Why you got to be so angry, baby?

[hawkwing_lb]

Rules 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.

Comments

[britmandelo.livejournal.com]

Had to comment on that thread. I think I won't go look at it again now that I've done so, though. Ugh.

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.

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

I love the title of this post to pieces. :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Most of those commentators are biased, and proud of it. And too stupid to listen or to try and appreciate that other people are allowed to disagree with them. It's hard to ignore it, when it;s directed at you. It's hurtful and intrusive. But you're smarter and nicer than they are. They're the ones who look like fools.