you bring round all your theory friends to use big words that make me look dumb and wreck the common sense of what I’m saying”. The resentment is rank and palpable and it’s a last line of defence for shitty thinking, basically, a kind of culture relativism where the “rightness” of my own ideas (or the ideas I like and agree with) is conflated with the fact I have the same right as any other person to say them. Mixing the right to make a bad review (not in dispute at all by any of the anti-Garcia commenters, their very engagement indicates their recognition of this person’s opinions as meritorious of their attention, though, acknowledged, not of their respect) with the “rightness” of what’s said in the exercise of that right becomes a way to beat off impassioned objections as nothing other than a kind of ganging up, to malign them as a bully tactic, basically, rather than a ensemble of criticisms about what they see as bad reading or bad ideas.
The self-noblilty of Altschul’s statement that the Rumpus will “take people at the word, however naive that makes us” is so irritating precisely because it assumes that people cannot be at their word in a multivalence of sensibility and explication of themselves – that performance is not genuine and that people don’t get that – and also the flagrantly condescending assumption that the much-ballyhooed ‘average reader’ believes in some one-dimensional true self rather than relates to a self that relates its quite sincere reality in a complex give and take with its relation of itself in the frame of the memoir. To make my point more concrete (and again, acknowledging I haven’t read the book), take Garcia’s remark that “Rooney seems always be avoiding one food or another, always dancing around eating—a possible disorder that goes begging to be touched upon.” What if the drama of possible disorder that Rooney apparently ‘fails’ to give us the goods on is in this very borderline dance that is about the compulsive addictivity of and recoil from hunger, need, self. I believe the ‘average reader’ can understand such a concept just fine, if not necessarily in the terms I have just explicated it. In fact, I would argue the very point of memoir as literature is to convey such thoughts in a language other than the analytical unpacking above, which is only a mode of concept transfer that, while claiming a certain authority, isn’t the only possibility for complex ideas to be transmitted. What’s curious to me is the assumption, basically, that average readers are just to, well, ‘average’ to think about the honesty of what they’re reading on many levels and as a thing involving many levels, or that the self has a formal, thematic dimension that they, as average people reading, will not conceptually understand and aesthetically engage with. To me, what sucks about the Garcia review on the face of it is precisely that it’s punted to a plain-talkin’ reading audience in a way that’s condescending (if unintentionally) because it assumes (without explanation) that the book isn’t being ‘level’ with an audience that only thinks of candor as this one non-complicated thing. That such a ‘dumb’ audience does not exist in that way is, essentially, what the critics of the review are saying that Rooney gets and Garcia doesn’t.
“I really don’t agree that positive reviews never get reprimanded for their angle. Sorry, Justin, but that’s such baloney. Classic ’subject supposed to believe’ stuff. Intense, often insulting discussion and debate about the curious elements of people’s likes happens here, and all over the internet, all the time”
Really? Almost every negative review on a popular site, esp for a book from an author with friends in the internet world, gets intense negative comments and a world of debate. I’ve virtually never seen that from a positive review on a website. Maybe every now and then there is a widely disliked or polarizing author whose critics will attack him at any outlet they can, but have you ever seen a positive review of a debut book turn into a flame war?
“I really don’t agree that positive reviews never get reprimanded for their angle. Sorry, Justin, but that’s such baloney. Classic ’subject supposed to believe’ stuff. Intense, often insulting discussion and debate about the curious elements of people’s likes happens here, and all over the internet, all the time”
Really? Almost every negative review on a popular site, esp for a book from an author with friends in the internet world, gets intense negative comments and a world of debate. I’ve virtually never seen that from a positive review on a website. Maybe every now and then there is a widely disliked or polarizing author whose critics will attack him at any outlet they can, but have you ever seen a positive review of a debut book turn into a flame war?
I’d rather see someone’s engagement with a book -no matter how flawed I may take their interpretation to be- than a mere rundown of what happens, where the author has published or who the author’s influences are. I always feel cheated when this happens and I wonder if the author feels cheated as well. I mean, I guess I can see why it happens, but does it need to?
If the reviewer picks up on certain intellectual threads, then great. If they just tell me how it made them feel when they were sitting in their reading chair, then great.
An analogue situation would be in new music reviews, where the reviewer often tells you all about the instrumentation and how long the piece lasted, without ever saying anything about the piece, concretely. Who cares? I’d rather know what that person got out of the experience, what it made them think of, even if they fell asleep. As Morton Feldman said, it’s the best compliment anyone had ever paid him…
But, politics are politics and I’m sure they have their reasons and I’m sure they’re really good reasons.
(As a sort of litmus test (and now a bsp), I recently reviewed ‘Boris by the Sea,’ which is a good book, on my blog. Lambast away)
Said better than I could/did. I’m mostly just sad I didn’t get counted as a local, above.
I’d rather see someone’s engagement with a book -no matter how flawed I may take their interpretation to be- than a mere rundown of what happens, where the author has published or who the author’s influences are. I always feel cheated when this happens and I wonder if the author feels cheated as well. I mean, I guess I can see why it happens, but does it need to?
If the reviewer picks up on certain intellectual threads, then great. If they just tell me how it made them feel when they were sitting in their reading chair, then great.
An analogue situation would be in new music reviews, where the reviewer often tells you all about the instrumentation and how long the piece lasted, without ever saying anything about the piece, concretely. Who cares? I’d rather know what that person got out of the experience, what it made them think of, even if they fell asleep. As Morton Feldman said, it’s the best compliment anyone had ever paid him…
But, politics are politics and I’m sure they have their reasons and I’m sure they’re really good reasons.
(As a sort of litmus test (and now a bsp), I recently reviewed ‘Boris by the Sea,’ which is a good book, on my blog. Lambast away)
Said better than I could/did. I’m mostly just sad I didn’t get counted as a local, above.
By which I mean Roxane said it better than I could/did.
By which I mean Roxane said it better than I could/did.
I think people just roll eyes at reviews that fawningly blow smoke up an author’s booty, or maybe at most they hang the portrait of the reviewer in a rouge’s gallery of the foreverafter untrustable, and then, when a bit wasted, rant and laugh about it all. That’s been my perception at least.
I think people just roll eyes at reviews that fawningly blow smoke up an author’s booty, or maybe at most they hang the portrait of the reviewer in a rouge’s gallery of the foreverafter untrustable, and then, when a bit wasted, rant and laugh about it all. That’s been my perception at least.
dude, I loved Boris by the Sea. I also liked your review. When you say:
“It may even be that Yankelevich is highlighting this Absurdity to then say the whole attempt to understand the world is absurd, which might be fine & good, but then one has to wonder, why Yankelevich bothers to rehearse this whole problematic at all, why not just latch onto other problems & interests? Because he’s trying to be absurd? Sort of an impasse, right?”
I think it has to do with what you say earlier about it being sort of a history of philosophy (which is a killer observation). I briefly entertained the idea of being a philosophy major my first year in college. After about one semester I abandoned the idea because I felt like philosophy as a whole does what Yankelevich does here in Boris (“rehearses the problematic”, as you call it. a nice phrase).
But this is off topic and to be honest I’m only bringing it up so that I don’t look like I’m just a flyby, claiming that I read your review just to look smart. But I run the risk of trying to look smart with what I’ve said, so I guess you’ll just have to take my word that I’m being sincere?
I liked the pictures of sloths on the post just before the review.
dude, I loved Boris by the Sea. I also liked your review. When you say:
“It may even be that Yankelevich is highlighting this Absurdity to then say the whole attempt to understand the world is absurd, which might be fine & good, but then one has to wonder, why Yankelevich bothers to rehearse this whole problematic at all, why not just latch onto other problems & interests? Because he’s trying to be absurd? Sort of an impasse, right?”
I think it has to do with what you say earlier about it being sort of a history of philosophy (which is a killer observation). I briefly entertained the idea of being a philosophy major my first year in college. After about one semester I abandoned the idea because I felt like philosophy as a whole does what Yankelevich does here in Boris (“rehearses the problematic”, as you call it. a nice phrase).
But this is off topic and to be honest I’m only bringing it up so that I don’t look like I’m just a flyby, claiming that I read your review just to look smart. But I run the risk of trying to look smart with what I’ve said, so I guess you’ll just have to take my word that I’m being sincere?
I liked the pictures of sloths on the post just before the review.
Not a flame war, no, but “flame wars” by their nature are the proper response to negative reviewing. I don’t see a problem with flame wars: there is this weird assumption that they’re pathological or something. They’re not. They’re just impassioned. And negativity will bring that about. When it comes to attacking a positive review online, there’s a difficult line one needs to negotiate where one doesn’t come over as simply a troll. Criticism of positive reviews exist but they’re far lower-toned because positivity sets off a different affective register, for the most part. So I actually should amend my point a bit because you’re right to say that polarizing authors will bring out flame wars on positive reviews but I see very trenchant and cutting remarks, and disputes about those remarks, made about debut books all the time, just not with the same argumentative dynamic. And as I say, it really depends on what level of book release we’re talking about. Praise of Philip Roth’s latest work gets (a much deserved, in my opinion) caning but it seems ‘not’ a flame war because of the established nature of his work and the ongoing nature of those critiques. Flame wars are predicated also on this weird sense of an ‘event’. Criticism of positive reviewing tend to be more ongoing in their nature precisely because a negative review takes a kind of intervention that begs a type of recoil in response. Positive reviewing may trigger a response from me but the review secures the opinions of the ‘like’ group so, I mean, what’s there to argue about? the authority is intact. So, a clarification: what I’m saying is not that positive reviews cause as much fracas as bad reviews but that it seems to me the argument that there’s some group of people who can’t tolerate bad reviews and do not critique good reviews is baloney. That’s my broader point.
Not a flame war, no, but “flame wars” by their nature are the proper response to negative reviewing. I don’t see a problem with flame wars: there is this weird assumption that they’re pathological or something. They’re not. They’re just impassioned. And negativity will bring that about. When it comes to attacking a positive review online, there’s a difficult line one needs to negotiate where one doesn’t come over as simply a troll. Criticism of positive reviews exist but they’re far lower-toned because positivity sets off a different affective register, for the most part. So I actually should amend my point a bit because you’re right to say that polarizing authors will bring out flame wars on positive reviews but I see very trenchant and cutting remarks, and disputes about those remarks, made about debut books all the time, just not with the same argumentative dynamic. And as I say, it really depends on what level of book release we’re talking about. Praise of Philip Roth’s latest work gets (a much deserved, in my opinion) caning but it seems ‘not’ a flame war because of the established nature of his work and the ongoing nature of those critiques. Flame wars are predicated also on this weird sense of an ‘event’. Criticism of positive reviewing tend to be more ongoing in their nature precisely because a negative review takes a kind of intervention that begs a type of recoil in response. Positive reviewing may trigger a response from me but the review secures the opinions of the ‘like’ group so, I mean, what’s there to argue about? the authority is intact. So, a clarification: what I’m saying is not that positive reviews cause as much fracas as bad reviews but that it seems to me the argument that there’s some group of people who can’t tolerate bad reviews and do not critique good reviews is baloney. That’s my broader point.
when people ask me if sloths are really my favorite animal and i tell them yes, more than an eyebrow is raised.
thanks for the comments, and yeah, maybe off topic (won’t perpetuate it anymore. you should have just written me in the appropriate venue! over there! in that other tab!). but thanks!
also, be thankful you got out early enough.
sincerely,
Shane
when people ask me if sloths are really my favorite animal and i tell them yes, more than an eyebrow is raised.
thanks for the comments, and yeah, maybe off topic (won’t perpetuate it anymore. you should have just written me in the appropriate venue! over there! in that other tab!). but thanks!
also, be thankful you got out early enough.
sincerely,
Shane
I guess what I find interesting is that we seem to hold book reviews to both a higher and a lower standard than reviews in other media. You often hear that book reviews should always add to the understanding of a work, that they should dissect the text directly and at length, that they should be a form of scholarship really. I like reviews like that, but isn’t the most basic function of a review to help a potential buyer decide if they should spend their money on the book/film/album in question?
That does not necessarily require much at all. Indeed, I often find the most helpful “reviews” are actually just the metacritic score to a film or a CD (metacritic tried doing book reviews once, but since every book gets near unanimous positive reviews all the scores were high and it didn’t tell you much.) That is to say, a mere number can do the primary job of a review. Do we really have a problem with knee-jerk, half-formed reviews of the latest Ghostface Killah or Wes Anderson?
Is it because the audience for literature is smaller and thus a negative review is more damaging to an authors career?
Is it because most book reviews are written by authors themselves while most music reviews aren’t written by rock bands and film reviews aren’t written by other directors?
etc.
So why do we expect so much from book reviews when we have no problem with short reviews of films or albums or TV shows?
I guess what I find interesting is that we seem to hold book reviews to both a higher and a lower standard than reviews in other media. You often hear that book reviews should always add to the understanding of a work, that they should dissect the text directly and at length, that they should be a form of scholarship really. I like reviews like that, but isn’t the most basic function of a review to help a potential buyer decide if they should spend their money on the book/film/album in question?
That does not necessarily require much at all. Indeed, I often find the most helpful “reviews” are actually just the metacritic score to a film or a CD (metacritic tried doing book reviews once, but since every book gets near unanimous positive reviews all the scores were high and it didn’t tell you much.) That is to say, a mere number can do the primary job of a review. Do we really have a problem with knee-jerk, half-formed reviews of the latest Ghostface Killah or Wes Anderson?
Is it because the audience for literature is smaller and thus a negative review is more damaging to an authors career?
Is it because most book reviews are written by authors themselves while most music reviews aren’t written by rock bands and film reviews aren’t written by other directors?
etc.
So why do we expect so much from book reviews when we have no problem with short reviews of films or albums or TV shows?
my paragraph order got a tad mixed up there at the end
my paragraph order got a tad mixed up there at the end
So, a clarification: what I’m saying is not that positive reviews cause as much fracas as bad reviews but that it seems to me the argument that there’s some group of people who can’t tolerate bad reviews and do not critique good reviews is baloney. That’s my broader point.
I disagree with you. There may be as many people who are intellectually offended by lazy, half-formed and poorly thought out positive reviews, but those people do not voice their displeasure in writing. The closest thing I’ve seen to this is the screed against hyperbolic blurbs you read now and then, although those are always general discussions and not pointed at singular people or blurbs.
So, a clarification: what I’m saying is not that positive reviews cause as much fracas as bad reviews but that it seems to me the argument that there’s some group of people who can’t tolerate bad reviews and do not critique good reviews is baloney. That’s my broader point.
I disagree with you. There may be as many people who are intellectually offended by lazy, half-formed and poorly thought out positive reviews, but those people do not voice their displeasure in writing. The closest thing I’ve seen to this is the screed against hyperbolic blurbs you read now and then, although those are always general discussions and not pointed at singular people or blurbs.
My favorite review of anything ever was Lynyrd Skynyrd’s review of Neil Young’s “Southern Man.” (Neil Young’s response to “Sweet Home Alabama” was pretty sweet, too: something like “those guys sure can play their guitars.”) Book reviews wield the same words as the books they review. Imagine Roger Ebert making a short movie to review a movie . . . .
My favorite review of anything ever was Lynyrd Skynyrd’s review of Neil Young’s “Southern Man.” (Neil Young’s response to “Sweet Home Alabama” was pretty sweet, too: something like “those guys sure can play their guitars.”) Book reviews wield the same words as the books they review. Imagine Roger Ebert making a short movie to review a movie . . . .
Such a good song well two songs. And by two good songs I mean Alabama and Southern Man, not Skynayrd.
One additional thing I would like to add is that it depends on the venue. Sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with a really positive review. When I personally review something for PANK (for example) I’m not trying to be critical. I only talk about books I love because I have a lot going on and I have neither the inclination nor the energy to write a proper, critical review, good or bad. I’m not trying to be sycophantic. If I love something, I do and I’m happy to share my enthusiasm. What has been interesting is that we just brought on a book reviewer and her first review was not positive and I got more than one e-mail (and not from the writer or publisher, to their credit) expressing… surprise maybe, and I found that response very intriguing, the notion that a positive review is always expected.
Such a good song well two songs. And by two good songs I mean Alabama and Southern Man, not Skynayrd.
One additional thing I would like to add is that it depends on the venue. Sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with a really positive review. When I personally review something for PANK (for example) I’m not trying to be critical. I only talk about books I love because I have a lot going on and I have neither the inclination nor the energy to write a proper, critical review, good or bad. I’m not trying to be sycophantic. If I love something, I do and I’m happy to share my enthusiasm. What has been interesting is that we just brought on a book reviewer and her first review was not positive and I got more than one e-mail (and not from the writer or publisher, to their credit) expressing… surprise maybe, and I found that response very intriguing, the notion that a positive review is always expected.
Fair enough. I disagree that people aren’t voicing their objections to the content and the style of individual positive reviews. Maybe they don’t voice their displeasure in a way that is as emotively obvious, such as the flame wars negative reviewing may create, but that they do make their critiques seems so patent to me I don’t really know where else we have to go. It’s kind of like both of us are standing outside with one of us saying it’s day and the other one say it’s night. Maybe we just read different things at different places, I don’t know.
Fair enough. I disagree that people aren’t voicing their objections to the content and the style of individual positive reviews. Maybe they don’t voice their displeasure in a way that is as emotively obvious, such as the flame wars negative reviewing may create, but that they do make their critiques seems so patent to me I don’t really know where else we have to go. It’s kind of like both of us are standing outside with one of us saying it’s day and the other one say it’s night. Maybe we just read different things at different places, I don’t know.
I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t think they are making the objections at all. A negative reaction to a positive review is very rare, while negative reactions to negative reviews are the norm. I just don’t see the critiques even being made at all (or, rather, pretty rarely), much less as passionately.
But yes to your last part.
I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t think they are making the objections at all. A negative reaction to a positive review is very rare, while negative reactions to negative reviews are the norm. I just don’t see the critiques even being made at all (or, rather, pretty rarely), much less as passionately.
But yes to your last part.
A lot of editors ask for positive reviews.
A lot of writers only review books they like. It takes effort to review a book (see Roxane above, etc.)
I, for one, wouldn’t mind seeing more mixed reviews. It seems most any book would have a mix of glow and gray. I think we enjoy books for the friction, not the butter.
A lot of editors ask for positive reviews.
A lot of writers only review books they like. It takes effort to review a book (see Roxane above, etc.)
I, for one, wouldn’t mind seeing more mixed reviews. It seems most any book would have a mix of glow and gray. I think we enjoy books for the friction, not the butter.
That’s a good point, Roxane. I agree about the time thing, preferring to spend time reviewing the positive (and, for that matter, not wasting my time so much attacking positive reviews of work I don’t like unless they make some outlandishly egregious claim about the superiority of some mediocre book or whatever). It’s a point too that there is a tendency in reviewing to simply not review a book you didn’t like. I don’t think that’s a problem seeing as the point of review, in the dynamic of reviewing a new release, is promotion. Seems sort of sensible really, just to absent your review rather than make some specific point about it, if you aren’t moved to make a specific point about it. It probably accounts for the less common emergence of “negative” reviews. And it’s true you don’t see as many negative reviews, which is why I’d imagine you received notes of surprise right? It would also say a lot about where criticisms of positive reviews do emerge and that’s later on by critics that have a specific analytical objection to a book or a movement or a style’s reception but treat that more comprehensively in an article later. On that point, I’d also want to add that negative reviewing means something quite specific too. It pursues a certain categorical decision against the item being reviewed. That categorical element is what triggers heated debate. Positive reviews tend not to be categorical in that way, more appreciative in a personal sense: in other words, recommendative. Objections to them do arise, I think, regularly, but just not in the same duelling mode of debate.
That’s a good point, Roxane. I agree about the time thing, preferring to spend time reviewing the positive (and, for that matter, not wasting my time so much attacking positive reviews of work I don’t like unless they make some outlandishly egregious claim about the superiority of some mediocre book or whatever). It’s a point too that there is a tendency in reviewing to simply not review a book you didn’t like. I don’t think that’s a problem seeing as the point of review, in the dynamic of reviewing a new release, is promotion. Seems sort of sensible really, just to absent your review rather than make some specific point about it, if you aren’t moved to make a specific point about it. It probably accounts for the less common emergence of “negative” reviews. And it’s true you don’t see as many negative reviews, which is why I’d imagine you received notes of surprise right? It would also say a lot about where criticisms of positive reviews do emerge and that’s later on by critics that have a specific analytical objection to a book or a movement or a style’s reception but treat that more comprehensively in an article later. On that point, I’d also want to add that negative reviewing means something quite specific too. It pursues a certain categorical decision against the item being reviewed. That categorical element is what triggers heated debate. Positive reviews tend not to be categorical in that way, more appreciative in a personal sense: in other words, recommendative. Objections to them do arise, I think, regularly, but just not in the same duelling mode of debate.
Rebekah, I shit you not, I was thinking why was Rebekah mentioned even before seeing your comment. You are a local here, and not just to Jimmy (and me).
Rebekah, I shit you not, I was thinking why was Rebekah mentioned even before seeing your comment. You are a local here, and not just to Jimmy (and me).
um that would be “not mentioned”
i’m hammered
um that would be “not mentioned”
i’m hammered
exactly. how many movies would we enjoy more if friends weren’t yapping about how “FUCKING GREAT” they are man you just have to see it and you won’t believe it blah blah
Let’s rip the hell out of everything, denigrate to the nth, enjoy nothing, be excited about absolute zero, and die miserable
exactly. how many movies would we enjoy more if friends weren’t yapping about how “FUCKING GREAT” they are man you just have to see it and you won’t believe it blah blah
Let’s rip the hell out of everything, denigrate to the nth, enjoy nothing, be excited about absolute zero, and die miserable
Please see above, where David Erlewine makes my day.
Please see above, where David Erlewine makes my day.
Southern Man is one of the best songs ever written. Going to play Ol’ Neil right now.
Holy moley. Let’s just chat a minute about how much awesome there is going on in this thread. It’s way rad. I feel happy. I rode the bus after work and then this was waiting for me.
Southern Man is one of the best songs ever written. Going to play Ol’ Neil right now.
Holy moley. Let’s just chat a minute about how much awesome there is going on in this thread. It’s way rad. I feel happy. I rode the bus after work and then this was waiting for me.
Ain’t you nice, Rebekah. Thank you. No one has ever had their day made by me, until now. As a lawyer, I’ve ruined so many days for so many people.
Thank you for posting that. I am now going to sue someone, maybe an old kind woman, to restore balance to the world.
Sincerely though thanks! D
Ain’t you nice, Rebekah. Thank you. No one has ever had their day made by me, until now. As a lawyer, I’ve ruined so many days for so many people.
Thank you for posting that. I am now going to sue someone, maybe an old kind woman, to restore balance to the world.
Sincerely though thanks! D
Interesting, Sean. Maybe I’m weighing too many of the NYTBR and Wash Post reviews, but it seems like no reviewer ever gives a fully positive review. Even when it’s clear they love the book, they, seemingly to appear in favor of eschewing sycophantry (?), they ding the writing/writer on some key points and wish them well doing better next time
I’ve tried to do mixed reviews. People get all hurt over those as well.
I don’t write reviews anymore.
Interesting, Sean. Maybe I’m weighing too many of the NYTBR and Wash Post reviews, but it seems like no reviewer ever gives a fully positive review. Even when it’s clear they love the book, they, seemingly to appear in favor of eschewing sycophantry (?), they ding the writing/writer on some key points and wish them well doing better next time
I’ve tried to do mixed reviews. People get all hurt over those as well.
I don’t write reviews anymore.
i believe it, bac.
people are weak. i’m weak. i wish that wasn’t the case. i’ve often thought the same thing that makes me want to write makes me not want to write “real” reviews.
i believe it, bac.
people are weak. i’m weak. i wish that wasn’t the case. i’ve often thought the same thing that makes me want to write makes me not want to write “real” reviews.
Please don’t sue her. It’ll ruin tomorrow. You’re a lawyer?
Please don’t sue her. It’ll ruin tomorrow. You’re a lawyer?
i can’t help reading a little of max’s (rushmore) into your voice, demanding to know if i’m a lawyer. hee hee
i am a lawyer. i will sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress. i tell that to people reading my stories on zoetrope. they say they like my stories. we’re all happy.
i can’t help reading a little of max’s (rushmore) into your voice, demanding to know if i’m a lawyer. hee hee
i am a lawyer. i will sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress. i tell that to people reading my stories on zoetrope. they say they like my stories. we’re all happy.
Rebekah- no slight intended, I was just working quickly. We love it when you come over and hang out with us! For serious.
Rebekah- no slight intended, I was just working quickly. We love it when you come over and hang out with us! For serious.
[…] HTML Giant – Vanity Fair or Unfair? […]
I think I like Alabama even better
I think I like Alabama even better
just listened to it again. the wheel in the ditch and a wheel on the track still gets it done. people at the gym used to rip on me for getting psyched to “cinnamon girl.”
and if we’re talking neil young … “old man” must enter the conversation.
just listened to it again. the wheel in the ditch and a wheel on the track still gets it done. people at the gym used to rip on me for getting psyched to “cinnamon girl.”
and if we’re talking neil young … “old man” must enter the conversation.
Nester vs. Altschul is entertaining.
Nester vs. Altschul is entertaining.
Athough I’m not sure how I feel about how you contributed to my loss of enthusiasm for editing a lit site, Mr. Erlewine, I’m sure I’ll thank you if your replies ‘neath every lil’ thing I post dissuade me from too often posting on this clusterflock.
Athough I’m not sure how I feel about how you contributed to my loss of enthusiasm for editing a lit site, Mr. Erlewine, I’m sure I’ll thank you if your replies ‘neath every lil’ thing I post dissuade me from too often posting on this clusterflock.
yeah, and I just received my copy of Artifice and it is amazing.
yeah, and I just received my copy of Artifice and it is amazing.
Oh no! I need to click on the link next time to see who is posting! Had I known that was you, I would have been more wary. And it saddens me to know that I contributed, even a little, to the death of Eyeshot.
I’m torn, Lee. More and more I’m coming to the conclusion that “glowing” reviews don’t help me as a writer. Maybe I’m turning Darby. However, I still think that for me, an admitted “hobby” writer, there is something wonderful about loving something uncritically. I guess I deal with enough negativity at work that sometimes I just like to enjoy a story/novel/movie and not critically analyze it. My sister in law is an English Lit PHD and now an English Lit professor. To hear her tell it, nearly every other English Lit PHD finds nothing to love in anything written. I never want to be that way, even if it means never getting a fully-functioning bullshit detector.
Oh no! I need to click on the link next time to see who is posting! Had I known that was you, I would have been more wary. And it saddens me to know that I contributed, even a little, to the death of Eyeshot.
I’m torn, Lee. More and more I’m coming to the conclusion that “glowing” reviews don’t help me as a writer. Maybe I’m turning Darby. However, I still think that for me, an admitted “hobby” writer, there is something wonderful about loving something uncritically. I guess I deal with enough negativity at work that sometimes I just like to enjoy a story/novel/movie and not critically analyze it. My sister in law is an English Lit PHD and now an English Lit professor. To hear her tell it, nearly every other English Lit PHD finds nothing to love in anything written. I never want to be that way, even if it means never getting a fully-functioning bullshit detector.
And don’t think I’m not reading an anti-stuttering dig at me into your new name. My God man, I over submitted to your journal. I apologize. There is no reason to dredge my “disability” into this.
And don’t think I’m not reading an anti-stuttering dig at me into your new name. My God man, I over submitted to your journal. I apologize. There is no reason to dredge my “disability” into this.
Ha. I was going for a Mark E. Smith impersonation thing with the name. Didn’t consider any offense re: stuttering. I’m kidding about Eyeshot, I think. Otherwise, re: reviews, most everyone who writes does so because reading made them “glow” at some point. I feel like “glowing” reviews for stuff that most people would find mediocre/dun-colored (not “luminous” etc) undermine the original spark that made you, for example, want to write as “a hobby.” I even feel that writing a “glowing” review to win favor of a writer or even support a friend is a sin unless the glow that inspires the review is honestly evangelical, and even then there should be disclaimers for transparency’s sake. Honesty = best policy.
Ha. I was going for a Mark E. Smith impersonation thing with the name. Didn’t consider any offense re: stuttering. I’m kidding about Eyeshot, I think. Otherwise, re: reviews, most everyone who writes does so because reading made them “glow” at some point. I feel like “glowing” reviews for stuff that most people would find mediocre/dun-colored (not “luminous” etc) undermine the original spark that made you, for example, want to write as “a hobby.” I even feel that writing a “glowing” review to win favor of a writer or even support a friend is a sin unless the glow that inspires the review is honestly evangelical, and even then there should be disclaimers for transparency’s sake. Honesty = best policy.
Oh yes, I agree. Some reviews are clearly written by “friends” or those wanting to be.
And, ha, no offense taken re the stutter. I know any such insult on that ground would be far more subtle and insidious. For example your use of “I think” is wonderful.
Oh yes, I agree. Some reviews are clearly written by “friends” or those wanting to be.
And, ha, no offense taken re the stutter. I know any such insult on that ground would be far more subtle and insidious. For example your use of “I think” is wonderful.
Hooray! Now MY vanity’s been stroked. I feel happy. (THANKS ADAM!)
Hooray! Now MY vanity’s been stroked. I feel happy. (THANKS ADAM!)
Indeed, the Skynyrd-Young back and forth was great.
Here’s a “thorough” examination: http://www.thrasherswheat.org/jammin/lynyrd.htm
Indeed, the Skynyrd-Young back and forth was great.
Here’s a “thorough” examination: http://www.thrasherswheat.org/jammin/lynyrd.htm
from that link:
It seems that whatever grudges Lynyrd Skynyrd had for Neil’s music may have been resolved – if there ever was any feud to begin with. From an interview with Ronnie Van Zant:
“We wrote Alabama as a joke. We didn’t even think about it – the words just came out that way. We just laughed like hell, and said ‘Ain’t that funny’… We love Neil Young, we love his music…”
from that link:
It seems that whatever grudges Lynyrd Skynyrd had for Neil’s music may have been resolved – if there ever was any feud to begin with. From an interview with Ronnie Van Zant:
“We wrote Alabama as a joke. We didn’t even think about it – the words just came out that way. We just laughed like hell, and said ‘Ain’t that funny’… We love Neil Young, we love his music…”
Wasn’t it Godard that said the best way to criticize a film was to make another film? I’ve always liked that idea.
Wasn’t it Godard that said the best way to criticize a film was to make another film? I’ve always liked that idea.
I’ve always wanted to use the great Max Fisher line “Can I see some documentation?” in real life. Perhaps some day I’ll get my chance.
I’ve always wanted to use the great Max Fisher line “Can I see some documentation?” in real life. Perhaps some day I’ll get my chance.