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I just sent Copperwise a review for Green Man of a book on the history of cooking. It was late because the book was so bad that every time I opened it, I was unable to force myself to read for more than five minutes. This book didn't just suck. It SUUUUUUCKED! So I said so. When my review comes out, I figure I have about a one-in-three chance of getting a splenetic response from the author.
I swear, every third negative review written on Green Man gets an outraged response from the author. (Occasionally they get an outraged response from fans. Mia disliked a book called THE SIGHT and wrote a very funny review explaining why, and she's _still_ getting aggrieved letters about it.)
On the one hand, I think this discourages reviewers from writing honest rather than sugar-coated reviews. On the other hand, I think reviewers need to grow a thicker skin.
It's not that I don't think anyone should publicly disagree with a review. That's fine. However, when the author writes to defend him or herself, he or she inevitably ends up with egg on the face. And I do have a problem with letters which follow the Standard Review Complaint Template:
1. Everyone else liked my book. (Links to positive reviews.)
2. Only positive reviews should be written, because negative reviews are mean and serve no purpose.
3. If you write negative reviews, you must be a bad person who kicks kittens.
4. Only people who have had their own novels published have the right to write reviews.
5. (optional): I can kick your ass.
When I started writing for Green Man, I didn't expect to ever get a response from an author whose book I'd reviewed. I didn't think a little no-pay internet magazine would attract a wide or professional readership (I was wrong about that) and I didn't think that writers commonly responded to negative reviews. (I'd gotten a few thank-yous from the authors of books I'd recommended on usenet, so I knew that happened.)
I was thinking of it from my own perspective as a writer, though; when the TV show I wrote for got bad reviews, it didn't even occur to me to write to the reviewers to tell them they were idiots. For one thing, some of their criticisms were right on the money. I suppose I could have written to explain that the stupid plot twist hadn't been my idea but was the result of someone else rewriting my brilliant script, or to say that everyone thought it was clever in the writer's room, or that my dialogue was actually quite scintillating.
But honest to God, it never even occurred to me. And if it had occurred to me, I wouldn't have done it because I would have realized that I would just make myself look like a moron. Writers write. Their works are their argument. Reviewers review. That's their response. The appropriate response to the response, should it be disliked, is to write a letter ranting about the stupidity and poor writing skills of the reviewer... and then send it to one's friends.
To explain why I feel so strongly about this, complete with explanations of why I think negative reviews are an essential part of the critical process, I will reprint some communications regarding a review I wrote a while back, of a very bad novel called WINDOWPANE.
I reproduce this here not merely because it contains amusing plot twists, but because it hits every single point of the Template Letter above, and is representative of the sort of letter exchange that frequently appears in the Green Man column.
First, the original review:
http://greenmanreview.com/book/book%5Fperry%5Fwindowpane.html
(Psst, Mia: I just noticed that the footnote explaining that WINDOWPANE was a trunk novel written long before BLACK STEEL never got added. Presumably it got lost when you and Grey switched departments. Can you put in a footnote to that effect, please?)
Then, the letters, in chronological order. Note that the first two were originally emailed directly, and that my Green Man bio at that time mentioned that I was working on a novel and studied karate.
From: Steve Perry
Subject: Windowpane Review
Date: November 10, 2003
Rachel,
Somebody sent me your review of Windowpane, and since it is, in fact, the worst one I have ever gotten for anything I've published, I found it greatly amusing. (Though I have to ask -- Why, as you indicated to WJW, in re his novel, The Rift, are you wasting your writing time doing poisoned pen reviews?)
You couldn't know, of course, that I wrote Windowpane in the early 1980's -- before I did the Matador books -- and didn't have enough clout to get it read. So I stuck it in a trunk and it stayed there for fifteen years. Which is why I cannibalized parts of it, because I knew it wasn't going to be published.
But, fast forward to 2001. Somebody starting an e-book company asked me if I had any trunk books and I gave them this one. The e-book company went belly-up, but the editor went to work for Five Star and he liked the ms enough to show it to his publishers. They liked it enough to publish it.
So you can rag me for having written something so deadly earnest, but not for stopping my paying work for what I was doing to try and break into the mainstream. I'm still hacking away. (That you didn't like it is okay, though I tend to respond to critics like Fred Allen used to -- Where were you when the page was blank? Better the world's worst artist than the world's best critic and all ...)
But since you are working on a novel -- and assuming you can sell it -- your turn in the barrel is coming. At the risk of sounding naively idealistic, Cap'n Karma never sleeps. I'd be interested in hearing from you when -- and trust me, you won't please 'em all -- you get a really nasty review. Just to see how it makes you feel.
But, hey -- break a leg. Living well is the best revenge.
Steve
Rachel writes:
Dear Steve,
Is it O.K. if I forward your letter to the Green Man Review letter column? It corrects my wrong guess about when and why you wrote Windowpane; it explains why the same scene was in Black Steel (which I quite enjoyed, by the way, and which I've praised elsewhere), and it raises some interesting points on the ethics of criticism which I would like to address publicly, as they have repeatedly come up at Green Man and elsewhere. I promise, I won't make any personal attacks.
Rachel
Steve Perry replied:
Rachel,
Nope, I don't mind if you forward it. Nor this note. And I don't have any problems with attacks, personal or otherwise -- I fancy that I can take care of myself. It's just that we have a basic philosophical difference when it comes to reviewing: Rather than pan a book I don't like, I don't review it at all. There are plenty of books I haven't cared for, and why give them ink? People remember the names of products in the worst ads as much as they do in the best. I'd rather hold up something worth a reader's time -- go get this and I think you'll get your money's worth.
Thumper Rabbit's Daddy's Dictum, and, of course, it goes along with my way of looking at life. Us old hippies have some of that attitude left -- even though I am more a believer in Meher Baba's non-violence of the strong, as opposed to pacificism. Because I can kick your ass sometimes means I don't have to do it in order to prove something.
Of maybe a hundred reviews I've had published, the only one in which I ever took writers to task concerned a collaboration by two horror heavyweights (King and Straub) in which they were deliberately messing with readers just because they could, and I called 'em on it; and I knew my opinion wouldn't do anything to keep the book off the bestseller list. (It didn't.) And even then, I found something to like.
I've never done one in which I told readers not to buy the book. (To dismiss something a fellow worker in the word mines has labored over for months, maybe years, with witty deconstruction or mayhaps even snide comments in print just doesn't call to me.)
Anybody can be a critic. You don't have to start with a blank page, all you have to do is react to what somebody else has done. For me, walking the walking gives you more rights to talk the talk, but even so, I'm just not a fan of attack journalism. Your mileage seems to vary.
Steve
Rachel replies:
(As a side note, I am quite familiar with Meher Baba. I grew up on his ashram in Ahmednagar, India. While most ashram kids grow up to be enlightened, spiritual types, a few of us turn out...well...differently.
So I do see your point about the "non-violence of the strong" thing, but if I went around telling people that I could kick their ass, my sensei would kick my ass. Well, not literally, but he'd raise his eyebrows and look at me, and it would feel the same.
Moving on...
Steve Perry’s main point seems to be that negative book reviews serve no purpose and should not be written. As this is an issue which has come up a number of times in this letter column, I would like to take the time to address it.
At Green Man Review, while we can volunteer to review books which we have already read, usually we are assigned books for review which we haven’t read yet--in other words, before we know whether or not we’ll like them. This is how the process works:
Publishers send review copies to Green Man Review. The editor sends the reviewers a list of books available for review. The reviewers choose books from that list. The editor assigns books when more than one person volunteers to review the same book, and re-posts the list if no one volunteers for certain books. Finally, the books are mailed to the reviewers.
This process selects for positive reviews to a certain extent, as people are likely to request books by authors whom they already know and like. But it does not, cannot, and should not ensure positive reviews. Once reviewers have received and read their assigned books, they have an obligation to review them whether they enjoyed them or not.
Imagine the consequences if they chose not to review books they didn't like: either the books would not be reviewed at all, in which case the implied contract with the publisher, who provides the books for free in exchange for a review, would be broken; or else books would be passed around indefinitely until they found a fan. For some books, that could take quite a long time, and the resulting review -- after, say, the first fifty reviewers declined to write one -- would hardly be representative.
Clearly, it's impractical for any publication which uses this or a similar system to receive only enthusiastic reviews. And if all books which are submitted are reviewed, then the only way of ensuring that all reviews are positive is to make them positive whether the reviewer liked them or not. And that would be dishonest.
Regarding the ethics of writing negative reviews in general, as we now see that such reviews are an inevitable part of the process of reviewing, one must raise the question of whether books should be reviewed at all.
Steve Perry’s views on that matter seem to go as follows:
1. That only writers of published fiction should review books:
"For me, walking the walking gives you more rights to talk the talk."
It’s true that I haven’t published any novels yet; however, according to my bio, which Steve Perry must have looked up in order to find out that I was working on one, I have had some teleplays produced. Does that mean I'm only qualified to review television? If my novel was published tomorrow, would I then become qualified to review fiction; and would I have been unqualified the day before? Surely one gains the right to write reviews by writing good ones, not by citing related accomplishments.
2. That even when performed by published novelists, criticism is an unskilled and worthless endeavor:
"Anybody can be a critic. You don't have to start with a blank page, all you have to do is react to what somebody else has done." "Better the world's worst artist than the world's best critic and all..."
It’s true that criticism does not exist in a vacuum, but neither does any written work. Everything ever written is a reaction to something else, whether it be other works of art or real-life experiences. No work of non-fiction starts, in that sense, with a blank page; does that mean that anyone could have written Seabiscuit, The Liar’s Club, or Into Thin Air? And what would Windowpane be without Steve Perry’s experience of the sixties?
As for the world’s worst artist vs. the world’s best critic, I will take the criticism of Pauline Kael, Michael Swanwick, or Ruth Reichl over the complete oeuvre of Ed Wood, thank you very much.
3. That reviews should only function as recommendations:
"I'd rather hold up something worth a reader's time -- go get this and I think you'll get your money's worth."
I argue that not only do negative reviews also serve the purpose of helping people get their money’s worth -- if only someone had warned me to see anything other than Con Air -- but positive reviews seem suspicious without the counterbalance of negative reviews. To know what someone dislikes is as informative as knowing what they like; and if someone seems to like everything, then they become useless as a source of recommendations.
4. That it’s wrong to criticize something which someone put a lot of work into:
"To dismiss something a fellow worker in the word mines has labored over for months, maybe years, with witty deconstruction or mayhaps even snide comments in print just doesn't call to me."
I’ve written insulting reviews, and I’ve received insulting reviews. Of course the former is more enjoyable. But I don’t see other reviewers as being out to get me, or deliberately crushing my years of work. From their point of view, it isn’t years of work, it’s an hour-long show that bored them.
I know that not everyone is going to like everything I do, and if I put my work out there for public viewing, I expect it to be commented upon in public. Just as the occasional bloody lip is the price of being a martial artist, the occasional witty review is the price of being an artist of the arty type. If you never get hit, you’ll never learn to protect your face. And if that sounds too rough, you shouldn’t be playing contact sports.
And finally, why did I take the time to write such a lengthy reply? It's for the same reason that I reviewed Windowpane. It's the reason why I write negative reviews, positive reviews, fiction, teleplays, articles, and letters.
Is it because I'm a bitter, angry person with no life and nothing better to do than express my venom and jealousy? No, for that would only motivate me to place late-night drunken phone calls.
I reviewed Windowpane the way I did because it was my honest opinion, and because I did my best to put the words together in the best and most interesting and amusing way I could. That's how I write and how, I presume, most writers (including Steve Perry) write; and how we write is why we write.
We do it because we want to share what's in our minds and hearts. We do it because it's fun.
Rachel
From: Steve Perry
Subject: Scratch a Critic, Find an Assassin
Date: November 13, 2003
Dear Letters Editor,
I've been writing forever, and like most writers I know, normally shrug off reviews and critiques, good or bad. Doesn't do much good to respond, for the same reason that the reviews don't much help a writer -- once the book is done and out, you can't go back and fix it, even if the comments are valid.
However, I have made a couple of exceptions, for reviews that were particularly well-done, be they pro or con -- and for those not-so-well-done. From where I sit, Rachel Manija Brown wrote a nasty, mean-spirited, and inaccurate critique of my novel Windowpane. It's so awful that it is more amusing than painful -- the worst comments out of hundreds of reviews I have gotten in twenty-five years as a writer. I wonder if it makes her feel good to know that?
I dropped her a note to this effect, and pointed the basic factual errors, and she indicated she'd pass the note along to you, with her comments. Well. Let me amplify my comments a bit:
Ms. Brown offered that she enjoyed another of my books, but damned it with faint praise -- liking it in spite of the facts that the prose was barely adequate, the sex ludicrous, and the setting generic. I'm a good-hearted, but guilty pleasure, and from what I am able to discern, I should stick to writing such material.
I'm guessing Ms. Brown is twenty-something, maybe thirty, grew up well after the sixties, and got tired of hearing her parents or grandparents or aunts and uncles blather on about how great it was to be there. Really, really got tired of it. So she ground her axe using my work. While I appreciate that there is always room for opinions, in this case, hers is such I can't find any use for it. She could be a nice person, but judging just from what she's had to say about what I do, I don't see it.
You only get one first impression and Ms. Brown's -- and thus Green Man's -- was for me, ugly. Maybe she might want to think about that next time she sits down to comment in print. Maybe you might want to think about putting forth poisoned-pen reviews, too. One can be honest without being nasty.
I must say that such a review would have bothered me had it been about a writer other than myself -- the hatchet job on Jane Yolen's book, for instance. And the reviewer's response to her comments was, to my mind, insulting. Snide is seldom appealing.
On the strength of these two reviews alone, I find that any call I might have had to read Green Man Review further is nil.
Steve
From: Rachel Manija Brown
Subject: My Final Word on the Steve Perry Dust-Up
Date: November 20, 2003
Dear Mr. Perry,
I regret the factual error in my review stemming from my assumption that because _Windowpane_ was copyright 2003, it had been written recently. I had no way of knowing that it was actually a trunk novel that had been written much earlier, but now that you've told me, I will put a note to that effect in the original review.
I know that's the least of your issues with me and my review, but the rest of them involve my opinions, which I couldn't change even if I wanted to.
As for your speculation that I'm not a nice person, think about it for a moment: if I'm a nasty person when I write a negative review, do I morph into a nice one when I write a positive review? Did Good Rachel review _The Fall of the Kings_ and _Ring_, and Bad Rachel _Green Boy_ and _Volcano High_? And who reviewed _Alia Waking_ and _The Tolkien Audio Collection_?
Also, now that I explained in my first reply that the staff here agrees to review books before we know if we'll like them, do you still think all our reviews should be positive?
Regarding your guesses about me, you're correct about my age range, and somewhat correct about my family. I'm thirty and my parents were indeed hippies. However, I have rather more complicated feelings about the sixties than blind jealous rage.
When I was a teenager, I so regretted missing out on the decade that I wore tie-dye and only listened to sixties music. Then I went to college, met many other people trying to recreate the sixties, and realized that while the music was great and the activism was noble, drugs can derail your life and communal living gets really gross if nobody wants to do the dishes. Now I think that the sixties were neither heaven nor hell, but an interesting time which still attracts a lot of love and hate.
So I don't automatically detest all books about the sixties, but I prefer those which don't assume that bringing them back would be nothing but wonderful. The righteous anti-war activism was spawned by a horrific war: you can't get the passion without the cause for it.
In my review of _Windowpane_, I mention one of my favorite fantasies about the sixties:
"If you want an edgy and elegiac dark fantasy about a magical/musical attempt to bring back the sixties, read George R. R. Martin's _The Armageddon Rag. Martin's protagonist loved the sixties, but the book as a whole takes a nuanced view of them."
Finally, regarding Jane Yolen's _The Sword of the Rightful King_, no writer, not even the deservedly esteemed Jane Yolen, can or should get automatic immunity from bad reviews. Green Man Review has reviews of many of her books on file, and the vast majority are overwhelmingly positive.
If you hear nothing but praise, because the mandate is praise or silence, you can never know if the praise is sincere. I think Green Man Review is refreshingly honest. And when I write a positive review of a book, the author can rest assured, with _Windowpane_ as the proof, that I meant every word.
If I ever write a letter to some reviewer who didn't like one of my books, you should all kick my ass.
I swear, every third negative review written on Green Man gets an outraged response from the author. (Occasionally they get an outraged response from fans. Mia disliked a book called THE SIGHT and wrote a very funny review explaining why, and she's _still_ getting aggrieved letters about it.)
On the one hand, I think this discourages reviewers from writing honest rather than sugar-coated reviews. On the other hand, I think reviewers need to grow a thicker skin.
It's not that I don't think anyone should publicly disagree with a review. That's fine. However, when the author writes to defend him or herself, he or she inevitably ends up with egg on the face. And I do have a problem with letters which follow the Standard Review Complaint Template:
1. Everyone else liked my book. (Links to positive reviews.)
2. Only positive reviews should be written, because negative reviews are mean and serve no purpose.
3. If you write negative reviews, you must be a bad person who kicks kittens.
4. Only people who have had their own novels published have the right to write reviews.
5. (optional): I can kick your ass.
When I started writing for Green Man, I didn't expect to ever get a response from an author whose book I'd reviewed. I didn't think a little no-pay internet magazine would attract a wide or professional readership (I was wrong about that) and I didn't think that writers commonly responded to negative reviews. (I'd gotten a few thank-yous from the authors of books I'd recommended on usenet, so I knew that happened.)
I was thinking of it from my own perspective as a writer, though; when the TV show I wrote for got bad reviews, it didn't even occur to me to write to the reviewers to tell them they were idiots. For one thing, some of their criticisms were right on the money. I suppose I could have written to explain that the stupid plot twist hadn't been my idea but was the result of someone else rewriting my brilliant script, or to say that everyone thought it was clever in the writer's room, or that my dialogue was actually quite scintillating.
But honest to God, it never even occurred to me. And if it had occurred to me, I wouldn't have done it because I would have realized that I would just make myself look like a moron. Writers write. Their works are their argument. Reviewers review. That's their response. The appropriate response to the response, should it be disliked, is to write a letter ranting about the stupidity and poor writing skills of the reviewer... and then send it to one's friends.
To explain why I feel so strongly about this, complete with explanations of why I think negative reviews are an essential part of the critical process, I will reprint some communications regarding a review I wrote a while back, of a very bad novel called WINDOWPANE.
I reproduce this here not merely because it contains amusing plot twists, but because it hits every single point of the Template Letter above, and is representative of the sort of letter exchange that frequently appears in the Green Man column.
First, the original review:
http://greenmanreview.com/book/book%5Fperry%5Fwindowpane.html
(Psst, Mia: I just noticed that the footnote explaining that WINDOWPANE was a trunk novel written long before BLACK STEEL never got added. Presumably it got lost when you and Grey switched departments. Can you put in a footnote to that effect, please?)
Then, the letters, in chronological order. Note that the first two were originally emailed directly, and that my Green Man bio at that time mentioned that I was working on a novel and studied karate.
From: Steve Perry
Subject: Windowpane Review
Date: November 10, 2003
Rachel,
Somebody sent me your review of Windowpane, and since it is, in fact, the worst one I have ever gotten for anything I've published, I found it greatly amusing. (Though I have to ask -- Why, as you indicated to WJW, in re his novel, The Rift, are you wasting your writing time doing poisoned pen reviews?)
You couldn't know, of course, that I wrote Windowpane in the early 1980's -- before I did the Matador books -- and didn't have enough clout to get it read. So I stuck it in a trunk and it stayed there for fifteen years. Which is why I cannibalized parts of it, because I knew it wasn't going to be published.
But, fast forward to 2001. Somebody starting an e-book company asked me if I had any trunk books and I gave them this one. The e-book company went belly-up, but the editor went to work for Five Star and he liked the ms enough to show it to his publishers. They liked it enough to publish it.
So you can rag me for having written something so deadly earnest, but not for stopping my paying work for what I was doing to try and break into the mainstream. I'm still hacking away. (That you didn't like it is okay, though I tend to respond to critics like Fred Allen used to -- Where were you when the page was blank? Better the world's worst artist than the world's best critic and all ...)
But since you are working on a novel -- and assuming you can sell it -- your turn in the barrel is coming. At the risk of sounding naively idealistic, Cap'n Karma never sleeps. I'd be interested in hearing from you when -- and trust me, you won't please 'em all -- you get a really nasty review. Just to see how it makes you feel.
But, hey -- break a leg. Living well is the best revenge.
Steve
Rachel writes:
Dear Steve,
Is it O.K. if I forward your letter to the Green Man Review letter column? It corrects my wrong guess about when and why you wrote Windowpane; it explains why the same scene was in Black Steel (which I quite enjoyed, by the way, and which I've praised elsewhere), and it raises some interesting points on the ethics of criticism which I would like to address publicly, as they have repeatedly come up at Green Man and elsewhere. I promise, I won't make any personal attacks.
Rachel
Steve Perry replied:
Rachel,
Nope, I don't mind if you forward it. Nor this note. And I don't have any problems with attacks, personal or otherwise -- I fancy that I can take care of myself. It's just that we have a basic philosophical difference when it comes to reviewing: Rather than pan a book I don't like, I don't review it at all. There are plenty of books I haven't cared for, and why give them ink? People remember the names of products in the worst ads as much as they do in the best. I'd rather hold up something worth a reader's time -- go get this and I think you'll get your money's worth.
Thumper Rabbit's Daddy's Dictum, and, of course, it goes along with my way of looking at life. Us old hippies have some of that attitude left -- even though I am more a believer in Meher Baba's non-violence of the strong, as opposed to pacificism. Because I can kick your ass sometimes means I don't have to do it in order to prove something.
Of maybe a hundred reviews I've had published, the only one in which I ever took writers to task concerned a collaboration by two horror heavyweights (King and Straub) in which they were deliberately messing with readers just because they could, and I called 'em on it; and I knew my opinion wouldn't do anything to keep the book off the bestseller list. (It didn't.) And even then, I found something to like.
I've never done one in which I told readers not to buy the book. (To dismiss something a fellow worker in the word mines has labored over for months, maybe years, with witty deconstruction or mayhaps even snide comments in print just doesn't call to me.)
Anybody can be a critic. You don't have to start with a blank page, all you have to do is react to what somebody else has done. For me, walking the walking gives you more rights to talk the talk, but even so, I'm just not a fan of attack journalism. Your mileage seems to vary.
Steve
Rachel replies:
(As a side note, I am quite familiar with Meher Baba. I grew up on his ashram in Ahmednagar, India. While most ashram kids grow up to be enlightened, spiritual types, a few of us turn out...well...differently.
So I do see your point about the "non-violence of the strong" thing, but if I went around telling people that I could kick their ass, my sensei would kick my ass. Well, not literally, but he'd raise his eyebrows and look at me, and it would feel the same.
Moving on...
Steve Perry’s main point seems to be that negative book reviews serve no purpose and should not be written. As this is an issue which has come up a number of times in this letter column, I would like to take the time to address it.
At Green Man Review, while we can volunteer to review books which we have already read, usually we are assigned books for review which we haven’t read yet--in other words, before we know whether or not we’ll like them. This is how the process works:
Publishers send review copies to Green Man Review. The editor sends the reviewers a list of books available for review. The reviewers choose books from that list. The editor assigns books when more than one person volunteers to review the same book, and re-posts the list if no one volunteers for certain books. Finally, the books are mailed to the reviewers.
This process selects for positive reviews to a certain extent, as people are likely to request books by authors whom they already know and like. But it does not, cannot, and should not ensure positive reviews. Once reviewers have received and read their assigned books, they have an obligation to review them whether they enjoyed them or not.
Imagine the consequences if they chose not to review books they didn't like: either the books would not be reviewed at all, in which case the implied contract with the publisher, who provides the books for free in exchange for a review, would be broken; or else books would be passed around indefinitely until they found a fan. For some books, that could take quite a long time, and the resulting review -- after, say, the first fifty reviewers declined to write one -- would hardly be representative.
Clearly, it's impractical for any publication which uses this or a similar system to receive only enthusiastic reviews. And if all books which are submitted are reviewed, then the only way of ensuring that all reviews are positive is to make them positive whether the reviewer liked them or not. And that would be dishonest.
Regarding the ethics of writing negative reviews in general, as we now see that such reviews are an inevitable part of the process of reviewing, one must raise the question of whether books should be reviewed at all.
Steve Perry’s views on that matter seem to go as follows:
1. That only writers of published fiction should review books:
"For me, walking the walking gives you more rights to talk the talk."
It’s true that I haven’t published any novels yet; however, according to my bio, which Steve Perry must have looked up in order to find out that I was working on one, I have had some teleplays produced. Does that mean I'm only qualified to review television? If my novel was published tomorrow, would I then become qualified to review fiction; and would I have been unqualified the day before? Surely one gains the right to write reviews by writing good ones, not by citing related accomplishments.
2. That even when performed by published novelists, criticism is an unskilled and worthless endeavor:
"Anybody can be a critic. You don't have to start with a blank page, all you have to do is react to what somebody else has done." "Better the world's worst artist than the world's best critic and all..."
It’s true that criticism does not exist in a vacuum, but neither does any written work. Everything ever written is a reaction to something else, whether it be other works of art or real-life experiences. No work of non-fiction starts, in that sense, with a blank page; does that mean that anyone could have written Seabiscuit, The Liar’s Club, or Into Thin Air? And what would Windowpane be without Steve Perry’s experience of the sixties?
As for the world’s worst artist vs. the world’s best critic, I will take the criticism of Pauline Kael, Michael Swanwick, or Ruth Reichl over the complete oeuvre of Ed Wood, thank you very much.
3. That reviews should only function as recommendations:
"I'd rather hold up something worth a reader's time -- go get this and I think you'll get your money's worth."
I argue that not only do negative reviews also serve the purpose of helping people get their money’s worth -- if only someone had warned me to see anything other than Con Air -- but positive reviews seem suspicious without the counterbalance of negative reviews. To know what someone dislikes is as informative as knowing what they like; and if someone seems to like everything, then they become useless as a source of recommendations.
4. That it’s wrong to criticize something which someone put a lot of work into:
"To dismiss something a fellow worker in the word mines has labored over for months, maybe years, with witty deconstruction or mayhaps even snide comments in print just doesn't call to me."
I’ve written insulting reviews, and I’ve received insulting reviews. Of course the former is more enjoyable. But I don’t see other reviewers as being out to get me, or deliberately crushing my years of work. From their point of view, it isn’t years of work, it’s an hour-long show that bored them.
I know that not everyone is going to like everything I do, and if I put my work out there for public viewing, I expect it to be commented upon in public. Just as the occasional bloody lip is the price of being a martial artist, the occasional witty review is the price of being an artist of the arty type. If you never get hit, you’ll never learn to protect your face. And if that sounds too rough, you shouldn’t be playing contact sports.
And finally, why did I take the time to write such a lengthy reply? It's for the same reason that I reviewed Windowpane. It's the reason why I write negative reviews, positive reviews, fiction, teleplays, articles, and letters.
Is it because I'm a bitter, angry person with no life and nothing better to do than express my venom and jealousy? No, for that would only motivate me to place late-night drunken phone calls.
I reviewed Windowpane the way I did because it was my honest opinion, and because I did my best to put the words together in the best and most interesting and amusing way I could. That's how I write and how, I presume, most writers (including Steve Perry) write; and how we write is why we write.
We do it because we want to share what's in our minds and hearts. We do it because it's fun.
Rachel
From: Steve Perry
Subject: Scratch a Critic, Find an Assassin
Date: November 13, 2003
Dear Letters Editor,
I've been writing forever, and like most writers I know, normally shrug off reviews and critiques, good or bad. Doesn't do much good to respond, for the same reason that the reviews don't much help a writer -- once the book is done and out, you can't go back and fix it, even if the comments are valid.
However, I have made a couple of exceptions, for reviews that were particularly well-done, be they pro or con -- and for those not-so-well-done. From where I sit, Rachel Manija Brown wrote a nasty, mean-spirited, and inaccurate critique of my novel Windowpane. It's so awful that it is more amusing than painful -- the worst comments out of hundreds of reviews I have gotten in twenty-five years as a writer. I wonder if it makes her feel good to know that?
I dropped her a note to this effect, and pointed the basic factual errors, and she indicated she'd pass the note along to you, with her comments. Well. Let me amplify my comments a bit:
Ms. Brown offered that she enjoyed another of my books, but damned it with faint praise -- liking it in spite of the facts that the prose was barely adequate, the sex ludicrous, and the setting generic. I'm a good-hearted, but guilty pleasure, and from what I am able to discern, I should stick to writing such material.
I'm guessing Ms. Brown is twenty-something, maybe thirty, grew up well after the sixties, and got tired of hearing her parents or grandparents or aunts and uncles blather on about how great it was to be there. Really, really got tired of it. So she ground her axe using my work. While I appreciate that there is always room for opinions, in this case, hers is such I can't find any use for it. She could be a nice person, but judging just from what she's had to say about what I do, I don't see it.
You only get one first impression and Ms. Brown's -- and thus Green Man's -- was for me, ugly. Maybe she might want to think about that next time she sits down to comment in print. Maybe you might want to think about putting forth poisoned-pen reviews, too. One can be honest without being nasty.
I must say that such a review would have bothered me had it been about a writer other than myself -- the hatchet job on Jane Yolen's book, for instance. And the reviewer's response to her comments was, to my mind, insulting. Snide is seldom appealing.
On the strength of these two reviews alone, I find that any call I might have had to read Green Man Review further is nil.
Steve
From: Rachel Manija Brown
Subject: My Final Word on the Steve Perry Dust-Up
Date: November 20, 2003
Dear Mr. Perry,
I regret the factual error in my review stemming from my assumption that because _Windowpane_ was copyright 2003, it had been written recently. I had no way of knowing that it was actually a trunk novel that had been written much earlier, but now that you've told me, I will put a note to that effect in the original review.
I know that's the least of your issues with me and my review, but the rest of them involve my opinions, which I couldn't change even if I wanted to.
As for your speculation that I'm not a nice person, think about it for a moment: if I'm a nasty person when I write a negative review, do I morph into a nice one when I write a positive review? Did Good Rachel review _The Fall of the Kings_ and _Ring_, and Bad Rachel _Green Boy_ and _Volcano High_? And who reviewed _Alia Waking_ and _The Tolkien Audio Collection_?
Also, now that I explained in my first reply that the staff here agrees to review books before we know if we'll like them, do you still think all our reviews should be positive?
Regarding your guesses about me, you're correct about my age range, and somewhat correct about my family. I'm thirty and my parents were indeed hippies. However, I have rather more complicated feelings about the sixties than blind jealous rage.
When I was a teenager, I so regretted missing out on the decade that I wore tie-dye and only listened to sixties music. Then I went to college, met many other people trying to recreate the sixties, and realized that while the music was great and the activism was noble, drugs can derail your life and communal living gets really gross if nobody wants to do the dishes. Now I think that the sixties were neither heaven nor hell, but an interesting time which still attracts a lot of love and hate.
So I don't automatically detest all books about the sixties, but I prefer those which don't assume that bringing them back would be nothing but wonderful. The righteous anti-war activism was spawned by a horrific war: you can't get the passion without the cause for it.
In my review of _Windowpane_, I mention one of my favorite fantasies about the sixties:
"If you want an edgy and elegiac dark fantasy about a magical/musical attempt to bring back the sixties, read George R. R. Martin's _The Armageddon Rag. Martin's protagonist loved the sixties, but the book as a whole takes a nuanced view of them."
Finally, regarding Jane Yolen's _The Sword of the Rightful King_, no writer, not even the deservedly esteemed Jane Yolen, can or should get automatic immunity from bad reviews. Green Man Review has reviews of many of her books on file, and the vast majority are overwhelmingly positive.
If you hear nothing but praise, because the mandate is praise or silence, you can never know if the praise is sincere. I think Green Man Review is refreshingly honest. And when I write a positive review of a book, the author can rest assured, with _Windowpane_ as the proof, that I meant every word.
If I ever write a letter to some reviewer who didn't like one of my books, you should all kick my ass.