Since we've been mourning the late, great John Updike around here (as an aside, Pigeon Feathers is probably my favorite work by Updike, especially the title story), I thought it fitting to post about his "rules for reviewing," which I came across in the Critical Mass archievs. I've been doing a little more book reviewing as of late, and Updike's guidelines make a lot of sense to me (and also remind me of how much I loved reading his reviews in The New Yorker). I enjoy the process of book reviewing, but it can be anxiety-inducing too. If I love something, I worry about doing the book justice in the review, and if I have issues with something, I worry about rendering my qualms in a way that doesn't go against Updike's edict of not blaming the author for "not achieving what he [or she, Mr. Updike!] did not attempt."
If you do book reviews, what do you like/not like about the process? What are your rules for reviewing?
February 5, 2009
Rules for Reviewing?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
I tend to think about the stakes. Who am I as a reviewer, and who is the author. What good does it do anyone if I (a nobody) trash a small press chapbook for instance, usually by a poet who is also relatively new on the scene. I guess it could save someone $5. But it'd actually prolly boost sales as much as it would prevent them. In that case, it seems to me that the worst review would be complete silence, a book with no buzz. So if an editor asks me to review a book I don't care for by a new author, I simply refuse. I think it is far more interesting for a heavyweight to question a fellow heavyweight's book. Or for an up-and-comer to challenge a more established poet that people seem to be afraid to go after. In much the same way, the venue matters. What are the aesthetics of the publication and its readers.
I agree completely, Chris. I would decline in that case, too, since finding stuff that's interesting and talking about it is where the joy comes from for me, and so if I just hated something I think it would be pretty joyless to write about. But I think too that taking on a more established writer, or a book that's been widely praised (or criticized, for that matter), can be a great conduit for raising larger aesthetic questions--Zadie Smith's "Two Paths for the Novel" (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22083) is a semi-recent good recent example of that for fiction. Perhaps any good review should broach those larger aesthetic questions to some degree, but if you really want to dig into a particular idea, it seems to work better to have a well-known author or book as your primary example...
1. Be honest
2. Be kind
Rebecca Loudon
State your agenda, but, for god's sake, HAVE an agenda.
Otherwise reviews are inert, passing things.
Agendas make me want to climb out the window.
Matt, how so? Obviously agendas can be bad for a review--reviewers that seem to want to make an example of a book tend to not sit well with me--but do you think having an agenda can be helpful at times? I agree with Drew in the sense that many reviews seem to just describe the work, but fall short of really saying anything...
I'm not sure if agenda is the right word, but I think I understand what Drew is saying. A review shouldn't just give a thumbs up or thumbs down. I read somewhere -- maybe it was a Cynthia Ozick essay? -- that not only are there too few reviews nowadays, but there are too few reviews that go beyond critiquing a book from a market perpective (i.e., you should buy this or not buy it) and set it in a larger context. That is, a book isn't an isolated thing, but a part of, or reaction against, a bigger thing, a trend, a tradition. Maybe that's asking too much of any one review, but the best reviews have a wider scope and a point of view with a clear opinion about the landscape. Does that make sense?
Yes, Chip, that makes perfect sense. I think "larger context" is more of what I was thinking too--agenda seems to imply something more negative.
Post a Comment