First, watch this video…
Okay, so then that’s my opinion of reviews, critics, the critical mob on social media, etc. But is that just me, shouting alone into the roaring masses of naysayers and worst-listers? I’d like to take this Tuesday to open the floor to a few other authors, living and dead, for their take on the value of reviews for authors, the nature of the review, and the personification of the book critic.
Buckle up…
First of all, behold Bertolt Brecht seeming to describe social media in “Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties” way back in 1934…
It takes little courage to mutter a general complaint, in a part of the world where complaining is still permitted, about the wickedness of the world and the triumph of barbarism, or to cry boldly that the victory of the human spirit is assured. There are many who pretend that cannon are aimed at them when in reality they are the target merely of opera glasses. They shout their generalized demands to a world of friends and harmless persons. They insist upon a generalized justice for which they have never done anything; they ask for a generalized freedom and demand a share of the booty which they have long since enjoyed. They think that truth is only what sounds nice. If truth should prove to be something statistical, dry, or factual, something difficult to find and requiring study, they do not recognize it as truth; it does not intoxicate them. They possess only the external demeanor of truth-tellers. The trouble with them is: they do not know the truth.
Truman Capote, interviewed by Patti Hill in The Paris Review in 1957 simply shut the door on critics…
Before publication, and if provided by persons whose judgment you trust, yes, of course criticism helps. But after something is published, all I want to read or hear is praise. Anything less is a bore, and I’ll give you fifty dollars if you produced a writer who can honestly say he was ever helped by the prissy carpings and condescensions of reviewers. I don’t mean to say that none of the professional critics are worth paying attention to—but few of the good ones review on a regular basis. Most of all, I believe in hardening yourself against opinion. I’ve had, and continue to receive, my full share of abuse, some of it extremely personal, but it doesn’t faze me any more. I can read the most outrageous libel about myself and never skip a pulse-beat. And in this connection there is one piece of advice I strongly urge: never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don’t put them on paper.
Haruki Murakami was rather more tolerant of the critic, as evidenced by this bit from his essay “Who Do I Write For?” in Novelist as a Vocation:
One well-known literary critic (who is no longer alive) gave a scathing review of my first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, saying, “You’re in big trouble if you think this kind of thing passes for literature.” When I read this, I simply thought, “Okay, I guess some people feel that way.” It didn’t make me upset or want to lash back. That critic and I had a very different way of viewing literature. What kind of ideological content my works had, what social role they played, whether they were avant-garde or reactionary, artistic fiction or not—I’d never given any of this a single thought. I’d started out with the stance that if I enjoy writing it, that’s sufficient; so from the start our ideas didn’t mesh.
And there definitely is something to be said for simply shrugging critics off. After all… “We can’t control our readers and some of them will hate us, and not because they misunderstand but because they understand perfectly,” Grace E. Lavery wrote in “You Already Write How You Write, Just Give In.” “I dislike some perfectly good writers.”
And as Mr. Capote hinted at it could very well be an age thing. You do sort of fall off the “I want everyone to love me” train as you get into, say, decade five. In “Inside Fran Lebowitz’s Digitally Unbothered Life,” the author and raconteur said:
When I was very young, I did [read reviews]. My first book came out when I was 27—I read everything. I probably kept that up until I was in my early 30s, and then I just stopped… At a certain point you lose interest in yourself, or at least you should. There’s a limit to how long you can think about one person, even if that person is you. I’ve lost interest in the subject.
And then, of course, there’s the undeniable mental health aspect of all this. And who besides Colleen Hoover has experienced the ups and downs of social media stardom? In “48 Chaotic Hours With Colleen Hoover” the multiple best-selling author said, “I could sit there and read reviews all day and have to go to therapy and take Xanax, but I don’t want that life…”
Hey, who does? It can get a little angry out there, on both sides. In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield wrote: “The professional blows critics off. He doesn’t even hear them.” While, “The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had the guts.”
Vladimir Nabokov knew full well that book reviews aren’t about the book, or the author of that book, but the critics themselves…
The purpose of a critique is to say something about a book the critic has or has not read. Criticism can be instructive in the sense that it gives readers, including the author of the book, some information about the critic’s intelligence, or honesty, or both.
All that said, it turns out maybe not everyone hates the idea of the critical crowd. Surprisingly, George Orwell actually called for something rather like the social media landscape in his 1936 essay “In Defense of the Novel”:
Incidentally, it would be a good thing if more novel reviewing were done by amateurs. A man who is not a practised writer but has just read a book which has deeply impressed him is more likely to tell you what it is about than a competent but bored professional. That is why American reviews, for all their stupidity, are better than English ones; they are more amateurish, that is to say, more serious.
Of course, Orwell didn’t live to see that actually come to pass. I’ll admit I can’t do much but project my own feelings onto his ghost, but I can’t help thinking he’d have changed his mind after a few minutes on Amazon or GoodReads.
And then there’s Stephen King, who seems a bit more sanguine on the subject…
I’m always interested in what my readers think, and I’m aware that many of them want to participate in the story. I don’t have a problem with that, just so long as they understand that what they think isn’t necessarily going to change what I do. That is, I’m never going to say, I’ve got this story, here it is. Now here’s a poll. How do you think I should end it?
That, to me, is really what it all boils down to. Whatever’s going on on GoodReads should not be changing what and how you write. We all do, absolutely, have the right to our own opinions. We also have the right to remain silent.
Silence is Wisdom, where Speaking is Folly; and always safe.
—William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Be careful out there!
—Philip Athans
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