13 Ways of Looking at Reviewing
I.
So there’s one way I can talk about this and it’s this: Jordan and I were talking the other day about how our values differ. Jordan values things like consensus, peace, getting along, happiness, puppies (he really likes puppies), and hugs.
I value excellence, honesty, and justice. Also, cats, fidelity, and tongue kisses. But mostly excellence, honesty, and justice.
Really. I realize that sounds ridiculous. But, were I to have a coat of arms, it would look like this:
Jordan says that my life won’t be easy with values like mine.
I’m inclined to agree.
II.
I’m thirteen or fourteen and I read the Star-Ledger every morning—the comics section, the entertainment news. One Sunday there’s a review by a guy named Jay Lustig where he pans a Hanson concert. He looks long and hard at the production values, the tinny quality of the music, the poor job these teenage boys did of lip-synching.
One week later, the paper prints a half-dozen angry letters written by girls my age. How dare he?! they demand. Just who does he think he is?! These are teenage boys! They shouldn’t be judged by someone who doesn’t make music himself! And so on. And so forth.
So I write the Star-Ledger a letter. I thank Lustig for respecting the Hanson brothers enough to review them as professionals, without cutting them slack because of their age. I thank him for being detailed and specific in explaining his feelings. I thank him for writing a solid, interesting review. And I write that I hope he doesn’t feel that all teen girls are incapable of appreciating excellent reviewing.
A few years later, one of my classmates brings me a newspaper clipping. She found it in a notebook at the back of her closet. She’d read it, and saved it. It’s my letter to Lustig. I never even knew it made it into the newspaper. My first piece of published writing. In praise of a negative review.
III.
It all went downhill when Arturo died.
Lustig’s name isn’t the only one I remember from that time. There’s Stephen Whitty’s pleasantly grumpy film reviews. And Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall. My Star-Ledger friends; my morning friends, what I woke up with before I drank coffee. Before there’s caffeine, there’s them, convincing me to take a step back and look at things a new way: yes, Sliders really wasn’t much more than squandered potential. Yes, Sports Night was much less awkward without the laugh track.
They make me appreciate these things more deeply. They make me think in a way I hadn’t before.
And I love it.
IV.
I’m a Siskel girl. I’ll always be a Siskel girl. He hates more things than he loves, and so it feels earned when he does love things, and so I understand him better. We have the same sonar, so to speak.
But perhaps Ebert is more relevant to this discussion. After all, Ebert wrote a screenplay. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. A finger in two dikes. A two-faced man. An artist (?), and a critic. The most dangerous kind of creature.
V.
Also Randall Jarrell. Also TS Eliot. Also Ezra Pound. Also my teacher, William Logan, whose Google alerts might be sounding in his mailbox right now. And Harold Bloom. And Stephen King. And Orson Scott Card, who I’ve heard reviews everything. John Gardner. There must be more.
You might say, wait, these men were or are institutions. They can say what they want.
You wouldn’t be wrong.
VI.
She's all like, please, bitches, can we just call a Utopia a Utopia?
Whose career would you emulate? Who is your model of ambition? If you had to travel a path which was not your own, which fairer road would you . . . ?
My answers are all women whose lives and work seem to exemplify the qualities I admire most: excellence, honesty, justice. Ursula K. Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Nancy Kress.
Fearless, fearless women—and it’s well deserved, because their careers are shining examples of intellectual and creative excellence.
They have nothing to fear. What can anyone say that would cut them down? You can’t. They might as well be made of carbon steel.
VII.
You must understand that with all of these people, I don’t always agree with their tastes. But I respect and admire the way that they explicate them.
IX.
About the women, I guess you could say that they exemplify the traits seen as “bitchy” in our society too. I mean, I know bitchy. I was a Hillary supporter.
But was Jarrell a bitch? Eliot? Pound? William or Stephen or Orson or John? Are men bitchy when they stridently speak their minds, shamelessly striving for excellence? When they openly criticize and/or critique each other? Are men told, “You catch more flies with honey”?
And why do we police other women? Why do people seem to care if women have an opinion of one another’s work? Was Ebert told, well, go ahead and speak your mind as long as you never try to make it in Hollywood?
X.
People have given me criticism that was clever, cutting, and snarky. Sometimes it hurts. I rage, cry, gnash teeth, and rend garments. I have this good friend, Pat (hi, Pat!), who often tells me his thoughts on my books in the worst possible way.
After a few days of hating my writing, and kind of hating Pat a bit, I often realize he’s right. Or at least, I can see where he’s coming from—I know his tastes as a reader, and understand his perspective. He’s perceptive, even if I don’t agree with him.
Then we sit down and have beers together. You are not obligated to like everything I do in order to be my friend. In fact, I would find such obsequiousness kind of creepy.
I have a feeling it will go the same way when I’m published. I’ll rage, then burn, burn about the negative reviews. And then I’ll get over it, learn from it, move on.
And if I ever run into you, and you’ve panned me? I don’t know. I’ll probably have a beer with you. We’ll have a loud, passionate debate about something stupid. That’s how I roll.
One of the people pictured believed that my last book was not a novel. That's okay. I still love him.
XI.
Love.
As a long-time lover of books and reviews both, I understand that even the most cutting negative review comes from a place of affection, a place of love. Maybe not for the author, but for the book, and what it could have been, even if it was not.
I think in reading we seek out a sort of platonic ideal of a book. I think even the most jaded Siskel is actually saddened, deep down, when a work of art has not exceeded his expectations. Every new book is like a first date. Every review? A love letter of sorts. We want to share with the world the pain or the joy of a love either fulfilled or unfulfilled.
Sometimes it seems to me that, with GoodReads and book blogs and amazon reviews, the world is a scary place for authors now. It’s like your exboyfriend is telling everyone on the internet all the things he didn’t like about you. This is art, and not a private life, but still, I suspect it feels that way.
I think it helps that you understand that readers—professional or amateur—are doing this out of love. Maybe not for you, but for your book. They want to love your book. They want to be surprised. Sure, some of them are hardened, jaded, snarky, cynical. But they wouldn’t be reading it at all if they hadn’t, at some point, hoped to love your book.
XII.
A few weeks ago I visited my mother. She subscribes to O, and I read it in the bathtub, and there was a Jay-Z quote, which I’ll paraphrase: “I learned early in my career that it would be easy to be famous as someone else. I didn’t want that. It’s not worth it. I want to be famous as me.”
XIII.
None of what I say matters.
Some people will despise me. Some people will find me presumptuous, pretentious, and cloying. Maybe they’ll think I’m a bitch. Maybe they’ll think I’m destroying my career. Maybe agents or editors who don’t understand will shut their doors to me. But I hope there are agents and editors out there who understand. I hope there’s room for passionate, honest, and vocal people in the world of publishing.
At twenty-seven, I’m still young, but I’ll say this: reviewing has been good to me, and I love it. Fiction has been good to me, and I love it, too. For the time being, I still feel I must strive for the qualities I admire most in others and myself: excellence, honesty, justice.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Phoebe
Phoebe is a 20-something writer who lives in New York State with her husband and cat. She is a dork, not a geek or a nerd.
Her debut novel, Starglass, will be released from Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers in Summer 2013.
23 comments
This is a really thoughtful, thought-provoking post, but I'll just comment on one thing. I don't think every reviewer wants to love a book. I think a lot of reviewers come to the table looking for something to bash, something they can use to make "LOLZ" and draw blog traffic.
And I think those are the people who ruin it for everyone else. Which makes your post that much more important.
Hey Kate, thanks for the comment!
I can only talk from my experiences, both personally and based on what I’ve seen and discussed with other (even snarky) reviewers. I think that a reviewer is always open to having their mind changed–and amazing art can persuade even the most cynical reviewer. For example, there’s a great series of reviews called Mark Reads. They started out as out-and-out snarking on Twilight. And it’s the stuff that writers worry the most about: someone posting just to make fun of their work.
Then someone suggested he read Harry Potter. It starts out snarky, but then . . .
he ended up loving the entire series! His blog suddenly became a celebration of the books! He goes through the entire series not once, but twice, in detail, because he loves them.
I’ve also seen lambastings that authors bristled against but clearly came from a place of wanting to explore a book and its sociological impact–which is at the very least a place of respect, if not love.
I guess my question would be, how can you tell the difference? My suspicion is that readings of critical work change if you view the reviewer as someone who is almost inevitably willing to love something as someone predisposed to haterade.
That's true– it's not up to me to judge a reviewer's motives. I just bitched about that other day, about the concept that people will disregard my recommendations of crit partners' books b/c they'll think I'm fawning over friends, when in fact we're friends and crit partners b/c I think they're so damn talented in the first place.
But it's subjective, just like the books reviewed in the first place. There's a point at which tone or personal attacks trump the actual criticism. At that point, I'm no longer interested in what the reviewer's saying, because I don't trust him/her to tell me the truth anymore.
That line's going to vary for everyone, obviously. And one overly snarky review doesn't make me distrust a reviewer's motives. But if every single review on their blog crosses that personal line? Yeah, I start to wonder what their real motive is.
I'd like to believe that the majority of reviewers do so for love of books, but I think there are also some who love internet fame and blog hits. Same as I think there are writers who write b/c they love it, and writers who write to make money. It's that gray area in between that's hard to navigate– and why I'm not a big fan of blanket advice like "no negative reviews ever," even if I don't write them myself.
(To be fair, I don't write reviews at all, because I don't enjoy it.
It's not a moral stance or anything.)
That’s all fair! I think the line can be pretty subjective and we are, of course, naturally biased by our past experiences with reviews and with specific reviewers.
I just bitched about that other day, about the concept that people will disregard my recommendations of crit partners’ books b/c they’ll think I’m fawning over friends, when in fact we’re friends and crit partners b/c I think they’re so damn talented in the first place.
Heh, yeah, that’s always hard. I’ve reviewed acquaintances books before (see my review of Like Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard) with lots of disclosures and caveats. But I do see the possibility of someday writing something like, “I can’t review this objectively, but I absolutely love it.” When it comes down to it, if someone doesn’t trust my opinion then? Not much you can do!
Oh, and I don’t think anyone is ever obligated to write reviews. If for no other reason than that they’re damned hard work!
Ha, Kirsten was the author I was referencing too.
Our tastes seem to run pretty similar grooves, so I was holding my breath waiting for your LM review. Once you get all the friendships and agencies and houses and crit groups thrown in, it's a mess. Everyone should have a "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" disclaimer on their reviews. 
DOH OH MY GOD. For some reason I didn’t look at your email and realize you’re that Kate.
That’s what I get for responding to blog comments at 2am-ish. Sorry
I love this. And I’d like to write a longer comment but just… I love this. It sums up so much of what I’m feeling about reviewing especially the part about Love. It’s why it’s so hard for me to walk away from what I’m doing even though in nearly every respect it looks more and more like that’s the best choice.
There is so much to think about. I’m proud of you for continuing to review and I hope I can be that brave also.
Hehe, I was just about to e-mail you the link. I’m glad you enjoyed it. I realized that I could have written another straight-forward account of the benefits reviewing has had for me, but I wanted to talk more about the emotions surrounding it–which, for those who love critical writing, can run pretty deep.
There are about a dozen (or maybe I should say thirteen…) really great points in this, but I want to focus on two…
<blockquote cite="">As a long-time lover of books and reviews both, I understand that even the most cutting negative review comes from a place of affection, a place of love. Maybe not for the author, but for the book, and what it could have been, even if it was not.
Yes. The one thing that makes me want to really, unashamedly rip into a book is laziness. If I think the author didn't give a damn about their characters or their story, I see red. But if somebody honestly tried, I don't get angry at the book. Instead I always feel disappointed that there's a story out there that could have been more than it is.
Which I never fully realised until I read your post, so thanks for that!
And secondly…
<blockquote cite="">Also Randall Jarrell. Also TS Eliot. Also Ezra Pound. Also my teacher, William Logan, whose Google alerts might be sounding in his mailbox right now. And Harold Bloom. And Stephen King. And Orson Scott Card, who I’ve heard reviews everything. John Gardner. There must be more.
I kept forgetting to mention him, but Patrick Ness reviews for The Guardian (a British newspaper). Sometimes he does reviews that make the author mad! Like this one. That review spawned a fascinating discussion/argument between him, Meg Rosoff and Steve Augarde over here. Yes, things get a bit heated at one point, and yes, I mostly side with Ness rather than Rosoff and Augarde, but the wonderful thing is that they were all making good points. It didn't just turn into a massive, pointless flamewar – instead it brought the discussion to a higher plane than it would have occupied had everybody kept quiet and 'polite'. To me, that's the power of a supposedly negative opinion.
Also Ness is generally fairly cutting, like when he slams 'gay' books in his first comment on that blog post. Which brings me to a third point (yes I'm making a third point shh):
<blockquote cite="">But was Jarrell a bitch? Eliot? Pound? William or Stephen or Orson or John? Are men bitchy when they stridently speak their minds, shamelessly striving for excellence? When they openly criticize and/or critique each other? Are men told, “You catch more flies with honey”?
No, men are told that being strident and having firm (or even unshakable) opinions is a virtue. If a man really takes a work of art apart, he's being 'merciless', which is generally thought to be no bad thing in small doses. If a woman does the same thing, she's being a bitch.
Oh my god, I had no idea that Ness reviews–and his reviews look brilliant! Time to go inhale them. Om nom nom.
Hi- saw your comments over the whole "to review or not to review" thing. I thought your input was thoughtful, insightful, and clear. I work in academia, and I'm comfortable with honest and open critique.
I agree that the folks who take part in mean-spirited and unhelpful bashing ruin it for everyone. At the same time, the idea that someone would encourage me to withhold my opinions, in any profession, gives me the willies.
I also believe there is something gender-based happening here, but I can't quite put my finger on it.
Anywho– thanks for the great insight!
Thank you for your comment, Katharine!
I think it's entirely different for those of us who come from academia–a place where we're encouraged to be vocal and opinionated about the work of our peers. I don't know if it's easy or even possible to turn those critical muscles off . . .
I’m still struggling with this.
Strangely, whether I’m comfortable reviewing a work has more to do with how established I am in that genre. With poetry, I’m fine praising/lambasting without worry about what people will think in response.
With YA, I’m worried (to some extent) that reviews may influence whether or not I’ll ever get my own YA book out into the world. A fear unhelped by comments such as Jill Corcoran’s (found on Kate Hart’s site):
“[...]for book review bloggers… if you diss one of my client’s books, I will probably not want to sign you. Editors feel similarly.”
I suppose the fear comes from knowing that some people’s “honest and critical” review is someone else’s “diss”.
Also not helpful: It seems that most people see the word “critical” as meaning “negative” rather than “evaluative”.
I think there's a definite conflation between being critical in YA and being "mean."
When it comes down to it, though, I would feel hesitant to sign with an agent who wasn't, at least, willing to talk to me about my reviewing in a reasonable way. That's not to say that I'm not open to being persuaded, or changing the manner in which I go about it. But when agents say they feel that reviewing is "shitting where you're eating" or "dissing" someone, I feel inclined to not let them make money off my work.
That might be fool-headed. It might be ignorant to feel that, as a nobody, unsigned author, I have any say in the matter. But like I said, I have to feel that I'm striving for honesty and excellence; I have to feel like I'm acting justly. And so I'm willing to deal with the repercussions of doing so, if I feel like I'm acting according to my own standards of moral behavior.
(But I also feel like it's a question each author has to grapple with for him or herself.)
Also not helpful: It seems that most people see the word “critical” as meaning “negative” rather than “evaluative”.
Yeah, precisely.
That comment about people 'dissing' her clients' books also bothered me. People seem to be casually equating an honest negative review with ripping a book apart and/or insulting the author…which is just baffling, because those two things aren't the same at all.
I just love all the comments on this post. It’s so nice to see a different side of the equation and that there ARE people who don’t think it’s horrible to write reviews as an author/aspiring author.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. I cannot tell you how relieved I am that I am not the only one who feels this way–and that someone 100x more eloquent than I am had the guts to write this.
<3
That is all.
http://aclairedawn.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-to-re…
I wrote a post on reviewing which was in response to the should writer's review argument. I've only just read all the connected blog posts from this week. And I don't know what I feel.
I understand why an agent would not want to rep a writer who gave their author's book, negative reviews. But I personally wouldn't want to query an author that repped a book I disliked. I heard some writers say they wouldn't blurb someone that reviewed them negatively. But I also don't think I'd want a review from someone who's work I didn't love.
I've never been good at sacrificing the truth. And I feel like I'd rather not make the big bucks, than pretend I'm someone else.
I really enjoyed your post, Claire. I meant to leave you a comment that said that but somehow I forgot to in all the hubbub!
I understand why an agent would not want to rep a writer who gave their author’s book, negative reviews. But I personally wouldn’t want to query an author that repped a book I disliked. I heard some writers say they wouldn’t blurb someone that reviewed them negatively. But I also don’t think I’d want a review from someone who’s work I didn’t love.
This is my instinct, too; in fact, I've decided not to query agents whose clients wrote books I had strong negative reactions to. Perhaps this is cutting my career off at the knees–but when so many agents are editorial agents, taste HAS to count for something!
It's a difficult question, though.
Just a heads up that this week will be my first Themed Week on Reviews and Reviewing.
I've been having a hard time with this subject — even with reading all the ancillary information that started this whole thing — because it makes me angry.
Essentially, what's going on on-line seems to me to be bullying of those with little power by those in power. It's a shutting down of discourse, and I don't see how shutting down discourse is good for anyone.
Writing & reviewing is not an either or proposition. See Samuel R. Delany and James Blish for examples in speculative fiction of people who did it well. And, yes, I know that Blish wrote under a pseudonym when he started, and Delany has been in academia for many years (Read The Jewel-Hinged Jaw or Issues at Hand to see what criticism of a popular genre can and should do). The great and famous writers in poetry and literary fiction often review as well as write, so why should this combination be seen as taboo?
What makes me the most sad about this whole dust-up is the fact that the person who started it all has shut down her blog. I understand why she has chosen to do so, but I fail to understand the culture that made her choice seem a necessity.
Awesome, Andrew. I definitely agree that there's something weird going on with the balance of power here, and I'm sad that Jordyn felt the need to shut down her blog, too. I look forward to reading your posts.
The last post of my Review Week (two days late) is up and at 'em.
Also, the contest you recommended.
Also, could you mention the contest to Jordan? He seemed really excited about experiencing the horror that is Boof and the Bruise Crew.