reviewing the situation
Mar. 4th, 2011 08:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacA number of authors on LJ have been posting statements pledging not to mind bad reviews of their novels. Admirable of them, I suppose, but perhaps a little beyond what is called for. It does give me an opportunity to talk about authors who do mind, and what they mind about them.
Sometimes I have seen authors complain about reviewers who appear not actually to have read the book, or, if they have, to give an impression of not having read it even more remarkable if that's not the case. I can rarely comment on these, since it's not always easy to find the review even when I've read the novel myself. I've seen little of this particular complaint online, and authors discussing this in print are understandably reluctant to quote liberally or give citations.
The most infamous such case I do know is that of Edmund Wilson's review of The Lord of the Rings.. (Though in this case the author is not known to have made any comment beyond "The Lord of the Rings is one of those things: if you like it you do; if you don't, then you boo!") Wilson's inability to see what was right in front of his nose, down to and including the spelling of the characters' names, was so staggering in a reviewer who claimed to have read the entire book aloud to his children, that in the long run it's hurt his once-towering reputation a lot more than it has Tolkien's. When a review is that incompetent, it's wise for the author to swallow pride, keep silent, and let your friends console you.
What I've seen more often - but not from the authors taking the pledge - is denunciations of reviewers, the whole pack of them. This often approaches hypocrisy, because the same authors seem very happy with the perception and wisdom of reviewers who like their work. A couple oft-repeated of these denunciations are particularly foolish. The composer Jan Sibelius famously said, "Nobody ever put up a statue to a critic." That's not actually literally true (see the comments here), and while the ability to be a great creative artist and a great critic do not often coincide, sometimes they do - Bernard Shaw was one, C.S. Lewis another, and among composers, Robert Schumann in particular - and they could get statues, back when statues were fashionable. More pertinently, critics aren't in the business of being deemed worthy of statues. They're in the business of deeming who is.
The other silly authorial remark about critics is the one about how they're like eunuchs in the harem: they can observe, but they can't do. Again, that's not always true: see the above critics who can do both. But it's also really beside the point. Sure, there are reviewers who reek of petty jealousy; they're called bad reviewers, just as there's such a thing as bad novelists. But that's not the cause of all negative reviews: more usually, the reviewer simply didn't like the book. And most reviewers are what I used to say on convention panels when asked to define myself as a reviewer. A reviewer is just a reader: an articulate reader with a forum. (These days you don't even need a forum: see the Web.) An author who disdains reviewers on that ground disdains their readers, because every reader has a reaction to the book, even if they don't write it. If you only want to be read by people who can create fiction as well as you can, you're going to have a mightily small readership. (And if you really are a good author, even smaller.)
Then there's the "I cried all the way to the bank" approach, which is to say, so what if the reviews are bad, you do sell lots of copies, even so. True enough, but also beside the point, since the reviewer isn't denying your sales, just criticizing your work. If sales are the mark of achievement, wouldn't you like it if the same book minus its flaws had sold even better? And for anyone who really just wants to make money, there are other careers more remunerative and less challenging than even best-seller authorhood.
Authors may be well advised not to read their reviews; it depends on the author. Not just bad reviews: a really perceptive review, or critical article, that points out unconscious patterns and themes in your work may make you self-conscious of them, like the centipede that suddenly realizes it has no idea how it manages to walk, and then can't move a step. Or too glowing a review may make you too self-critical of your next work. Other authors can learn from their reviewers, and I hope they do.
Sometimes I have seen authors complain about reviewers who appear not actually to have read the book, or, if they have, to give an impression of not having read it even more remarkable if that's not the case. I can rarely comment on these, since it's not always easy to find the review even when I've read the novel myself. I've seen little of this particular complaint online, and authors discussing this in print are understandably reluctant to quote liberally or give citations.
The most infamous such case I do know is that of Edmund Wilson's review of The Lord of the Rings.. (Though in this case the author is not known to have made any comment beyond "The Lord of the Rings is one of those things: if you like it you do; if you don't, then you boo!") Wilson's inability to see what was right in front of his nose, down to and including the spelling of the characters' names, was so staggering in a reviewer who claimed to have read the entire book aloud to his children, that in the long run it's hurt his once-towering reputation a lot more than it has Tolkien's. When a review is that incompetent, it's wise for the author to swallow pride, keep silent, and let your friends console you.
What I've seen more often - but not from the authors taking the pledge - is denunciations of reviewers, the whole pack of them. This often approaches hypocrisy, because the same authors seem very happy with the perception and wisdom of reviewers who like their work. A couple oft-repeated of these denunciations are particularly foolish. The composer Jan Sibelius famously said, "Nobody ever put up a statue to a critic." That's not actually literally true (see the comments here), and while the ability to be a great creative artist and a great critic do not often coincide, sometimes they do - Bernard Shaw was one, C.S. Lewis another, and among composers, Robert Schumann in particular - and they could get statues, back when statues were fashionable. More pertinently, critics aren't in the business of being deemed worthy of statues. They're in the business of deeming who is.
The other silly authorial remark about critics is the one about how they're like eunuchs in the harem: they can observe, but they can't do. Again, that's not always true: see the above critics who can do both. But it's also really beside the point. Sure, there are reviewers who reek of petty jealousy; they're called bad reviewers, just as there's such a thing as bad novelists. But that's not the cause of all negative reviews: more usually, the reviewer simply didn't like the book. And most reviewers are what I used to say on convention panels when asked to define myself as a reviewer. A reviewer is just a reader: an articulate reader with a forum. (These days you don't even need a forum: see the Web.) An author who disdains reviewers on that ground disdains their readers, because every reader has a reaction to the book, even if they don't write it. If you only want to be read by people who can create fiction as well as you can, you're going to have a mightily small readership. (And if you really are a good author, even smaller.)
Then there's the "I cried all the way to the bank" approach, which is to say, so what if the reviews are bad, you do sell lots of copies, even so. True enough, but also beside the point, since the reviewer isn't denying your sales, just criticizing your work. If sales are the mark of achievement, wouldn't you like it if the same book minus its flaws had sold even better? And for anyone who really just wants to make money, there are other careers more remunerative and less challenging than even best-seller authorhood.
Authors may be well advised not to read their reviews; it depends on the author. Not just bad reviews: a really perceptive review, or critical article, that points out unconscious patterns and themes in your work may make you self-conscious of them, like the centipede that suddenly realizes it has no idea how it manages to walk, and then can't move a step. Or too glowing a review may make you too self-critical of your next work. Other authors can learn from their reviewers, and I hope they do.
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Date: 2011-03-04 07:40 pm (UTC)But that didn't seem to be the case in that particular review. I wish I still had the magazine at hand. But since I had read the book in toto, I found the claim that it was impossible to read dubioius. Like I said, since I had read the whole, I could see what points might not satisfy a Western reader, and wouldn't have minded if they had actually been cited as causes. But that wasn't what Morris did: it was a rather short, curt "This bored me, and I didn't finish it." I got the feeling that she hadn't even begun reading the book until shortly before the review was due. I had been tracking the title's release because I'd seen advance notice of it in Publishers Weekly, so I was on top of the book well before the review came out.
On top of that, we're not talking about some obscure Japanese novel. This was the book that got called "the Japanese Gone With the Wind", a novel that had, by the time the English translation was published (the first such, remember), inspired nine films adapting the whole or parts of it. It was a work that deserved a complete read, whether one liked it or not.
Heh. Yeah. Guess I'm still worked up about it, for this specific instance.
On principle though, I concede the point that "Could not finish this," with an explanation of why, can provide a legitimate review.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-05 05:11 am (UTC)