A DEFENCE OF REVIEWING
By Alex Good

After years of abuse at the hands of the press, authors are beginning to fight back. 

The first indication that something new was afoot came from a much-reported story involving a literary bounty. When first-time novelist Jaime Clark received a negative review in Publisher's Weekly he offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who could identify his anonymous persecutor. 

As ridiculous as the story seemed (Salon ran it under the clever headline "When Authors Attack") it was hard not to sympathize with Mr. Clark. Most authors have a rough enough time of it without having to face the slings and arrows coming from a critical elite. A letter written in response to the Salon article bitterly observed how "It may take a writer a life to produce a work, only to be artistically and financially undone by some asswipe who is paid, merely, to have an opinion." 

Still, as Samuel Johnson once said, "he that writes may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom everyone has a right to attack." And while among the better class of author the job of professional bodyguard is usually undertaken by publicist or publisher, for many writers the only way to defend their reputation is by descending into the pit. 

Already there is blood on the floor. If my reading is any indication, it is becoming more and more the fashion for authors to go on the offensive. And not just specific reviewers are the target, but the whole system of reviewing in general. 

Martin Amis, writing in the Guardian complains that the "forces of democratisation" ("incomparably the most potent in our culture") have overthrown the "structure of echelons and hierarchies" that is literary criticism proper. This baneful effect of democratisation can be seen in the terrible proliferation of book reviews now found in daily newspapers, television, radio, and even - shudder - the Internet. All of this literary reportage has resulted in a great leveling, not to mention the acceptance of an "equality of sentiment" that makes every opinion of equal value without reference to those fixed structures of echelons and hierarchies that should be our standard.

Amis says he does not deplore these developments because they are unavoidable, and it would be the "summit of idleness" to deplore actuality (an asinine bit of casuistry that makes one wonder how Amis thinks any kind of criticism, of anything, is possible). Yet it is perfectly obvious what he means. This warrior against cliché is simply quoting Matthew Arnold, who, in Culture and Anarchy, appealed for a "centre of authority" capable of rising above the contemporary literary scene and its chaotic clash of ignorant opinions.

Hot on Amis's heels came a column in Brill's Content by James Atlas. With Amis, Atlas wonders what has happened to criticism as a literary art. Again with Amis, he blames the "plethora of judgments" to be found in the new media. The "coverage of books is almost too plentiful," he observes. But while critics are many, critics that are "definitive" (an unusual word to apply to a reviewer, surely) are few. (What makes a critic definitive, in case you were wondering, is whether or not they are a "generalist" - educated and versatile enough to write with equal ease on matters of literature, politics and history. Authoritative criticism, it would appear, does not come from anyone who could be mistaken for an authority.)

Atlas locates "the golden era of reviewing" as the decades from the 1930s to the 1950s, a time when "a handful of high-brow journals" were the "sole arbiters of opinion." What we have now is the deluge: a vast stew of anonymous opinionating on the Internet and equivocal literary salon talk that fails to provide either consumer guidance or "sophisticated critical judgment." The great leveling is complete. One might as well read the customer reviews posted on Amazon as bother with The American Scholar. 

I have to say I find something unseemly about Atlas's whining. The file he keeps the reviews of his Saul Bellow biography in is "bulging" with reviews, and yet he isn't satisfied. All that attention: It was too much, and yet it wasn't enough. 

Why, I want to ask, do writers have to be so needy? 

After all, what authors are really upset about is not the number or quality of reviews they receive. I can honestly say I've never known an author I didn't think would trade three or four book-length, serious analyses of their work for a chance to be plugged on Oprah or chat "for the hour" with Charlie Rose. Rather, what bothers authors is the fact that their work is an increasingly marginal part of a culture that now looks to other media for its news and entertainment. Somebody is responsible for this sad state of affairs. Why not blame the messenger?

In fact, blaming the messenger has become an increasingly popular route. So popular that Kevin Chong, writing in the National Post, went so far as to publicly attack the state of Canadian reviewing before his first book had even been published! Talk about a pre-emptive strike! (Albeit selectively targeted. Chong was careful to hedge his bets by attaching appropriate terms of endearment to a selection of useful names.)  

And why not? If recent reports are any indication (leaving aside the ugly claims of cultural leveling and dumbing-down), reviewers have not been keeping their house in order. Leading the way are stories coming out of Amazon.com. In particular, the online bookseller's system of "customer reviews," while attractive in theory, has now become a kind of running joke. Over a year ago it was discovered that many of these reviews were plagiarized from such mainstream sources as The New Criterion and The New York Times Book Review, as well as online reviews The Complete Review and Salon. More recently it was reported that perhaps a significant number have been written by friends or family of the author. "I don't think it's worth condemning," one former book review editor remarked when asked about the ethics involved, "because I think everybody knows what's going on."

Indeed they do. And the mess doesn't stop there. Another well-reported scandal to recently shake the reviewing community has been the selling of reviews. The first we heard of this was a February story that reported Amazon.com was going to begin charging publishers to recommend their books in mass e-mails (see here for a comment). An Amazon spokeswoman admitted concern over appearances, but went on to say how the company's "credibility with customers is hugely, hugely important to us" (this despite the fact that "everybody knows what's going on"). But the Amazon story was soon overtaken by the even bigger announcement that Foreword Magazine was going to begin selling reviews, and the sensational tale of an American metaphysician who paid academics up to $12,000 to review his work.

As I tried to point out in my report "Reviews For Sale," there is really nothing here that we need to get upset about. When it isn't mercenary, reviewing is mostly a game of connections - even at a centre of authority like the New York Times, as Dennis Loy Johnson at MobyLives.com has shown. If it weren't for the networking of players in what I have charitably described as the Great Toronto Circle Jerk, one wonders if there would be any significant reviewing in Canada at all.

And yet I still think reviews are of some importance, aside from occasionally being entertaining in themselves. In the first place, they can be effective examples of what Northrop Frye described as "a form of consumer's research." In an industry where style, advertising and promotion are increasingly being called upon to move product, reviews remind us that substance counts. Reviewers help to keep it real.

But more than this, a review is a testament to the idea that books matter as something more than mere consumer products. Reviews represent the exercise of a critical faculty on what we read. I should emphasize that this isn't any particular critical faculty I'm referring to, my own or that of a "centre of authority," but simply the idea that we all should read critically. 

We should also be wary of what a book culture without reviews is likely to turn into. As I noted in "Reviewers vs. Columnists," the book review has been steadily losing ground to the book column, which is usually just a cover for celebrity features and insider reportage: 

Commentary is to books what Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood are to the movie industry. The convergence of literature and art with entertainment is obviously proceeding apace. But a book reviewer and a book columnist are still two very different things. A reviewer is an objective reporter on art and ideas, offering explication and analysis through a focused consideration of specific works of literature. A columnist is engaged not with art but with industry - the shadow play of celebrity, signings, sales figures, festivals, launches, and law-suits.

There is nothing the book industry - and, I suspect, many authors - would like more than to get rid of reviews entirely. We are not effective advertising. Our focus on content rather than image makes us hopelessly out of step with the times. Admittedly, our independence and objectivity are only borrowed virtues that come to us through our association with newspapers, but nobody believes in their independence and objectivity anymore either. In the twenty-first century we may well become an endangered species - a few of us kept alive in captivity to serve as quote whores, but otherwise extinct in our native habitat of books.

So let us speak no more of the loss of critical echelons and hierarchies, but rather wish for even more reviews. Is Oprah, as her theme music suggests, "every woman"? Then let every woman be an Oprah! The best book clubs have a membership of one. That's the first step down the critical path.

Notes:
Essay first published online June 28, 2001.