I've been reading comparisons of books reviews on community/commercial sites with those by professional critics. The upshot seems to be they're interchangeable. Both are equally likely to make satisfying recommendations for the average reader, with a slight edge given to the consumer reviews for being less biased.
The problem with that assessment is that, like so many aspects of current culture, it leaves out the instructive aspect. It dismisses the chance for reviews by academics and experts to educate the reader. Those who make the assessment often go even further, suggesting that instructive passages in a review are tedious and even meaningless.
I'm not saying that an Amazon reviewer necessarily lacks the experience or powers of analysis to write an instructive or even learned review. I'm saying that that happens far less often than it does in a publication devoted to the idea, such as (in the past)
October, the
Paris Review or even the
New York Review of Books, in which working novelists and experts often review the work of other novelists and experts.
(One feature I hope to see someday on sites like Amazon is the ability to filter out reviewers whom the individual user finds unhelpful.)
In the States, we now refrain from teaching music in the majority of public schools, and education in the arts is also declining. Even television shows that used to enlighten people in the 50s and 60s (Leonard Bernstein actually hosting "A Young Person's Guide" to classical music!) are nearly nonexistent.
Faced with this dearth, what chance have we given the smart person who hasn't got the money to go to college but longs to understand aspects of culture that are no longer part of everyday parlance? And what good are book reviews by people who don't understand the craft of fiction to those who want to read novels which are helpful stylistically and formally? What if one is looking for the most historically authoritative manual on English prosody -- how are Amazon reviews likely to help? What if one is looking for the best translation of Mallarme? The Amazon reviewer is likely to avoid that subject entirely and simply tell us that Mallarme is a great poet -- which we already know -- or that they feel he doesn't life up to "the hype" (inherited ideas of excellence that haven't been explained).
In these areas, populist reviews are usually not very helpful. And if professional and academic reviews are presumed to be interchangeable with them, what happens to the ability of select critics, teachers and writers to provide new insights to readers who wouldn't have experienced them otherwise? It isn't only a matter of which book you walk away choosing. Sometimes it's a matter of better understanding books you've already read or might not even like.
What would past writers, readers and students have done without the criticism of Walter Pater, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, Cleanth Brooks, William Empson, George Sainstbury, William Hazlitt, De Quincey, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf and the rest? Which is ultimately more helpful for the person who wishes to understand satire, consumer reviews of the Mark Polizzotti translation of Bouvard et Pecuchet or the one by Christopher Hitchens? I have yet to read a consumer review that actually talks about Polizzotti's diction and word choices as opposed to the novel itself, which is essentially the same in any translation.
I understand that snobbery can be oppressive; as Cicero once said, "The authority of those who teach is often a hindrance to those who wish to learn."
The problem is that the privileging of populist over academic criticism can be equally prejudiced and detrimental.
After all, the authority of those who
don't wish to learn is often a hindrance to everyone else.