There's no doubt that logrolling is part of the publishing industry, most visible in blurbs, some of which are so over-the-top they make my eyes roll out of my head. (I remember the rapturous endorsements of Sean Penn's "Bob Honey Who Do Stuff" from leading literary lights that everyone should have been too embarrassed to print.) I also …
There's no doubt that logrolling is part of the publishing industry, most visible in blurbs, some of which are so over-the-top they make my eyes roll out of my head. (I remember the rapturous endorsements of Sean Penn's "Bob Honey Who Do Stuff" from leading literary lights that everyone should have been too embarrassed to print.) I also sometimes read a review where I feel like I can detect a reviewer pulling their punches, but I also think it's a dead end to go into reading someone's review and trying to suss out their motives or hidden agendas behind a review. If that's going to be my stance towards another person's articulation of their opinion, I'm dead in the water when it comes to taking those ideas in and letting them intersect with my own thoughts.
It's just as easy to turn things around and say that Ross Barkan is throwing (minor) shade at "James" because he's trying to establish his bona fides as an iconoclast truth-teller in the face of the elite who are afraid to risk their status. Now, I read your newsletter, so I don't actually believe that, but this is why I think worrying about this stuff is a dead end. I have to assume that the reviewer is this being truthful. That doesn't mean I'm going to agree with them, but I take their message as it is. I'm not interested in publishing industry intrigue, and as a reader, I don't know how to factor in potential insincerity to what a review is really saying. I once thought that Dale Peck was a sort of negative review performance artist, totally insincere in the degree of his haterade, but it became clear that he was entirely sincere and his animus was the fuel for his writing. To each their own.
I should say that I also only read reviews after I've read a book for myself, so my engagement is more of a "I thought this, what does someone else think" way, rather than using reviews in a consumer choice way. I particularly enjoy negative reviews of books I liked because it's a great way to reflect on why a book worked for me.
Even though I write lots of book reviews, I've never actually considered myself a true book reviewer (and definitely not a critic) because I almost exclusively write about books I think are good and worth the attention of others. (I wrote a column years ago explaining I write enthusiasms, not reviews.) This is a total cop-out if you think a reviewer's job is to sort through the contemporary firmament and and separate the wheat from the chaff and articulate those differences, but that's not the task I've given myself. When I talk about a book I mostly explain why it worked for me as a reading experience, and then try to articulate that in a way that allows my readers to decide if it sounds like a book they might want to check out. I don't have any desire to write a negative review because when a book doesn't work for me, I assume that it's not necessarily because the book is objectively bad, but simply because that book and I do not connect. I think it was Naomi Kanakia (whose newsletter I read every time) that said she couldn't imagine anyone thinking "Small Rain" was a good book and that it was a product of industry hype, butI found it genuinely hypnotic and wonderful. I don't know what to tell anyone who thinks the book is overrated trash other than maybe I like overrated trash.
My reviews are entirely honest, but they are obviously not the whole picture of what I think about the many books I read. The books that did not connect with me, or they I find wanting don't show up in my column. I suppose one could argue that this is itself a form of deception, but I guess that returns to my original point that judging the work of others based on the motives you think went into its creation is a dead end, for me at least.
I wouldn't say what I wrote was aimed at you and I often feel the same way in my own writing life. I tend to write on books I like and ignore ones I don't. I will also say, for certain book critics, there is a sorting that should happen. It's ok for a book critic to write that a book didn't speak to them or failed on some level. That honesty is needed.
I do think motives are worth considering in an industry where incentives are aimed in one clear direction - praise the novelist that is already being feted - and novelists themselves, when reviewing today, have every professional incentive to hail a book. They want to make friends and get ahead in a precarious moment. I *am* suspicious of the rapture around "James" (as I am other novels, to be fair, like "Creation Lake") because I respect Everett's oeuvre so much and know (as I think you do) this is not his best. There is a part of me that thinks "James" is Everett's version of "My Pafology" as Everett now recognizes the (largely white) publishing apparatus enjoys afro-pessimism, whereas in the 90s and 2000s it was the salacious tales from poor neighborhoods, the Precious writing that Everett seemed to dislike so much. Of course, I am *speculating* but my point is, on a meta-level, it is fine to do this. I get to be suspicious. And I am fine if people are suspicious of me. If they want to think "Ross is clout-chasing by knocking a popular book" then they can. I let my record speak for itself.
Re: Dale Peck, yeah, I understand why people thought that about him. It's also notable there are basically no Dale Pecks today. The industry incentivizes against it. The closest, probably, is Blake Smith, but Blake is much more an outsider than insider.
There's no doubt that logrolling is part of the publishing industry, most visible in blurbs, some of which are so over-the-top they make my eyes roll out of my head. (I remember the rapturous endorsements of Sean Penn's "Bob Honey Who Do Stuff" from leading literary lights that everyone should have been too embarrassed to print.) I also sometimes read a review where I feel like I can detect a reviewer pulling their punches, but I also think it's a dead end to go into reading someone's review and trying to suss out their motives or hidden agendas behind a review. If that's going to be my stance towards another person's articulation of their opinion, I'm dead in the water when it comes to taking those ideas in and letting them intersect with my own thoughts.
It's just as easy to turn things around and say that Ross Barkan is throwing (minor) shade at "James" because he's trying to establish his bona fides as an iconoclast truth-teller in the face of the elite who are afraid to risk their status. Now, I read your newsletter, so I don't actually believe that, but this is why I think worrying about this stuff is a dead end. I have to assume that the reviewer is this being truthful. That doesn't mean I'm going to agree with them, but I take their message as it is. I'm not interested in publishing industry intrigue, and as a reader, I don't know how to factor in potential insincerity to what a review is really saying. I once thought that Dale Peck was a sort of negative review performance artist, totally insincere in the degree of his haterade, but it became clear that he was entirely sincere and his animus was the fuel for his writing. To each their own.
I should say that I also only read reviews after I've read a book for myself, so my engagement is more of a "I thought this, what does someone else think" way, rather than using reviews in a consumer choice way. I particularly enjoy negative reviews of books I liked because it's a great way to reflect on why a book worked for me.
Even though I write lots of book reviews, I've never actually considered myself a true book reviewer (and definitely not a critic) because I almost exclusively write about books I think are good and worth the attention of others. (I wrote a column years ago explaining I write enthusiasms, not reviews.) This is a total cop-out if you think a reviewer's job is to sort through the contemporary firmament and and separate the wheat from the chaff and articulate those differences, but that's not the task I've given myself. When I talk about a book I mostly explain why it worked for me as a reading experience, and then try to articulate that in a way that allows my readers to decide if it sounds like a book they might want to check out. I don't have any desire to write a negative review because when a book doesn't work for me, I assume that it's not necessarily because the book is objectively bad, but simply because that book and I do not connect. I think it was Naomi Kanakia (whose newsletter I read every time) that said she couldn't imagine anyone thinking "Small Rain" was a good book and that it was a product of industry hype, butI found it genuinely hypnotic and wonderful. I don't know what to tell anyone who thinks the book is overrated trash other than maybe I like overrated trash.
My reviews are entirely honest, but they are obviously not the whole picture of what I think about the many books I read. The books that did not connect with me, or they I find wanting don't show up in my column. I suppose one could argue that this is itself a form of deception, but I guess that returns to my original point that judging the work of others based on the motives you think went into its creation is a dead end, for me at least.
I wouldn't say what I wrote was aimed at you and I often feel the same way in my own writing life. I tend to write on books I like and ignore ones I don't. I will also say, for certain book critics, there is a sorting that should happen. It's ok for a book critic to write that a book didn't speak to them or failed on some level. That honesty is needed.
I do think motives are worth considering in an industry where incentives are aimed in one clear direction - praise the novelist that is already being feted - and novelists themselves, when reviewing today, have every professional incentive to hail a book. They want to make friends and get ahead in a precarious moment. I *am* suspicious of the rapture around "James" (as I am other novels, to be fair, like "Creation Lake") because I respect Everett's oeuvre so much and know (as I think you do) this is not his best. There is a part of me that thinks "James" is Everett's version of "My Pafology" as Everett now recognizes the (largely white) publishing apparatus enjoys afro-pessimism, whereas in the 90s and 2000s it was the salacious tales from poor neighborhoods, the Precious writing that Everett seemed to dislike so much. Of course, I am *speculating* but my point is, on a meta-level, it is fine to do this. I get to be suspicious. And I am fine if people are suspicious of me. If they want to think "Ross is clout-chasing by knocking a popular book" then they can. I let my record speak for itself.
Re: Dale Peck, yeah, I understand why people thought that about him. It's also notable there are basically no Dale Pecks today. The industry incentivizes against it. The closest, probably, is Blake Smith, but Blake is much more an outsider than insider.