One of the many amazing things about The Complete Review is a reasonably calibrated scoring system. Gives you a real sense of which books really stood out. And at some point you realize a book getting B+ shouldn't put you off reading it. And then there are at least amazon/goodreads reviews. Authors really despite them for understandable reasons, but sometimes the emperor has not clothes. I've found myself reading the 1/2 star reviews just to see if I'm not just hallucinating a sense about a book. It's really a shame when blurbing/reviewing makes a lot of publishing feel like some kind of mid level marketing scam.
Quite frankly, I don't know how anyone could write something good without being able to make strong value judgements such as deciding when something is badly written/uninteresting/boring. Or just mediocre. And to be fair, a lot of lit-fic can feel like a kind of show and tell where people are bringing very personal stuff about their lives and identity, and on a social level it's just inappropriate to point out that book might be a bit of a self indulgent chore.
In my Tribune column a few weeks back I wrote about how a 1-star review on Amazon for Big Swiss by Jen Beagin convinced me that it was a book for me because I could tell from the objections that it was a style of humor I would enjoy. It's a reminder to me that reviews are qualitative evidence I can take in for myself - applying my standards of taste and values - rather than verdicts I have to accept or reject.
I think Amazon reviews are unfailing honest, though they're also often cockamamie, but to that extent, they can still be useful as indicators of human response to a particular work. I know lots of writers who refuse to look at their public reviews at all costs and I don't blame them, but I tend to find them fascinating.
Interesting piece, John. Without getting too deep, I'll just share my initial thoughts. When talking about reviews, POV seems important.
For critics, reviews are obviously important -- it's what they do.
For consumers, reviews are important as supplementary opinions that may or may mix well with their own opinions -- or inspire them to check something out (or not).
For artists/creators, though, reviews seem natural byproducts of their work, but byproducts that they need not interact with or even acknowledge. The power is in the artist's hands when it comes to deciding if they want to allocate brain power toward a review or not. A review is just a person's reaction to your artwork: take it or leave it, and keep going. Likewise, to call a review "unfair" is just the artist's reaction to the review -- a review of a review. It's just, you know, a bunch of reactions to a work of art -- and IMO the artist always comes out ahead because they were brave enough to TRY SOMETHING, else the critic would have nothing to do.
Rogen's point seems above all this. It's just that: should the artist decide to acknowledge a review, it can hurt -- personally, even though it's not personal. And that's maybe something reviewers don't think enough about as they attempt to write as sharply as they can. That seems very valid and true.
I wonder: Does "The cultural ecosystem need both creative work and the critical commentary about that work"? The model now seems: feed people the stuff that other people are enjoying, and let them decide. There's no critic in that model, and I much prefer it. I literally cannot recall the last time I relied on a critic's review for anything. (Which makes you wonder . . . it's possibly only the artists'/industry reading reviews in some kind of anxious circle jerk, where as real people are pretty open to just trying stuff out . . . and let's not even get into all the BS that becomes an "NYT Bestseller").
I do wonder if traditional criticism is really "the work that must be done." For consumer goods, like cars etc.? Yes. But for art? It's so damn subjective. I always like to think about the hundreds of rejections and haters Bukowski accumulated, and still he's a beloved cultural icon.
The caveat to all this? Perhaps, in Litrahchah, critics serve as power brokers from a marketing/promo standpoint more than they do in TV/Film. But that's bad. I'd like to see more of a Netflix model for books. Let the people decide with a thumbs up or thumbs down -- or simply by the amount of "views" / "reactions" a work receives. Again, a critic is only one person, however "astute" they may be.
I think the distinction I would make is that while criticism requires art as fodder, it exists as its own form of artistic expression and therefore has value in and of itself. Commentary that puts art into new contexts independent of the existence of the art itself.
A critic's job is not the same as a consumer reports reviewer meant to advise the masses on what is the best product. There is no such category when it comes to art. The critic's job is to render a fair and transparent judgment form their own perspective. The idea that this should consider the artist's feelings at all as part of being transparent and fair is sort of mind boggling to me, TBH. The art is the art and once it's in the world it exists, it stands apart from its creator as an object to be responded to and evaluated.
If you're not learning from critics, I think you've got to start reading different critics because the best critics consistently reveal some aspect of a work that I hadn't previously considered. This has happened over and over again in this year's Tournament of Books where there's not only the judgment from the judge, but the commentary from we commentators, and then the additional comments from the readers. All of this takes the form of criticism, and it's deeply fascinating to consider these things juxtaposed to the books themselves.
Criticism doesn't need to exist for consumer goods at all. Those are purely reviews, which is not the same thing as criticism (which often includes a review as a frame for the criticism).
I can also say that critics hold almost no sway when it comes to the power structures of publishing. The only people external of publishing companies with any power in that area are named Oprah, Reese, and Jenna.
The idea of a Netflix model for everything makes me shudder. The Netflix model is, unfortunately leading to a homogenization of content, rather than diversity and originality. The thumb's up/thumb's down model is sales. Do we truly believe that the best books, or the books that deserve to be in the world are the ones that sell the most?
I do agree that artists never need to interact with the criticism of their work. In fact, it's probably healthier if they don't, but I've never reached a level where my work has so much attention that I wasn't greedy to know every last thing people were saying about me.
Off topic perhaps, but the local Charleston paper used to have an excellent restaurant critic who regularly enraged chefs and customers because she was forthright and unflinching. I didn’t always agree with her but trusted her commitment to her craft and depth of research. There are film and book critics who affect me in a similar way and who can induce me to give a work a chance that I might otherwise have dismissed or been sure I’d dislike. Sadly, the food critic is gone along with her insights and detailed reviews.
Hanna Raskin. She had some real power. I remember a review where she accused the restaurant of poisoning her with sunchokes that really irked the chef/owners. She has a substack now. I thin she was one of the writers the platform lured with some guarantees around income, if I remember correctly: https://thefoodsection.substack.com/
Restaurant reviews are interesting because they're local businesses and there's really only one or two reviews that are going to make a difference. That's much more influence than a book or movie reviewer could ever have.
That's an interesting question. Leaving aside education, which I already write about more than books, I'd have to say music. There was a time I would've said sports, but while I'm still a fan of a lot of sports, my obsessive fanatic days seem behind me.
One of the many amazing things about The Complete Review is a reasonably calibrated scoring system. Gives you a real sense of which books really stood out. And at some point you realize a book getting B+ shouldn't put you off reading it. And then there are at least amazon/goodreads reviews. Authors really despite them for understandable reasons, but sometimes the emperor has not clothes. I've found myself reading the 1/2 star reviews just to see if I'm not just hallucinating a sense about a book. It's really a shame when blurbing/reviewing makes a lot of publishing feel like some kind of mid level marketing scam.
Quite frankly, I don't know how anyone could write something good without being able to make strong value judgements such as deciding when something is badly written/uninteresting/boring. Or just mediocre. And to be fair, a lot of lit-fic can feel like a kind of show and tell where people are bringing very personal stuff about their lives and identity, and on a social level it's just inappropriate to point out that book might be a bit of a self indulgent chore.
In my Tribune column a few weeks back I wrote about how a 1-star review on Amazon for Big Swiss by Jen Beagin convinced me that it was a book for me because I could tell from the objections that it was a style of humor I would enjoy. It's a reminder to me that reviews are qualitative evidence I can take in for myself - applying my standards of taste and values - rather than verdicts I have to accept or reject.
But have you ever looked in Amazon reviews for more honest and forthright assessments than what you'd find in pro reviews?
I think Amazon reviews are unfailing honest, though they're also often cockamamie, but to that extent, they can still be useful as indicators of human response to a particular work. I know lots of writers who refuse to look at their public reviews at all costs and I don't blame them, but I tend to find them fascinating.
Interesting piece, John. Without getting too deep, I'll just share my initial thoughts. When talking about reviews, POV seems important.
For critics, reviews are obviously important -- it's what they do.
For consumers, reviews are important as supplementary opinions that may or may mix well with their own opinions -- or inspire them to check something out (or not).
For artists/creators, though, reviews seem natural byproducts of their work, but byproducts that they need not interact with or even acknowledge. The power is in the artist's hands when it comes to deciding if they want to allocate brain power toward a review or not. A review is just a person's reaction to your artwork: take it or leave it, and keep going. Likewise, to call a review "unfair" is just the artist's reaction to the review -- a review of a review. It's just, you know, a bunch of reactions to a work of art -- and IMO the artist always comes out ahead because they were brave enough to TRY SOMETHING, else the critic would have nothing to do.
Rogen's point seems above all this. It's just that: should the artist decide to acknowledge a review, it can hurt -- personally, even though it's not personal. And that's maybe something reviewers don't think enough about as they attempt to write as sharply as they can. That seems very valid and true.
I wonder: Does "The cultural ecosystem need both creative work and the critical commentary about that work"? The model now seems: feed people the stuff that other people are enjoying, and let them decide. There's no critic in that model, and I much prefer it. I literally cannot recall the last time I relied on a critic's review for anything. (Which makes you wonder . . . it's possibly only the artists'/industry reading reviews in some kind of anxious circle jerk, where as real people are pretty open to just trying stuff out . . . and let's not even get into all the BS that becomes an "NYT Bestseller").
I do wonder if traditional criticism is really "the work that must be done." For consumer goods, like cars etc.? Yes. But for art? It's so damn subjective. I always like to think about the hundreds of rejections and haters Bukowski accumulated, and still he's a beloved cultural icon.
The caveat to all this? Perhaps, in Litrahchah, critics serve as power brokers from a marketing/promo standpoint more than they do in TV/Film. But that's bad. I'd like to see more of a Netflix model for books. Let the people decide with a thumbs up or thumbs down -- or simply by the amount of "views" / "reactions" a work receives. Again, a critic is only one person, however "astute" they may be.
I think the distinction I would make is that while criticism requires art as fodder, it exists as its own form of artistic expression and therefore has value in and of itself. Commentary that puts art into new contexts independent of the existence of the art itself.
A critic's job is not the same as a consumer reports reviewer meant to advise the masses on what is the best product. There is no such category when it comes to art. The critic's job is to render a fair and transparent judgment form their own perspective. The idea that this should consider the artist's feelings at all as part of being transparent and fair is sort of mind boggling to me, TBH. The art is the art and once it's in the world it exists, it stands apart from its creator as an object to be responded to and evaluated.
If you're not learning from critics, I think you've got to start reading different critics because the best critics consistently reveal some aspect of a work that I hadn't previously considered. This has happened over and over again in this year's Tournament of Books where there's not only the judgment from the judge, but the commentary from we commentators, and then the additional comments from the readers. All of this takes the form of criticism, and it's deeply fascinating to consider these things juxtaposed to the books themselves.
Criticism doesn't need to exist for consumer goods at all. Those are purely reviews, which is not the same thing as criticism (which often includes a review as a frame for the criticism).
I can also say that critics hold almost no sway when it comes to the power structures of publishing. The only people external of publishing companies with any power in that area are named Oprah, Reese, and Jenna.
The idea of a Netflix model for everything makes me shudder. The Netflix model is, unfortunately leading to a homogenization of content, rather than diversity and originality. The thumb's up/thumb's down model is sales. Do we truly believe that the best books, or the books that deserve to be in the world are the ones that sell the most?
I do agree that artists never need to interact with the criticism of their work. In fact, it's probably healthier if they don't, but I've never reached a level where my work has so much attention that I wasn't greedy to know every last thing people were saying about me.
Off topic perhaps, but the local Charleston paper used to have an excellent restaurant critic who regularly enraged chefs and customers because she was forthright and unflinching. I didn’t always agree with her but trusted her commitment to her craft and depth of research. There are film and book critics who affect me in a similar way and who can induce me to give a work a chance that I might otherwise have dismissed or been sure I’d dislike. Sadly, the food critic is gone along with her insights and detailed reviews.
Hanna Raskin. She had some real power. I remember a review where she accused the restaurant of poisoning her with sunchokes that really irked the chef/owners. She has a substack now. I thin she was one of the writers the platform lured with some guarantees around income, if I remember correctly: https://thefoodsection.substack.com/
Restaurant reviews are interesting because they're local businesses and there's really only one or two reviews that are going to make a difference. That's much more influence than a book or movie reviewer could ever have.
I was thinking about you when reading about AO Scott’s transition this week. If you were not writing about books, what would you want to write about?
That's an interesting question. Leaving aside education, which I already write about more than books, I'd have to say music. There was a time I would've said sports, but while I'm still a fan of a lot of sports, my obsessive fanatic days seem behind me.