Review This!
When Bad Reviews Happen to Good Writers
"...curious how incest, impotence, nymphomania...can be so dull."
–Time and Tide review of Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic
The book review is a strange, wonderful, sometimes frightening, and hopefully exhilarating experience for writers. We dream of having our books reviewed, and then pray that the review will be positive. I'm struggling to come up with a good metaphor, but everything crossing my mind—motherhood, relationships, careers, pole dancing—lacks that elements of the large-scale accolade or the humiliation.
"A lugubrious and heavy-handed piece of propaganda"
–New York Herald Tribune review of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
When my first novel, The Bone Weaver, came out in 2001, I knew little about reviews and their impact on sales, and nothing about their effect on the author being reviewed. I was warned, certainly, but I was so excited about being in print that I forgot. Which is why, when my first reviews were excellent, I thought, "Hey, what's the big drama?"
"Monsieur Flaubert is not a writer."
–Le Figaro review of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary
And then someone posted a less flattering review of my book online. It said something like "Has she never heard of an editor?"
"...tragic-comic bubble and squeak."
–New Monthly Magazine review of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick
My two anthologies have been blessed with excellent reviews-not a mediocre one in the lot—which I attribute to the gifted authors who contributed to them. Nevertheless, I am painfully aware of The Dark Side. And no matter how we try to explain, rationalize, or project, it comes down to this: Whether it's a New York Times review read by millions or a review in the Family Market flyer, a bad review is a bad review.
So how does a writer deal with a bad review? Survival calls into play a variety of body parts: stiff upper lip, thick skin, tough hide. Walt Whitman had to be tough to withstand this:
"...as unacquainted with art as a hog is with mathematics."
–London Critic review of Whitman's Leaves of Grass
Did Emily Brontë take to her bed when she opened up the pages of the North British Review and read about Wuthering Heights:
"The only consolation...it will never be read."
Writing a book takes time, heart, energy, and courage. When the reviews begin to appear is a good time to solicit support from anyone and everyone prepared to circle the wagons around what could become a damaged ego. Did I say damaged? How about "ravaged?"
"Sentimental rubbish..."
–Odessa Courier review of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
I sincerely hope that Tolstoy's friends rushed to his side to give comfort. I pray that Joseph Heller's support system was steadfast when a publisher rejected Catch-22, calling it "...a continual and unmitigated bore..."
What do these maligned authors have in common? While they may have locked their study doors and refused to come out, they went on writing, often brilliantly.
"We do not believe in the permanence of his reputation..."
–Saturday Review, 1858, on Charles Dickens
How seriously should we take a bad review? It might be helpful to remember that, while all of the above books continue to be read and loved by millions and remain in print, of all of the publications with reviews cited in this piece, only Le Figaro still exists.
–Victoria Zackheim is the author of The Bone Weaver and has edited two anthologies of woman writers. She is also the creator of WretchedReviews. com.
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Victoria Zackheim says:
Essay
PS: Comments are welcomed!
Mitch Cullin says:
Firk Kuckus
I don't think we should take bad reviews very seriously at all. That said, it's not always an easy thing to ignore when you get one. My personal rule is to allow myself a single day to feel slighted about an unkind critique of something I've written, and then that's it (water off a duck's back, as my grandmother would say). Getting tasered by a critic or critics is, in fact, a rite of passage for those of us who are lucky enough to be published--perhaps a continual rite of passage for some of the more unfortunate among us--and it simply comes with the territory; no one is spared, no one should be.
But a few ruminations have perplexed me: What is the function of a bad review? What service does it really provide? More to the point, why would anyone want to write one? Over the years I've been asked to review books, but for the most part I've declined to do so because they were never books I felt strongly about. In other words, I'd rather review something I feel favorable toward than not, as I don't see any useful reason to focus my efforts otherwise. Ultimately, though, I don't blame reviewers for writing bad reviews about good books, or for even writing great reviews about books I don't like. That's what they do, and I guess they enjoy it. Or maybe they just can't do anything else. Still, I imagine being snarky or uber-critical can be fun in a Cruella Deville kind of way.
However, what I do despise with a passion is when writers write bad reviews about the work of other writers, especially when it's done to first-time novelists. Any writer worth his or her salt knows how hard writing is, how difficult it is to live with a project for years before letting it go. So for another writer to dump on a fellow creator in print strikes me as a pretty nasty undertaking, right up there with throwing kittens into a pond, and I can't see any logic behind doing such a thing aside from a desire to elevate one's status over his or her peers. But, then again, everyone is a critic.
Linda Jo Hunter says:
Thanks I needed that kick
my first book is about to appear on bookshelves so I am very nervous about this subject. I was cruising through an online book seller's website when I noticed a new book that had one really really bad review. . I had to look. . the rating for the book was so bad that I wanted to know what happened. It wasn't about the book at all but someone who had ordered it and not recieved it!!! SO, based on that the computer automatically trashed the book. Yikes. . . it is so easy to get kicked. I hope for this author's sake that it wasn't his first book and that he will notice and get the error fixed. Computers can be a good thing and then .. . sometimes they make assumptions. Linda Jo Hunter
Victoria Zackheim says:
Interesting post
I can see your point, certainly. I've written reviews and have given very few negative ones. A weak character for one, a missed comprehension of subject matter for the other...but always finding something positive. (Except one book, which was...well...offensive.) Sometimes, writing and putting my work out there it feels like the pathetic character in a cartoon, on his knees and saying, "Wait, come back, there's a part of me you haven't stepped on yet."
Jacquelyn Mitchard says:
I wonder why bad reviews are written, sometmes....
If the purpose of a review is to encourage reading books.
Savaging a writer's efforts, rather than leaving the work (and the writer) alone if the work does not hold up, not only discourages the writer from what might be the next and greater work but hobbles the form altogther.
Which makes the Kirkus shop, of elves with tight shoes, whose eyes are watching Louise Erdrich (who's wonderful, of course, but not sui generis) all the more mystifiying.
Jacquelyn Mitchard
Victoria Zackheim says:
Savaging a writer
Of course you're right, Jacquelyn, that a brutal essay discourages not only the writer, but perhaps future works. Which was the point I was making in that essay...imagine if those few authors I named had been so flattened that they never again wrote...or published.
This brings up another interesting point: the dwindling book review sections. How does this connect? Well, when I began to review and was assigned a book that I really disliked, I wasn't even aware that I could pass on the assignment. I wanted to be sure that I got more work, and it seemed that turning something down was deadly. Today, with so few review sections surviving, the competition to get assignments must be brutal, which might intensify a reviewers need to accept whatever is offered. Any reviewers out there who'd like to jump in on this?
Huntington Sharp says:
A shy comment
As you all know, I'm tremendously supportive of authors, especially ones just getting a toehold, and dream of being one myself one day. I wouldn't be here otherwise. But as a voracious reader now, I find book reviews, good and bad, to be helpful in the same way that I do movie reviews and restaurant reviews. With the bewildering amount of options competing for my book-buying dollar, it's helpful to know what to avoid as well as what to choose.
We wouldn't expect a director or restauranteur to abandon his or her dream just because Mick LaSalle or Michael Bauer thought they weren't great and said so in print, would we? So why should authors be any different when faced with a less-than-glowing opinion of their work? (One thing does come to mind: both moviemaking and running a restaurant are much more collaborative efforts than authoring.)
That said, there is a difference between mean-spirited, unkind reviews and the constructively critical kind. I try hard to see the difference always, ignore the former, and really think about the latter.
Huntington Sharp, Red Room
Mitch Cullin says:
Anonymous Reviewing: A Review
I just stumbled across this from MediaBistro, and, in light of Victoria Zackheim's essay, I thought I'd pass the link on for those who might want to ponder it. So here it be: http://www.mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a4694.asp?pntvs=1&
Please note the very interesting comments from Jerome Weeks, the books editor of the Dallas Morning News, including this: "Who knows what ax an anonymous critic may be grinding?" Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...I never thought about that.
Victoria Zackheim says:
Mediabistro article
Mitch, this brings to mind several writer friends who were recently trashed in Kirkus....and prasied to the sky in other publications. When a book is given a bad review on Kirkus and is simultaneously selected as a BookSense choice, it makes you wonder.
Mitch Cullin says:
The Kirkus Circus
Well, you know, I like to personify Kirkus as a grumpy old spinster who doesn't like much of anything, especially strangers. The first review I ever got as a writer was from them (or her) and it was a weird one. I remember that my publisher and I couldn't figure out if it was a pan or a benign thumbs up. In hindsight, though, I think it's fair to say it was a pan. Since then, Kirkus has reviewed every book I've written, and only 1 out of 8 of those reviews could really be called good.
But for some odd reason I have a soft spot for that antiquated dowager. Maybe it's partly because Kirkus can be so over-the-top in offering disdain that I can't take them too seriously (a case of the following: normal person + anonymity + audience = asshole), and partly because I know that when I get a bad Kirkus review my books tend to be reviewed rather well elsewhere. When they finally gave "A Slight Trick of the Mind" a begrudgingly kind review, I can admit now that I was a bit dismayed. I thought that the book had been damned to receive bad reviews from then on. That turned out not to be the case, but it wouldn't have surprised me if it had.
About four years ago I actually spoke with one of the Kirkus cult by telephone. It was purely by chance, as I was being interviewed by this person about an unrelated topic involving publishing and, during the conversation, I simply asked about her background. That's when the name Kirkus was dropped. Feeling like I might never have the opportunity again, I asked this woman (a certain bookish babe, if that hint helps) why exactly was it that Kirkus reviews could often be so...I don't know...unreasonably ugly. Her answer was something like this: "It's not deliberate on our part. It's that we have so many books to consider for our review, more than we can manage, and because of that we don't feel the need to be coy. We really want to point our readers toward the best of the best, that's all." Sure, of course. But then I asked, "So why don't you just review what you feel is the best of the best, and avoid the others? Wouldn't that make more sense?" To which a proper answer wasn't given, the subject promptly changed. I think, though, I would have respected her so much more if she had said, "Come on, man, can you understand that there's fun to be had in dumping all over books sometimes? We like it, we truly do, oh yes!"
In the end, however, it's the anonymity factor that bothers me the most. Where there is anonymity there is no accountability or transparency. My dislike of this stems from a graduate student I knew at the University of Houston who had, more than once, written a bad review of a single book and then published it in two different periodicals (one with his byline attached, one anonymously, neither review written in such a way as to be identical to the other...aside from the "bad" angle that was bestowed upon a given book). I thought this was an amazingly unethical thing to do to one's self, and an even unkinder thing to do to the writer who was being reviewed. So as far as I know, it wouldn't be wholly impossible for a bad review from Kirkus and a bad review from PW to actually come from the same source. That alone should be reason enough for those publications to change their long-standing use of anonymity when it comes to the reviewing process.
Anyway, please tell your writer friends that they are in decent company when it comes to a Kirkus loin punch. I have no doubt that your friends are consistent in their work--the problem is that reviewers seldom are; and I suspect, if truth be known, they probably outnumber us by a long shot.
daniel curzon says:
reviews
DANIEL CURZON
What should be stopped is "reviewers" writing reviews
on places like Amazon.com without any proof whatsoever
that they have read the book. They could be old enemies,
ex-wives, ex-husbands, students one has failed, or simply
mischievous hackers.
Victoria Zackheim says:
About Amazon et al
Daniel, you bring up a point that nearly every published author addresses...the readers who review. I'm afraid we run into that pesky little 'freedom of speech' thing...
On the other hand, amazon has been known to remove reviews that appear to have evolved from spite or revenge.
Robin D. Gill says:
i'll try again tomorrow POSITIVE ABOUT NEGATIVE REVIEWS
Had a damn good comment here but it suddenly upped and dissappeared on me and i could not recover it -- weather depending (i use a satellite connection), i'll be back tomorrow!
Here I am, Friday.
For great reviews of good writers, i recommend the Norton critical anthology editions of Moby Dick and Sartor Resartus (or was this Norton?). In the long run, good writers have the last laugh!
But, I do not write to bury bad reviews but to praise them. Swift had good reason to complain of an excess of writers in his day. Every reader who did not read him because his or her time was wasted on less potent wits, or would-be wits, lost by it. We need negative reviews for the same reason nature needs carnivores: 99.9% of books add nothing, or at least nothing worthwhile to our meme pool. And our wolves should budget their limited time on thinning out large game, i.e., books published by presses with money and influence enough to publicise them, for those are the ones that fill up the reviews and bookstores and do not allow better books published by paupers, of whom I am one, to meet the light of day.
That is my theoretical take. Now, I have something personal. Last year, after seven books in Japanese and eight in English and scores of positive reviews (mostly in Japanese) over three decades, I got my first negative one. Thanks to that experience, I have given some thought to what is and is not proper to criticism.
1) Harsh charges should be backed by evidence. I searched my book in vain for examples supporting my attacker's claim, and could only guess he was ticked off by a note in another of my books!
2) In the absence of evidence, a reviewer should at least be honest, by which I mean, let us know where he or she is coming from. No, even if evidence is given, the selection or weighting of it may be biased, so a reviewer should always provide relevant information. Editors should not use that as an excuse to kill the review either, at least not for high-quality nonfiction where experts are few and far between and a conflict of interest is not only acceptable but unavoidable.
3) If the editor feels the review might be unfair, he or she should try to obtain the author's objection ahead of time and print it side-by-side.
In this case, the review was in a journal belonging to and edited by someone who loves my work and usually reviews it, who was under the weather for a long time and delegated the job to someone else. It would have been too much work for her to have done 3), but as soon as I read it, I knew she must feel as awful about it as I did. There was one thing to do and I did it. I posted the review in its entirety at my website and had a wonderful time demolishing it. If anyone wants to see how it was done, i.e., review my review of the review, please go to paraverse dot org, click on the link to the reviews page, then click on The Fifth Season. It is the second of two reviews, the other positive, for ).
So, hurrah, for negative reviews! Let us have good ones!
p.s.1 About twenty years ago, I wrote an article in praise of the negative review as a literary art I sorely missed in Japanese reviews, which, while otherwise diverse and as quirky(?) as ours, tended toward a uniform niceness. I came across that article recently, but no longer have the English originals I gave as examples of the type of savage wit found in English language academic journals, so I cannot provide them here.
p.s.2 What got erased included a comparison of the literary review and patent review. I slept on it and decided to sa ve it for another time as it pertains not to negative reviews but to the ideal review.
Victoria Zackheim says:
Hurrah for negative reviews
Oh, to have your beliefs (and your international acclaim)!
Robin D. Gill says:
international acclaim
Murakami enjoys international acclaim, I do not not. I was appreciated in Japan, but my books were written with Japanese in mind. While constantly asked for articles on this and that in Japanese, and paid well, the only time the Japan Times, a good paper, but unkind to all who are not establishment as its nose is permanently fixed in the stratosphere, deigned to mention my books was when I insisted upon introducing them (note: i donated the 25000 yen to their indochina refugee relief fund).
While one might rationally assume the ability to get many books published in a language exotic with respect to one's own translates into respect at home, I got zero credit for it from the monolingual publishing culture of Usania. They do everything topdown. You cannot even reach them through an agent, for the agents who can demonstrate they have their ear are "not looking for new writers." That is one reason I became an author-publisher. And one reason I am considering return to a less elitist state.
daniel curzon says:
not freedom of speech
DANIEL CURZON
I am a gay writer and have had to fight for thirty-seven years
for free speech, so I want it. But it is not "free speech" to lie,
in court or in a review passed off as legitimate when it is not.
Technology enables deception.
Victoria Zackheim says:
Deception
Yes, I understand your point...and how often have we read a review (as was mentioned in this discussion) that attacked something in the book...that isn't in the book. I've known reviewers who were given litle tijme to read the book and submit the review...how can one get the facts straight under such a deadline...especially when the book is nonfiction and quoting dates, events, participants, etc.
As for having to fight for free speech...I can only hope that it will one day exist. (And before anyone attacks, I mean that in the figurative way. When someone takes a stand against our administration and is suddenly a pariah, or outs an illegality in corporate America and is suddenly jobless, that says something profound about freedom of speech.)