the reviewer's dilemma

[calimac]

I've come across a quote in my files that addresses a problem I find acute as a reader of book reviews, at least of fiction, and which I try (not very successfully, I'm afraid) to avoid when writing them. Reviewers tend to grade on a curve, praising the merely OK or even mediocre in the absence of anything better. (Authors think that reviewers are cruel, but they're at the other end of the stick.) As a result, I find it hard to tell when a novel is really good or merely pleasant reading. Here's the quote, the beginning of a review:

A reviewer tries to exercise relative judgment. In a year (like most years, it must be admitted) when nothing is, in the eyes of the Ages, of the absolute first rank, he recommends and praises the best of what's available. But then what does he do when he's present (or so he thinks) at the birth of one of the pure unquestionable classics of the century?

What happened ... when the mystery reviewers who had been praising Fletcher and Van Dine met up with Dashiell Hammett? How did the drama reviewers of the turn of the century differentiate between the relatively commendable plays of Jones and Pinero and the masterpieces of George Bernard Shaw? What did musical comedy reviewers who had lauded Rio Rita and My Maryland say when they heard Show Boat?

Well, to be honest, the answer is that in most cases they saw no marked difference in kind; critical hindsight has its advantages over the contemporary reviewer.

Still, I wish I could readily establish some kind of qualitative differentiation between my praise of the average good (or even very good) fantasy novel and my urgent recommendation of ...

OK, trivia fans: Who wrote this, and what book was he about to praise?

Comments

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

Given your interests, I'm guessing he's about to praise Lord of the Rings. Surely not some awful, forgettable fantasy, I hope. I can't even make a guess at the critic's name (well, I could, but I don't think I know any. Robert Benchley, maybe?).

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I was going to make the same suggestion as vgqn, that the work was The Lord of the Rings. Wasn't there a famour review of it in The New Yorker that put the work on the American literary map, so to speak?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

W.H. Auden reviewed it for the NY Times, but I've read that review, and this isn't it. (At least I don't remember this part.)

[emerdavid.livejournal.com]

My first reaction was that it could *not* have been "Lord of the Rings", which was generally ignored or panned by critics at its first release.

Given the perversity of the universe and the frequent absurdity of past judgements in light of present insight, I would have guessed something by Terry Brooks or Piers Anthony.