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Badmouthing Authors, a Blood Sport for
Critics and Bloggers |
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Badmouthing Authors, a Blood Sport for
Critics and Bloggers
I have not
read any of Anne Rice's novels and
cannot be a fair judge of them. But I can
feel her pain.
Reacting to
bad reviews of her new book Blood
Canticle by dozens of disappointed
readers on Amazon.com, she fired off a
1,200-word angry rebuttal and posted it on
the Amazon.com website. The anti-Rice
reviews were quite nasty. Some of them,
according to the New York Times were
"virulently negative."
Having
been, like most authors, on the receiving
end of terrible reviews, I sympathize with
her. But I have resisted any attempt at
rebuttal. I have been tempted, very tempted
to strike back. They do make you feel
impotent, frustrated and angry, especially
since you have spent uncountable hours
thinking about and honing your work. Every
writer, artist or composer knows the
feeling.
Normally
confrontational and argumentative, I have
nevertheless learned to keep my cool over a
bad review. A novel is, after all, a
one-on-one communication system. If you are
unlucky enough to draw a reviewer, whether a
so-called professional or an ordinary reader
who does not relate to your work or has an
axe to grind or a hangover or is in a battle
with his or her significant other or has a
differing political view or is being
assailed by a thousand slings and arrows of
misfortune, you are in deep doodoo. Worse,
you will never know exactly why, since the
critique is always subjective, always
personal.
Even in the
publications designed to serve the so-called
literary highbrow "establishment," such as
the New York Review of Books and, at
times, the New York Times Book Review,
I find many reviews are more about the
reviewers' opinions, biases and prejudices
than about the book itself. A case in point
was a recent lengthy review dealing with
Philip Roth's latest novel, The Plot
Against America. The reviewer fulminated
about his own political creed and strayed so
far from the book's meaning and substance
that I thought it actually demeaned Roth's
book, which I found "terrific." (Now there's
a one word review that says it all.)
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"Writers,
especially of imaginative fiction, have
been wasted, assailed, berated, and
denounced by critics from the very
beginnings of the written word. Few have
escaped." |
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Yes, bad
reviews can be emotionally painful and
definitely a career inhibitor. If, for
example, a bad review appears in one or
another of the trade publications such as
Kirkus, Publishers Weekly or Library
Journal, it does have some impact on the
marketplace. For the most part, these
reviews are written by well-meaning
underpaid folks, many of them wannabee
writers, teachers or students beached on the
fringes of publishing world. They wield,
arguably, the power to sway the opinions of
book buyers for big brick and mortar chains
and libraries, and therefore can have some
impact on an author's sales.
Bad reviews
on Amazon can be hurtful, as they have been
for Ms Rice. They can bruise sensitive egos,
but I doubt very much if they can really
negatively affect sales to any degree,
especially for an author with Ms Rice's vast
following of vampire enthusiasts. This is
probably true as well for the internet book
opinion websites, which employ a gaggle of
so-called reviewers, some of whom are paid
in chump change, or free books, or in the
satisfying ego rewards of seeing their name
in print.
Book lovers
in general are fierce and feisty in their
various opinions of authors, whether pro or
con. The literary blogging sites are filled
with inflammatory, negative and very nasty
comments about published writers. They are
particularly vehement about best selling
authors, whom they excoriate for what they
consider bad writing, bad plots, bad
characterization and general all-around
incompetence. Mass popularity and apparent
success in the marketplace gives them
instant reflux. A popular pin cushion target
has been Dan Brown's phenomenal
The DaVinci Code with accusations that
range from story theft to very bad writing,
as if it made a difference.
The subtext
of the blogger comments on many of these
sites seems to be the old bugaboo. I am a
better writer than him. I know more than he
does. I deserve to be published, recognized,
celebrated, lionized. Why him and not me?
But then,
attacks and venting on the internet are sly
fun. There is no physical confrontation, no
accountability. There is satisfaction in
finding others who agree with your opinions
and, if those who disagree militantly step
forward, there is more opportunity for
confrontation and attack and even more
enjoyable word tussles.
My advice
to Ms Rice is keep cool. Writers, especially
of imaginative fiction, have been wasted,
assailed, berated, and denounced by critics
from the very beginnings of the written
word. Few have escaped.
Here are a
few reviews to give heart to Ms. Rice:
Ralph Waldo Emerson on Jane
Austen: "Miss Austen's novels seem
to me vulgar in tone, sterile in
artistic invention, imprisoned in the
wretched conventions of English society,
without genius, wit or knowledge of the
world."
James Lorimer of the North British
Review on Wuthering Heights by
Emily Bronte: "Here all the faults
of 'Jane Eyre' (by Charlotte Bronte) are
magnified a thousand fold and the only
consolation which we have in reflecting
upon it is that it will never be
generally read."
Lord
Byron on Chaucer: "Chaucer,
notwithstanding the praises bestowed on
him, I think obscene and contemptible;
he owes his celebrity merely to his
antiquity."
The
Manchester Guardian on Youth
and on Heart of Darkness by
Joseph Conrad: "It would be useless
to pretend that they can be very widely
read."
John
Burroughs on Charles Dickens'
Tale of Two Cities: "Last
winter I forced myself through his 'Tale
of Two Cities.' It was a sheer dead pull
from start to finish. It all seemed so
insincere, such a transparent
make-believe, a mere piece of acting."
Henry James on Middlemarch by
George Eliot: "Middlemarch' is a
treasure house of details, but it is an
indifferent whole."
Thomas Carlyle on Ralph Waldo
Emerson: "A hoary-headed toothless
baboob."
The
Saturday Review of Literature on
The Great Gatsby: "What has never
been alive cannot very well go on
living. So this is a book of the season
only."
Le
Figaro on Madame Bovary: "Monsier
Flaubert is not a writer."
The
New York Times on Catch 22 by
Joseph Heller: "…it gasps for
want of craft and sensibility…the book
is an emotional hodgepodge; no mood is
sustained long enough to register for
more than a chapter."
The
NY Times on The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway: "…leaves one
with the feeling that the people it
describes really do not matter; one is
left in the end with nothing to digest."
The
Southern Quarterly Review on
Herman Melville's Moby Dick:
"It is sad stuff, dull and dreary, or
ridiculous. Mr. Melville's Quakers are
the wretchedest dolts and drivellers and
his Mad Captain…is a monstrous bore."
The
Bookman on Mark Twain: "A
hundred years from now it is very likely
that (of Twain's works) 'The Jumping
Frog' alone will be remembered."
It goes on
and on, the point being that Ms Rice should
desist from wasting her energies. After all,
what do people who believe in such fanciful
demons as Vampires know about writing?
Besides,
critics in general are all bloodsuckers.
Nota bene:
The historical reviews quoted are a sampling
from Rotten Reviews: A Literary
Companion, edited by Bill Henderson
(W.W. Norton & Co., 1986) and The Experts
Speak, edited by Christopher Cerf and
Victor Navasky (Villard, 1998).
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