Finally someone who talks about books rather than the author's "queerness", "blackness" or political views. Just give me a good book to read! I'm not interested in the author's baggage.
I was not, though I remember when that book came out, and I was both intrigued and afraid to read it because I thought that I'd spend too much time comparing Diamond's take to my own. Still haven't read it. Shows you how complicated this stuff can be.
That's an interesting question, some of what we think about with "qualifications" depends on the context of a review. Like, anyone who has read the book is qualified, but that doesn't mean an audience is obligated to respect what comes from the reviewer. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but not everyone's opinions are worth listening to. With writing, I think qualifications are often rooted in the process people bring to table. If you're careful, open, fair, transparent, etc...you're qualified. There's people with expertise on paper who don't bring those traits to the task that ultimately show that despite their credentials, they weren't qualified.
Thanks, John. I appreciate your response and I wholeheartedly agree. But, also, while I don't think shared experience or identity has to be a prerequisite for a good review, I think it *can* help (in the right hands). As a reader I get frustrated when I connect with a book, then I read the reviews afterward and find the reviewer has completely missed what I found so special because they aren't culturally attuned to the subtleties and subtexts of the topic. (It's not just book reviews--I recently had this experience with a review of the movie Vivo.) I'm not sure it's always the reviewer's fault when there's a mismatch like that, either. Is it fair to expect one person to be knowledgeable about all things?
Beyond that, I think it's unfair to the author in these scenarios because a major review has the power to shape how readers perceive a text and if a reviewer "under-reads" or even misreads a book, it encourages readers to do the same. I wonder if part of being a "careful, open, fair, transparent" reviewer means being willing to ask yourself why a reader should listen to what you have to say and being able to admit when there's not a compelling answer to that question. I guess that all depends on what we expect a review to do, which is a whole other (related) topic :).
To your point, I'm thinking about what happened with the novel, American Dirt last year, where reviewers knowledgable about Mexico and immigration could see huge flaws in the story that wouldn't have been apparent to someone without that background and knowledge. In that case, it's important that the book was reviewed by some Latinx reviewers in order to add that perspective to the overall discussion.
You also raise another part of the equation separate from the choice of an assigning editor in terms of the ethical responsibility of the reviewer when requested. For McWhorter's book, I think Jillani should've self-excluded given their co-membership in FAIR. I'd hold myself to that standard. Your framing puts the focus of the decision on what benefits the reading audience, which is where I stand as well. They're ultimately who is being served by the review.
Exactly. The American Dirt controversy raised important questions about who gets to write about whom, who gets to review whose work and who publishers imagine their readers are. I know these are thorny questions that tend to elicit polarizing answers because of "culture wars" but I think they're worthy of serious consideration. So, too, the related question--Who is the audience for a review? Does how a reviewer imagines his audience impact his review?
I think it can. For example, it was very clear to me when I was reading the recent review of Vivo I mentioned above that I was not that reviewer's audience. Normally I wouldn't care except I am the audience for that movie. He ended up coming away from the film with a very different assessment than I did because of it, which again is normally ok--potato, potatoe--except I felt he badly misjudged the film because he couldn't see things about it that were very obvious to me (and really would be to any Latin Floridian) and he was clearly unaware of the cultural conversations that informed the film (again, which were obvious to me even as a causal viewer). I could be totally off-base, but I expect a reviewer to be "well-read," which doesn't just mean they've read a lot of books, but also they're fluent in the cultural conversations that surround a work and use that "expert" knowledge to illuminate things I might have glossed over as a reader/viewer. And it's hard to be conversant when you aren't aware those conversations exist.
Anyway, ultimately, it was a flawed review not only because he didn't care about what he was writing about (which, I hope, is the baseline for reviewing), but also because he couldn't see that his evaluative framework was too limited and the movie, its creators and its audience deserved more than he could give. So maybe what it comes down to is humility and the ability to self reflect. And ethics. (Which might have helped Jillani, lol!)
Hmm, commenting on Heidi Stevens' article you referenced about a mom who wanted Beloved removed from her son's school library 🙄 (love those people) because it gave him nightmares. I haven't read Beloved, nor have I read this article by Stevens, but I will just say two things. Heidi Stevens knows what's what. I'm a HUGE fan, and, secondly, Lord of the Rings gave me nightmares when I read it as a teenager. My mom even suggested that I should stop reading it. It is one of my favorite books in life, and I've read it multiple times through the years. Just saying. Also, I think books should be reviewed by a range of readers/reviewers, not handed to Reviewer X because Reviewer X "has so much in common with the author."
Finally someone who talks about books rather than the author's "queerness", "blackness" or political views. Just give me a good book to read! I'm not interested in the author's baggage.
Thanks for adding a word to my vocabulary today! I had to google "enmity".
Be as cranky as you like. It’s always interesting to get an actual point of view.
I hope you were recruited to review Jason Diamond’s Searching for John Hughes back in 2016.
I was not, though I remember when that book came out, and I was both intrigued and afraid to read it because I thought that I'd spend too much time comparing Diamond's take to my own. Still haven't read it. Shows you how complicated this stuff can be.
If shared experience doesn't necessarily qualify someone to write a book review than what does?
That's an interesting question, some of what we think about with "qualifications" depends on the context of a review. Like, anyone who has read the book is qualified, but that doesn't mean an audience is obligated to respect what comes from the reviewer. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but not everyone's opinions are worth listening to. With writing, I think qualifications are often rooted in the process people bring to table. If you're careful, open, fair, transparent, etc...you're qualified. There's people with expertise on paper who don't bring those traits to the task that ultimately show that despite their credentials, they weren't qualified.
Thanks, John. I appreciate your response and I wholeheartedly agree. But, also, while I don't think shared experience or identity has to be a prerequisite for a good review, I think it *can* help (in the right hands). As a reader I get frustrated when I connect with a book, then I read the reviews afterward and find the reviewer has completely missed what I found so special because they aren't culturally attuned to the subtleties and subtexts of the topic. (It's not just book reviews--I recently had this experience with a review of the movie Vivo.) I'm not sure it's always the reviewer's fault when there's a mismatch like that, either. Is it fair to expect one person to be knowledgeable about all things?
Beyond that, I think it's unfair to the author in these scenarios because a major review has the power to shape how readers perceive a text and if a reviewer "under-reads" or even misreads a book, it encourages readers to do the same. I wonder if part of being a "careful, open, fair, transparent" reviewer means being willing to ask yourself why a reader should listen to what you have to say and being able to admit when there's not a compelling answer to that question. I guess that all depends on what we expect a review to do, which is a whole other (related) topic :).
To your point, I'm thinking about what happened with the novel, American Dirt last year, where reviewers knowledgable about Mexico and immigration could see huge flaws in the story that wouldn't have been apparent to someone without that background and knowledge. In that case, it's important that the book was reviewed by some Latinx reviewers in order to add that perspective to the overall discussion.
You also raise another part of the equation separate from the choice of an assigning editor in terms of the ethical responsibility of the reviewer when requested. For McWhorter's book, I think Jillani should've self-excluded given their co-membership in FAIR. I'd hold myself to that standard. Your framing puts the focus of the decision on what benefits the reading audience, which is where I stand as well. They're ultimately who is being served by the review.
Exactly. The American Dirt controversy raised important questions about who gets to write about whom, who gets to review whose work and who publishers imagine their readers are. I know these are thorny questions that tend to elicit polarizing answers because of "culture wars" but I think they're worthy of serious consideration. So, too, the related question--Who is the audience for a review? Does how a reviewer imagines his audience impact his review?
I think it can. For example, it was very clear to me when I was reading the recent review of Vivo I mentioned above that I was not that reviewer's audience. Normally I wouldn't care except I am the audience for that movie. He ended up coming away from the film with a very different assessment than I did because of it, which again is normally ok--potato, potatoe--except I felt he badly misjudged the film because he couldn't see things about it that were very obvious to me (and really would be to any Latin Floridian) and he was clearly unaware of the cultural conversations that informed the film (again, which were obvious to me even as a causal viewer). I could be totally off-base, but I expect a reviewer to be "well-read," which doesn't just mean they've read a lot of books, but also they're fluent in the cultural conversations that surround a work and use that "expert" knowledge to illuminate things I might have glossed over as a reader/viewer. And it's hard to be conversant when you aren't aware those conversations exist.
Anyway, ultimately, it was a flawed review not only because he didn't care about what he was writing about (which, I hope, is the baseline for reviewing), but also because he couldn't see that his evaluative framework was too limited and the movie, its creators and its audience deserved more than he could give. So maybe what it comes down to is humility and the ability to self reflect. And ethics. (Which might have helped Jillani, lol!)
Hmm, commenting on Heidi Stevens' article you referenced about a mom who wanted Beloved removed from her son's school library 🙄 (love those people) because it gave him nightmares. I haven't read Beloved, nor have I read this article by Stevens, but I will just say two things. Heidi Stevens knows what's what. I'm a HUGE fan, and, secondly, Lord of the Rings gave me nightmares when I read it as a teenager. My mom even suggested that I should stop reading it. It is one of my favorite books in life, and I've read it multiple times through the years. Just saying. Also, I think books should be reviewed by a range of readers/reviewers, not handed to Reviewer X because Reviewer X "has so much in common with the author."