Almost every weekend, I read a printed newspaper. I save the best for last: I start with the news, then opinion, then business and arts, then lifestyle, and finally the magazine essays and book reviews. It's really enjoyable to see what assemblage of new books the editor found and which critics are reviewing them each week. I alternate between the Times and the Journal. The latter's reviews are a little longer and often more like essays about the book's topic rather than a straight-up review. When I shared the paper with an old friend a few months back, I had to let him in on that secret: when the review just discusses the book's subject, that means it's a good one. The Times, on the other hand, usually focuses on the author, their background, and offers a brief, typically positive, position on the book. Rarely does either paper pan a book they choose to review, although the exceptions are delightful (see Sam Sacks's pan of Ann Patchett's latest, where he remarks that she treats her readers like 9-year-olds).
Too often, reviewers start from end. They ask whether a thing was "good," by which they mean, "did I like this" or "would I have done it this way." While the answers to those questions maybe be interesting, at least to the reviewer, they aren't a decent starting point for considering the merit of someone else's work. Imagine that you're reviewing a restaurant. If you start out with your preferences about the cuisine and then turn to your experience of the food you ate, the reader would be right to obect, "who cares." De gustibus non est disputandum: you can't argue personal taste. It's all too subjective. Who cares if you would've made the food that way or if you liked the dish? We want to know whether the chef is any good and if the restaurant is worth our time. To answer questions like this, the reviewer has to work a bit harder, getting into the mind of the creator and the minds of the audience—the reviewer has to be fair.
The first and fifth of John Updike's rules for reviewing books are excellent guides at being fair:
1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.
5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?
The reviewer needs to understand what the creator was trying create; the reviewer needs to assess whether the creator has achieved the goal. Only after those two are clearly established, can the reviewer do the fun part: judge whether the thing was worth making in the first place. It's this last bit that requires the most taste. And it's this last bit that Updike forces wider work upon his reviewer. If this book didn't work, then you have to understand why similar books did. Only in this comparative work can the reviewer be sure that the failure wasn't theirs, that they didn't miss the point.
For the reading this week, I have three pieces of criticism. If you read any, then I'd read the first essay. It's a fascinating look at what we bring to the books we love, what they give us, and how evanescent these moments with transformative literature are. The other two pieces are pans of popular works—good criticism, and fun. Enjoy the reading!
On misreading Doris Lessing
Christopher Nolan’s $250 million action movie version of Homer’s ancient Greek poem is an entertaining way to hide from the high temperatures for a few hours.
J. D. Vance's Ohio and mine