Why you got to be so angry, baby?
Jan. 15th, 2012 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbRules for reviewing, Opposite World edition:
1. Reviews must be "objective."
2. Never use passionate rhetoric.
3. Never mention the author's treatment of female characters.
4. Never mention the author's ability, or lack thereof, to construct a sentence.
5. Probably best to just quote the flap copy and say "Eeee."
6. All negative reviews are personal attacks upon the author and everyone who likes their work.
I'm venting, at least a little. The comments on the review over at SH are pretty much the first time I've had shit-talking directed at me personally over the internet (what can I say, I've been relatively sheltered) and it's been an interesting learning experience. (One of the commenters scored a sexist/abusive bingo right out of handbook.) (Also, wow, anti-intellectualism.) (But most of them are, I suspect, just feeling judged by the fact that someone else thinks that a thing which they like is crap. As someone who still holds a tendre for a couple of books by Terry Goodkind and an avid reader of some really really problematic (and sometimes downright bad) books, I can sympathise.)
Thing is, for me? I get as much or more out of a negative review (by someone else) than I do out of a positive one. Article-sized negative reviews frequently go into more depth, so I can see exactly what I may or may not like about the work - and they're frequently more entertaining.
I mean, mostly I'm reading article-sized reviews of films. These days I get my book recommendations in the form of a blog paragraph or line from people whose tastes I know often align with mine (I think the last book I bought as a result of an actual review was Suzanne McLeod's urban fantasy, which I found rather meh, in the final estimation. Or take the case of The Steel Remains, which I ended up loving but which was getting such good press from reviewers whose tastes don't align with mine I thought I'd hate it to pieces, and only read it out of guilt at ignoring a gift sitting months on my shelf), or in the form of direct recommendations after asking people. But the point is, I think, comparable.
Anyway. Venting done.
1. Reviews must be "objective."
2. Never use passionate rhetoric.
3. Never mention the author's treatment of female characters.
4. Never mention the author's ability, or lack thereof, to construct a sentence.
5. Probably best to just quote the flap copy and say "Eeee."
6. All negative reviews are personal attacks upon the author and everyone who likes their work.
I'm venting, at least a little. The comments on the review over at SH are pretty much the first time I've had shit-talking directed at me personally over the internet (what can I say, I've been relatively sheltered) and it's been an interesting learning experience. (One of the commenters scored a sexist/abusive bingo right out of handbook.) (Also, wow, anti-intellectualism.) (But most of them are, I suspect, just feeling judged by the fact that someone else thinks that a thing which they like is crap. As someone who still holds a tendre for a couple of books by Terry Goodkind and an avid reader of some really really problematic (and sometimes downright bad) books, I can sympathise.)
Thing is, for me? I get as much or more out of a negative review (by someone else) than I do out of a positive one. Article-sized negative reviews frequently go into more depth, so I can see exactly what I may or may not like about the work - and they're frequently more entertaining.
I mean, mostly I'm reading article-sized reviews of films. These days I get my book recommendations in the form of a blog paragraph or line from people whose tastes I know often align with mine (I think the last book I bought as a result of an actual review was Suzanne McLeod's urban fantasy, which I found rather meh, in the final estimation. Or take the case of The Steel Remains, which I ended up loving but which was getting such good press from reviewers whose tastes don't align with mine I thought I'd hate it to pieces, and only read it out of guilt at ignoring a gift sitting months on my shelf), or in the form of direct recommendations after asking people. But the point is, I think, comparable.
Anyway. Venting done.
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no subject
Date: 2012-01-15 06:21 pm (UTC)If it helps, a very similar thing happened to Joanna Russ in 1979 because she published a takedown of epic fantasy as a genre as it stood, and people were furious. Her response, the next issue, was absolutely killer, out of the park. It begins: "I know it's painful to be told that something in which one has invested intense emotion is not only bad art but bad for you, not only bad for you but ridiculous [...]" and gets better from there.
There's also a great letter she wrote in response to people saying her reviews were unfair or too harsh; it's a brilliant summation of the job of a critic, which is not ever to be nice. (All of this stuff, and her reviews, are collected in "The Country You Have Never Seen.") And if those folks thought your review was harsh, Russ's would have given them heart attacks.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-15 06:42 pm (UTC)But I don't think I'll be commenting again unless someone brings something that isn't the tone argument into play.
Joanna Russ always helps! (Well, maybe not always. But when it comes to eviscerating arguments, definitely.) Intellectual rigor and biting wit, that lady had buckets of it. (And one of these days I'll actually manage to finish The Female Man.)
I've just requested The Country You Have Never Seen from the library. Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-15 06:47 pm (UTC)(Only sort of related: I found that reading her reviews in that book did more to change my whole outlook on criticism than years in an academic program half-devoted to it.)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-15 06:55 pm (UTC)I suppose some weeks are like that. You win some, etc.
(Though the person referred to in the previously tagged asshole post? Went from being I don't care to read your books to I will avoid entering elevators and deserted places if you are there as a result of his words. My This person is not safe for women meter did a big jump. Which is maybe unfair, but my instincts, I trust them.)
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Date: 2012-01-16 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-16 03:14 pm (UTC)It's not a reviewer's job to pay attention to people's wounded manly feelings (all one of them). I do think that there's a potential interesting conversation to be had about compelling reasons to review books, what counts as one, and whether the lack of an especially "compelling" reason to review is a reason not to.
Though perhaps that's not a conversation that can happen fruitfully in that comment thread. (Disappointingly, Jeff VanderMeer has failed to elaborate on or defend his initial argument that some books are "more worthy" of review than others: that might be a conversation worth having in genre as a whole, considering the proportion of works by women "professionally" reviewed to the proportion of those by men in light of the numbers published - even if such a conversation results in more sound than substance, there might be some substance there.)
I think you're wrong about me being nice, though. Nice people worry about hurt feelings and making themselves amenable - tho' perhaps I have too much exposure to people taking only one definition of nice.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-16 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-16 09:00 pm (UTC)(For now, I'm perfectly content to leave pursuing that line to someone who doesn't have two language courses, a thesis, a funding app, and a conference paper in the pipeline.)
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