Subscribe to RSS 2.0"Only the professional critics ... know what they are talking about; bloggers are merely expressing an opinion." Discuss.
Oh dear. Someone's forgotten that in polite society one is meant to keep one's right-wing tendencies under wraps.
The story that's circulating about Persephone Books' latest Letter , in which they assert that book review blogs offer 'mere yammering' compared to the 'logically reasoned discourse that sits still on a page, inviting serious engagement', is an interesting one.
Interesting for its utter bone-headedness, on one level; interesting too because of the ideas about branding that it raises.
Why do we trust an opinion? Take a book that has been positively reviewed in The Times by a well-known author or professional critic. 'Ooh,' the reader thinks, 'The Times is important. They must know quality when they see it; I shall purchase this book forthwith'. Well, maybe the reader doesn't think quite so expicitly about the endorsement - better things to spend your brainpower on, frankly - but that's the essence of it. The reader trusts the review because they believe in The Times' brand - a construct created by a successful, and in this case long-term, marketing strategy.
Now take a book that has been reviewed by, say, DoveGreyReader. DoveGreyReader hasn't written any books (that I know of), nor does she write reviews in order to pay the mortgage, so why should I trust what she thinks? I trust her, implicitly, far more than the Times review, in fact, because I know that she writes from the heart. I know that she isn't moving in a complicated, political world where books get reviewed because of connections. I trust her precisely because she hasn't got paid to write. Her 'brand', as it were, is above reproach. It achieves what large companies pay zillions of pounds to emulate and still fail to reach: a sense that the brand is trustworthy, that it has your best interests at heart, that it is honest.
There are comparisons to be drawn with news networks and news bloggers. I am almost at the end of my tether with the BBC news. Andy spends all day in front of a Reuters news feed - new stories appearing by the minute - and so when we get home and watch the five or six stories that the BBC has extracted and compare them to the hundreds of, often far more important and newsworthy, happenings, it makes me shudder to think of how ill-informed we are. Thank god for the news blogs: blogs that aren't hamstrung by political affiliations, spin, money and power. These blogs draw people's attention to events that would otherwise go un- or under-reported; events that actually matter. On this morning's BBC effort: Paris Hilton is in prison and something about strawberries. I'm sure there can be nothing more important. Nothing at all. Did you know that this week a mass grave has been discovered in the Ukraine containing thousands of Jews murdered in the Second World War? Or that it has been proven that Cheney personally blocked the promotion of a government lawyer who had raised objections to the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program, and that administration officials tried to get then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to sign off on the program as he lay recovering from major surgery in his hospital bed? Rob told me today that the U.S. Department of Justice tried to obfuscate a story by issuing 3,000 pages of documentation about a particular set of meetings, with a nicely-spun summary. The professional journalists took the summary and ran with it. A political news blog, TPMmuckraker, sent a call out for volunteer fact-checkers to get in touch. They divvied up the documents, worked through the night and uncovered all sorts of things that the Bush Administration had tried to hide. Far from being unprofessional, some blogs are doing the sort of investigative journalism that the salaried journos don't seem to bother with any more.
One more thing about professionals. I used to be in awe of professionals; people who, clearly, knew better than me, because of their training and experience. Their expertise was undoubted. I worked for a lot of them, within industry and as a consultant. Thing was, I was always surprised that their actions didn't always result in success. I thought it must have been some other factor: after all, these were the experts. Finally it dawned on me, of course: people can be in positions of power, and can be articulate, educated and bright, but it doesn't mean that they know what they're doing. Ineptitude coupled with arrogance: it rarely ends well.
Coming back to books: there's a bit of point-missing going on here, too. Who is the most important person in this picture? Wait - it couldn't - surely it couldn't be the reader? If readers enjoy a book, regardless of whether it stands up to the scrutiny of a scholar, that is all that matters. The enjoyment of a book is pretty much purely subjective. If people love it - and love it enough to talk about it on their own time from the heart - that makes it a success. Further, if professional reviewers were so great at knowing what people would enjoy, surely they'd have started their own publishing companies by now and used their powers of insight into taste to make their fortunes? Professional reviews aren't for the reader; they're for the reviewer.
It's the 'arbiter of taste' thing that I worry about with publishing itself. I can't get comfortable with the idea that publishers know, any better than the reader, whether a book is 'good' enough to be published. What training do we have that gives us the expertise to make that choice? There are much better-read, better-educated people than me out there. There are also a squillion people who enjoy books that I can't stand. The idea that experts are allowed to filter the readers' choice is one which I think will have to change, at some point. Cue the best thing the human race has come up with in the last fifty years, amongst all the warmongering, the power struggles, the whole planet-destruction-thing: the internet.
It is crucial that bloggers are supported and encouraged. They are one of the best ways of getting a democratic, honest consensus in a world where everything is spun and affected by political agendas. In fact - you can see where I'm going with this - I think they should be invited to get involved *before* publication. Any bloggers out there want to talk to me about this?
This post will probably mean we never get another newspaper review again. Fact is, if I had to choose between the support of the papers and the support of the bloggers, I'd go for the bloggers every time because they are the ones who the reader can trust for an honest, from-the-heart opinion, 100% of the time - and, in case you hadn't noticed, I care, more than anything, about the reader.
Comments: 10
Ok, I'm obviously biased, but Eve's Alexandria? Mere yammering? The closest comparison I could make between their close reading and considered critical approach would be with the LRB - except that the ladies at EA read much more widely.
Sarah
Posted by: Sarah Bower on June 10, 2007 11:55 AM
Give up listening to the BBC news: switch to Channel 4 News. They deal with the issues that matter. Go with Snow.
Posted by: Sue Hepworth on June 11, 2007 08:05 AM
While we're on the subject of reviewing, can someone explain why a member of the literary elite will have their book reviewed twice in every broadsheet? - once when it comes out in hardback and again when the same book comes out in paperback. This means there is even less space to review books by unknown debut novelists who are not young and beautiful and who live out in the sticks and have no contacts. (Qui moi?)
Posted by: sally howe on June 11, 2007 09:09 AM
This is all rather silly isn't it? There are good blogs and bad blogs. The internet is VERY big! And book reviews, long or short, online or offline, are very rarely "literary criticism". That is something wonderful, but quite different to even some of the longest reviews in, say, the TLS.
Of course my blogging over at The Book Depository (www.bookdepository.co.uk) or ReadySteadyBook.com is "mere opinion" -- and it is the same opinion when I write for the TLS or PN Review!
Some of the very best things I've ever read about books I've read online. And some of the most inane guff too!
Posted by: mark on June 11, 2007 10:04 AM
Sticking with book reviews I do think that there is a need to seperate out fiction from non-fiction. In fiction you are right it is important that the enjoyment of the reader is the most important critieria considered. In non-fiction this isn't necessarily the case. It is important that a non-fiction book is 'correct'. There is no reason why your comment "people can be in positions of power, and can be articulate, educated and bright, but it doesn't mean that they know what they're doing. Ineptitude coupled with arrogance: it rarely ends well. " can't apply to authors as well. I see nothing wrong with a newspaper (or indeed blog) getting someone who really knows the subject of the book to comment on it from a position of authority. Newspapers find this easier than bloggers - but that isn't a reason to dismiss them. Scott Pack's Sunday blog raises the slightly more important point that books are apparently only considered for review if they come from a mainstream publisher - as if that had anything to do with the contents of the book.
Posted by: Matthew on June 11, 2007 10:08 AM
Sarah, you make me blush. Your confidence in us, and Emma's spirited defence of blogging and of the reader more generally, makes me immensely glad. Eve's Alexandria was founded out of love, and each and every post we publish is written out of love. I know that dozens of litbloggers feel the same way and no mainstream venue, with its bevy of 'celebrity' reviewers, can say that. I wonder how often the Guardian or the Times asks their contributors to review without payment, in the name of pure passion.
To be honest, I feel like Persephone Books have kicked us in a soft, sensitive place. Because I love their books, I really do, and, in many ways, have felt a kinship with them. Litblogs are to mainstream review venues, what small presses are to big publishing houses - the passionate, personal fringe of the literary establishment. What separates 'us' and 'them' (although these are false distinctions in the first place), is not that we are amateurs and they are professionals, but that we are free to pursue ideas and opinions as we wish, uncensored.
The reviewer in me is synonymous with the reader - there is no disconnect and I am proud of that. I can read what I like, when I like, and when I'm done I can write what I like about it. My reviews can be long or short, playful or impassioned, personal or not. I can give attention to a book published 100 or 10 years ago, in equal measure to a book due in summer 2007. I have no bias except my own opinion, and Nicola Beauman is mistaken if she thinks that critical thinking involves any other faculty. There are differences in the timbre of readers'/reviewers' subjectivity - you can appreciate a novel without liking it; I won't pretend my MA in English doesn't help - but at the bottom all critics are working upon their likes and dislikes. And mainstream critics are plain old readers deep down, harbouring their own interests and uncertainties. How ridiculous to suggest that they are another species! I hate that the twin processes of reading and evaluating are dichotomised, as though they occur at different times to different people.
Finally, a silly niggle, if Nicola Beauman thinks that I only spend half an hour on my reviews, she should think again. I spend, on average, between 3-5 hours, usually over several evenings (because I work full time too). That is not to mention the week or so it takes me to read a book, and the copious notes and musings I write along the way. She is also mistaken if she supposes mainstream critics are universally careful and thoughtful creatures - I know several who shoot their copy off an hour before the deadline.
Posted by: Victoria on June 11, 2007 12:10 PM
Victoria raises another good point about litblogs - reviewers are free to write about books other than those which are newly published or newly on some prize-list. They can revisit old favourites and unearth treasures in the remaindered heap alongside basking in the glitz of the Orange Prize dinner! Print reviewers never do that - even in the LRB. Oh, except for 'Slightly Foxed' but I'm biased again there in the opposite direction because they once rejected a review I sent them.
Posted by: Sarah Bower on June 12, 2007 03:26 PM
In a slightly irrelevant addition to this discussion, a lot of the quotes here come from a critic named Richard Schickel. The authors of this letter who quote Schickel are still on the hook for agreeing with his drivel, but I have something to add about Schickel himself.
He's the film critic for Time, and I saw him speak last summer. He's a smart man, and knows a great deal about film. But he's also a reactionary, and a snob, and a damned grumpy guy, and is of the opinion that if you don't have any life experience you don't have anything to say. His years teaching film at NYU were short because he was bored by the uninformed opinions of his students (!!). And what on earth does a film critic have to say about literary reviews anyway? My degree in film prepares me absolutely not at all to be a book reviewer, at least not the snotty intellectual sort that writes obtuse, unhelpful reviews for the New York Times, which are more about the reviewer than they are about the book.
In sum, Schickel is wholly ill-equipped to speak about this topic, involving as it does technology and a field he does not work in. (This is not to say that I believe only people who have degrees in literature should review literature (I believe quite the opposite), but that this is so according to his own rhetoric.)
Posted by: KatharineC on June 13, 2007 01:54 PM
As a long time supporter of Persephone Books this made me very angry and I posted about this on my blog. I also took issue with Nicola Beaumann by email correspondence and the tone of the Letter was edited down and the words yammering removed. No apology mind you.
Posted by: Elaine Simpson-Long on June 14, 2007 03:47 PM
Only just catching up this end too Em and confirming that I haven't written a book!I'm just a lover of books who has read over a lifetime and loves the thought that I can share that passion with like-minded people.I'd give my eye teeth to move in a bookish work world but somehow people in my bit of the NHS don't read so no bookish debates at work.The litblogs provide that community and the ideas I hopefully give to others and receive from them just can't be found anywhere else.As for the time element, phew, it's unbelievable and many rewrites and notes and scrawlings later a post emerges that I hope gives a fair and honest appraisal of a book's worth without causing offence or upsetting anyone.Leave that to the critics!
Posted by: dovegreyreader on June 15, 2007 09:07 PM