May 11th, 2010 / 11:39 am
Snippets
Snippets
Justin Taylor—
Consider this a PS to this morning’s roundup: Emily Gould’s And the Heart Says Whatever, written by Eryn Loeb for The Rumpus. It’s not a review, exactly, and neither is it quite a personal essay (it’s also not quite not one) but it is both clear-eyed and well-intentioned, which is more than can be said for most of what’s been written about And the Heart (cf. Ana Marie Cox in Bookforum, which Loeb discusses at some length).
I read Cox’s review, which she linked to. Seemed evenhanded and not at all “peeved” or “finger-wagging” let alone savage. Loeb’s review on the other hand feels like (and she in fact admits as much) a result of years of identification with the author and doesn’t seem trustworthy. I haven’t read Gould’s book and probably won’t get a chance for a while (although I mean to at some point) so no stake there. Did you read it, Justin?
I haven’t read Gould’s book, but I did read the Cox review. I thought it was astonishing in its obviously feigned hand-wringing, among other things. Ugly stuff, imho. What’s more, I thought that Bookforum’s decision to publish the “review” over a month in advance of the actual publication date of the book was extremely unsporting of them. Now granted, Bookforum is a bi-monthly, so a book with a May 4th pub-date is necessarily going to be reviewed early, late, or not at all, but I thought the decision they made was the wrong one. Early praise of a book is always welcome, but an early take-down seems to me very much like a premeditated attack, perpetrated by a partisan whose motives are something other than the civilized disagreement or genuine aesthetic/ethical difference that traditionally incline people toward criticism.
I read Cox’s review, which she linked to. Seemed evenhanded and not at all “peeved” or “finger-wagging” let alone savage. Loeb’s review on the other hand feels like (and she in fact admits as much) a result of years of identification with the author and doesn’t seem trustworthy. I haven’t read Gould’s book and probably won’t get a chance for a while (although I mean to at some point) so no stake there. Did you read it, Justin?
Interesting–I thought Cox’s review seemed like she was holding back out of loyalty. Like she really hated the book but was trying to find nice things to say about it nonetheless.
In reading Loeb’s complaint, I thought, in a roundabout way, she actually arrives at the same main point that Cox makes: to reveal something is not the same thing as a revelation. The difference is Cox found this maddening; Loeb found meaningful distinctions.
I haven’t read Gould’s book, but I did read the Cox review. I thought it was astonishing in its obviously feigned hand-wringing, among other things. Ugly stuff, imho. What’s more, I thought that Bookforum’s decision to publish the “review” over a month in advance of the actual publication date of the book was extremely unsporting of them. Now granted, Bookforum is a bi-monthly, so a book with a May 4th pub-date is necessarily going to be reviewed early, late, or not at all, but I thought the decision they made was the wrong one. Early praise of a book is always welcome, but an early take-down seems to me very much like a premeditated attack, perpetrated by a partisan whose motives are something other than the civilized disagreement or genuine aesthetic/ethical difference that traditionally incline people toward criticism.
“but an early take-down seems to me very much like a premeditated attack, perpetrated by a partisan whose motives are something other than the civilized disagreement or genuine aesthetic/ethical difference that traditionally incline people toward criticism.”
I think that borders on ridiculous, to be honest, unless it’s clear that Bookforum assigned the book to Cox absolutely knowing she’d write a take-down. Books get assigned to reviewers, reviewers write their reviews. So long as the editor believes that the reviewer successfully argued their points in a meaningful way, the review gets published.
With the logic above, Bookforum, or any other reviewing outlet, especially those that typically do concentrate on reviewing books prior to, or right at, publication dates, would need to line up somewhere between 1.5 to 3 times the number of reviews they plan on publishing just to make sure that they don’t publish anything negative.
That’s not to say that I don’t believe there are editors out there that assign books to reviewers that they know are going to have big problems with the writing, or the ideas, within – I think that concept is absolutely ridiculous and done with the idea that such a review will bring readers. Those reviews typically don’t feel very well written or argued to me.
Interesting–I thought Cox’s review seemed like she was holding back out of loyalty. Like she really hated the book but was trying to find nice things to say about it nonetheless.
In reading Loeb’s complaint, I thought, in a roundabout way, she actually arrives at the same main point that Cox makes: to reveal something is not the same thing as a revelation. The difference is Cox found this maddening; Loeb found meaningful distinctions.
I think the Rumpus piece is spot on that Cox used Gould’s book as “a pretext to be dismissive,
dickish, and haughty about our oversharing, blog-based culture.”
“but an early take-down seems to me very much like a premeditated attack, perpetrated by a partisan whose motives are something other than the civilized disagreement or genuine aesthetic/ethical difference that traditionally incline people toward criticism.”
I think that borders on ridiculous, to be honest, unless it’s clear that Bookforum assigned the book to Cox absolutely knowing she’d write a take-down. Books get assigned to reviewers, reviewers write their reviews. So long as the editor believes that the reviewer successfully argued their points in a meaningful way, the review gets published.
With the logic above, Bookforum, or any other reviewing outlet, especially those that typically do concentrate on reviewing books prior to, or right at, publication dates, would need to line up somewhere between 1.5 to 3 times the number of reviews they plan on publishing just to make sure that they don’t publish anything negative.
That’s not to say that I don’t believe there are editors out there that assign books to reviewers that they know are going to have big problems with the writing, or the ideas, within – I think that concept is absolutely ridiculous and done with the idea that such a review will bring readers. Those reviews typically don’t feel very well written or argued to me.
I think the Rumpus piece is spot on that Cox used Gould’s book as “a pretext to be dismissive,
dickish, and haughty about our oversharing, blog-based culture.”