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I am aware that the majority of published authors who read my LJ disagree with my stance on this, some of them quite strongly. [ETA: I mean that a majority of them, unlike me, do not write negative reviews. I do not mean that they agree with the italicized arguments. Sorry for the confusing wording.] It’s okay! I don’t hate or even dislike you because we disagree. (If I hate or dislike you, believe me, you will not unhappily wonder about it. You will know for certain that I do.)
Just because we disagree on an issue does not mean that I hate the person on the other side. Even when it comes to issues far more personal than book reviewing (though to an author, nothing may be more personal than a negative review of a book they wrote) I at least try to keep an open mind. I have friends who believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ and Meher Baba, I have friends who believe that abortion is morally wrong, I have at least one friend who thinks Touched by Venom was a good and important work of feminist fiction, and I have friends who think that authors who write negative reviews are being unprofessional and mean. We are still friends.
I respect other people’s decision to never say anything negative about a book in public. This is an explanation of why I do.
The italicized sentences are arguments I’ve seen against criticism. Please note that I am not quoting anyone I know personally. The people I know personally have been careful to state that their subjective opinions on why they don’t write negative reviews are subjective. The italicized opinions are the distillation of many opinions I have read repeatedly elsewhere. And yes, people do say outright that negative reviews are bad and wrong.
Criticism is mean and pointless. Also, life is too short to discuss negative things.
The motto of the ashram where I grew up was “Don’t worry, be happy.” This sounds great, but what it actually means when you’re not allowed to voice worries, or when identifying a problem is shut down because it’s worrying and not being happy, is that no problem can ever be identified and so no problem can ever be solved. Unhappiness cannot be banned, but discussion of it can. And so everyone continues, seething and miserable, unable to solve or even unburden themselves of their sorrows, putting on a fake smiley face.
I believe that bad things exist and are worth talking about. Bad prose exists. Unmotivated character changes exist. Books which are simply not to my taste exist. They do not stop existing if we stop discussing them.
If a thing exists and a person wants to talk about it, it is not wrong to talk about it.
I like discussing books. I have opinions on books. I like reading and discussing good books. In a different way, I like reading and discussing bad books. I find it very interesting, both as a reader and as a writer, to see how books go wrong, much in the same way that mountaineers like to read and discuss accident reports. One can often learn more from seeing how something was done badly than how something was done well – the badly sewn seam is more easily visible. And apart from the educational value, I simply find all aspects of books interesting and worthy of discussion – good, bad, ambitiously failed, un-ambitious, perplexing.
If I can’t write honestly about my actual reaction to a book, for me there’s no point in writing at all. And if I can only write about books which I unreservedly loved, but not about books which I hated or had mixed feelings about, then for me there’s no point in writing about any books at all.
Negative reviews are bad and mean because they hurt the author’s feelings.
I don’t write reviews for the benefit of the author being reviewed. I write them for the benefit of the actual or potential reader.
I too get my feelings hurt when I read negative reviews of my own work or of friends’ work or just of a book I particularly love. But that doesn’t mean those reviews should not exist. If I don’t want my squee harshed or my feelings hurt, I make use of the back button or don’t click at all.
Authors would do well to either cultivate a thick skin or avoid reading reviews. Either choice is completely respectable and valid. But to expect the reviewer – who writes for the readers – to fall silent for the benefit of a single person, who is not even the intended audience, is to misunderstand the entire purpose of reviews.
It’s okay to objectively state some criticisms, well-peppered with equally objective praise. But mocking is mean.
Book reviews are not supposed to be objective. They are the subjective opinion of the reviewer. I’m not sure it’s even possible to write an objective review, and I don’t know what one would even look like. Opinions are inherently subjective.
Mixed reviews are appropriate if the reviewer’s feelings are honestly mixed. They are dishonest if the reviewer honestly felt that the book was mostly or entirely bad.
That being said, I’m fine with people thinking I’m mean. I just want to go on the record that when I mock a book, it is because my honest impulse is to mock. I have enjoyed reading many mocking reviews, and will no doubt write many more. I wouldn’t point and laugh at an author, but the author is not the book.
It’s fine to criticize a book on political grounds, like for containing sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, etc, because that provides a valuable public service in warning away readers who might be hurt by reading such a book. However, criticizing a book on artistic grounds is wrong.
I have absolutely no problem with political criticism. But if all criticism is political, it removes the (admittedly often blurry) distinction between artistic merit and political merit.
I love Eminem. Many of Eminem’s songs are incredibly misogynistic. If I were to review one of his albums, I would praise him on artistic grounds and criticize him on political ones. If the only acceptable critique is political, my review would make it incomprehensible why I listen to him, and would elide key elements of his work. On the flip side, I could write a rap about how feminism is good and threatening women with violence is bad. It would be politically valid and absolute crap artistically. And if all critique is political, people would get the impression that I’m a better rapper than Eminem.
Not all political critiques must address art. Not all artistic critiques must address politics. But both types need to exist for criticism to have any validity at all.
Since authors are all in the same field, it is unprofessional for a published author to write a negative review of another author’s work.
I was a reader before I was a writer. Being published doesn’t make me magically no longer a reader, deprived of my reader’s opinions. And since reviews are inherently written by people who write, it is natural that many of them will also be published writers. Saying that published writers shouldn’t write reviews is essentially saying that success in one area of one’s field should forever ban one from another.
Attempts by published authors to squelch negative reviews, whether of their own books or in general, are ill-advised. Most books don’t get much publicity and could use every scrap they can get. In those cases, a mixed or negative review is better than no review at all. The worst fate possible for a book is to be ignored and forgotten.
It’s fine for individuals to have a policy of not speaking unless they have something nice to say. But it’s also fine and necessary for other individuals to speak when they have nothing nice to say at all. (And, for me as for Alice Roosevelt, those individuals should come sit next to me.)
A healthy culture of criticism, in which reviews voicing any opinion are acceptable, would produce more and more lively and memorable discussion of books, and this would be better for book sales overall than a bland culture of nicey-nice, in which only recommendations are put forth and they all blend together in an indistinguishable and forgettable mass of positivity.
Just because we disagree on an issue does not mean that I hate the person on the other side. Even when it comes to issues far more personal than book reviewing (though to an author, nothing may be more personal than a negative review of a book they wrote) I at least try to keep an open mind. I have friends who believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ and Meher Baba, I have friends who believe that abortion is morally wrong, I have at least one friend who thinks Touched by Venom was a good and important work of feminist fiction, and I have friends who think that authors who write negative reviews are being unprofessional and mean. We are still friends.
I respect other people’s decision to never say anything negative about a book in public. This is an explanation of why I do.
The italicized sentences are arguments I’ve seen against criticism. Please note that I am not quoting anyone I know personally. The people I know personally have been careful to state that their subjective opinions on why they don’t write negative reviews are subjective. The italicized opinions are the distillation of many opinions I have read repeatedly elsewhere. And yes, people do say outright that negative reviews are bad and wrong.
Criticism is mean and pointless. Also, life is too short to discuss negative things.
The motto of the ashram where I grew up was “Don’t worry, be happy.” This sounds great, but what it actually means when you’re not allowed to voice worries, or when identifying a problem is shut down because it’s worrying and not being happy, is that no problem can ever be identified and so no problem can ever be solved. Unhappiness cannot be banned, but discussion of it can. And so everyone continues, seething and miserable, unable to solve or even unburden themselves of their sorrows, putting on a fake smiley face.
I believe that bad things exist and are worth talking about. Bad prose exists. Unmotivated character changes exist. Books which are simply not to my taste exist. They do not stop existing if we stop discussing them.
If a thing exists and a person wants to talk about it, it is not wrong to talk about it.
I like discussing books. I have opinions on books. I like reading and discussing good books. In a different way, I like reading and discussing bad books. I find it very interesting, both as a reader and as a writer, to see how books go wrong, much in the same way that mountaineers like to read and discuss accident reports. One can often learn more from seeing how something was done badly than how something was done well – the badly sewn seam is more easily visible. And apart from the educational value, I simply find all aspects of books interesting and worthy of discussion – good, bad, ambitiously failed, un-ambitious, perplexing.
If I can’t write honestly about my actual reaction to a book, for me there’s no point in writing at all. And if I can only write about books which I unreservedly loved, but not about books which I hated or had mixed feelings about, then for me there’s no point in writing about any books at all.
Negative reviews are bad and mean because they hurt the author’s feelings.
I don’t write reviews for the benefit of the author being reviewed. I write them for the benefit of the actual or potential reader.
I too get my feelings hurt when I read negative reviews of my own work or of friends’ work or just of a book I particularly love. But that doesn’t mean those reviews should not exist. If I don’t want my squee harshed or my feelings hurt, I make use of the back button or don’t click at all.
Authors would do well to either cultivate a thick skin or avoid reading reviews. Either choice is completely respectable and valid. But to expect the reviewer – who writes for the readers – to fall silent for the benefit of a single person, who is not even the intended audience, is to misunderstand the entire purpose of reviews.
It’s okay to objectively state some criticisms, well-peppered with equally objective praise. But mocking is mean.
Book reviews are not supposed to be objective. They are the subjective opinion of the reviewer. I’m not sure it’s even possible to write an objective review, and I don’t know what one would even look like. Opinions are inherently subjective.
Mixed reviews are appropriate if the reviewer’s feelings are honestly mixed. They are dishonest if the reviewer honestly felt that the book was mostly or entirely bad.
That being said, I’m fine with people thinking I’m mean. I just want to go on the record that when I mock a book, it is because my honest impulse is to mock. I have enjoyed reading many mocking reviews, and will no doubt write many more. I wouldn’t point and laugh at an author, but the author is not the book.
It’s fine to criticize a book on political grounds, like for containing sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, etc, because that provides a valuable public service in warning away readers who might be hurt by reading such a book. However, criticizing a book on artistic grounds is wrong.
I have absolutely no problem with political criticism. But if all criticism is political, it removes the (admittedly often blurry) distinction between artistic merit and political merit.
I love Eminem. Many of Eminem’s songs are incredibly misogynistic. If I were to review one of his albums, I would praise him on artistic grounds and criticize him on political ones. If the only acceptable critique is political, my review would make it incomprehensible why I listen to him, and would elide key elements of his work. On the flip side, I could write a rap about how feminism is good and threatening women with violence is bad. It would be politically valid and absolute crap artistically. And if all critique is political, people would get the impression that I’m a better rapper than Eminem.
Not all political critiques must address art. Not all artistic critiques must address politics. But both types need to exist for criticism to have any validity at all.
Since authors are all in the same field, it is unprofessional for a published author to write a negative review of another author’s work.
I was a reader before I was a writer. Being published doesn’t make me magically no longer a reader, deprived of my reader’s opinions. And since reviews are inherently written by people who write, it is natural that many of them will also be published writers. Saying that published writers shouldn’t write reviews is essentially saying that success in one area of one’s field should forever ban one from another.
Attempts by published authors to squelch negative reviews, whether of their own books or in general, are ill-advised. Most books don’t get much publicity and could use every scrap they can get. In those cases, a mixed or negative review is better than no review at all. The worst fate possible for a book is to be ignored and forgotten.
It’s fine for individuals to have a policy of not speaking unless they have something nice to say. But it’s also fine and necessary for other individuals to speak when they have nothing nice to say at all. (And, for me as for Alice Roosevelt, those individuals should come sit next to me.)
A healthy culture of criticism, in which reviews voicing any opinion are acceptable, would produce more and more lively and memorable discussion of books, and this would be better for book sales overall than a bland culture of nicey-nice, in which only recommendations are put forth and they all blend together in an indistinguishable and forgettable mass of positivity.
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