Book Reviews: Populism vs. Edification/Initiation

[Prestidigitweeze]

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.

[caleb72]

In short - I agree.

[piperclassique]

Interesting. I tend to ignore consumer reviews, largely due to the plethora of "great book, loved it" useless. I download samples, which I find enables me (usually) to get an idea of the quality of the work. but that doesn't address your point of the instructive aspect.

After all, the authority of those who don't wish to learn is often a hindrance to everyone else.

Sad, but probably true

[fjtorres]

Cicero was a wise dude.

The problem with relying on established authorities is the establishment is by its very nature backwards-looking; it relies on past experience to judge the present. This works fine with slow-changing or even paralyzed areas but useless in fast moving, evolving, living areas.

Book review publications?
Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they are all-wise, all-knowing, totally unbiased. (Hey, it could happen... in some alternate universe.)
How many titles can they review? 100 a month? 200?
In 2006, the UK, US, Canada, and Australia saw 400,000 new books published.
And that is pre-Kindle, pre-ebook mainstreaming, pre-legitimitization of ebooks.
Even a conservative estimate is going to leave us with well north of half a million new books a year. (Less conservative but more likely is going to be closer to a million.)
And the authoritative reviewers will be looking at, maybe, a few thousand?
5%, maybe?
How useful is that?
Are we to limit our reading choices to the 5% they deem significant enough to look at?
Especially when, faced with that reality, the authoritative reviewers' first kneejerk reaction was to exclude all self-published titles from consideration and that it takes well-nigh an act of god to get them to consider a title from a small, new publishing venture.
The quality of their reviews may be outstanding and a work of art all unto itself but if they're not reviewing the books you're considering, those reviews are going to be useless to you.

Crowd-sourced reviews may not be authoritative but for most titles a consumer encounters there is nothing else. This isn't populism. (That is something entirely different and purely political.) It isn't pandering to the lowest common denominator or reverse-snobbbery; it is simple *marketplace* reality.
Crowd-sourced reviews is simply the only game in town for now.

Relying solely on authoritative reviews these days meaning ignoring 90% of the available titles and only looking at high-visibility content from a handful of traditional publishers. It means, to put it in terms the established authorities might relate to, not "being where its at".

The center of gravity of publishing is moving away from the establishment.
From the cozy "everybody knows everybody" salons to the streets.
Because publishing is a business and in business follows the money. And in the wake of the ebook evolution the money is scattering.

The traditionalists bemoan that "bestsellers" just aren't selling as much as they used to and they are right. Because the consumers are no longer penned in and force-fed a small list of books to choose from and they are instead choosing other things to read. Things no authoritative source can keep track of, much less review.

Hey, even "less authoritative" web-based genre-focused review sites are unable to keep track of everything or even most of their chosen genres, why would anybody expect more "thoughtful" and "more insightful" reviewers to be able to keep up?

At this point, authoritative reviewers have ceased to be useful comparison-shopping tools; they are merely recommendation tools. The best they can do is recommend titles that fit their criteria so that people that share and value their criteria will know those titles exist. A useful and valid service. If you have no interest in the other 95% of the new titles hitting the market this year.

Crowd-sourced reviews are a lot like democracy; they are the worst way to find good books to read, except for all the other ways.

It is an imperfect, flawed system but it is the only one that, so far, even aspires at full market coverage.

Until somebody comes up with something better, we just have to make do.

[Prestidigitweeze]

FJ (or whatever you like to be called):

Thanks for your thoughts. I'm about to leave work, but let me clarify one thing:

I'm not suggesting that reviews by academics and competent professionals are a better alternative for the reader whose taste is closer to that of consumer reviewers', or that professional reviews should be *substituted* for consumer reviews. I'm saying they serve *a different function entirely*.

The Hitchens review of the Polizzotti translation is a case in point. No review I've seen on the Amazon product page gives you any sense of what the translation is like, nor are people's first exposure and assessment of the book as useful to me as Hitchens's (or Quenau's) longer term appraisal. I pay close attention to reviews of translations because I often modify a given writer's method and use it for something which I myself am writing. I happen to think the satire in *Bouvard* can grow tedious over time, esp. for modern audiences, which is why I was studying it for *a short story*. In terms of the translation, I was looking for the best compromise between elegance and immediacy, and one that represented faithfully the gradual change in tone as Flaubert's unfinished book became more naked stylistically later on (which is interesting, because Flaubert's famous empathy for his characters seems to have been something he acquired gradually; his earlier drafts show a surprising amount of contempt for them).

For reasons like the ones I've tried to offer above, I often find Amazon reviews unhelpful. It isn't that they fail as reviews, it's that they usually don't offer the kind of information and insights I need. Besides which, a really informed academic review should have something for the reader at every level; they should have something to offer even those who are more in sync with consumer reviews. You don't have to agree with an instructor to learn from them.

I'm usually more interested in reading someone with insights about a book I'm likely to hate than banal things to say about a book I might very well enjoy.

I often disagreed with Virgil Thompson's taste in 20th century classical music, but I was always interested to learn what he had to say about it. And George Perle is an amazing critic on that subject, even if you hate his compositions or his taste.

And John Ashbery is useful and fun on writers like Raymond Roussel, John Clare and even Henry Darger even if you're the sort of reader who'd pay money to avoid all three!

Piperclassique and caleb: Thanks for the input and kind words.

[fjtorres]

(I'll answer to most anything. Even, "Hey you!"

And I'm not saying there isn't a place for reviews, or more to your point: Criticism.
Rather I'm saying that the two are no longer tied together: reviews are a consumer function and criticism is a scholarly/educational function. Relying on criticism simply isn't a viably reliable way to find good reads anymore.

Critical analysis should be selling *itself* on its merits rather than as a consumer tool.
Maybe moving online as movie critics have done to great success.
Roger Ebert thinks this is a golden age for movie critics:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010...ie_critic.html

Literary critics ought to market their output strictly as a product unto itself instead of an adjunct or guide to a market they simply can't track anymore. Their best essays tend to be independent of the merits of what they review anyway.

I'm coming at this from the "fit the tool to the task" or "...to the audience".
The days of one-size fits all practices in the industry are long past and trying to apply the tols/practices of one segment to the rest will not be satisfactory to anybody.

Publishing from here on out is going to be a collection of niches appealing to different audiences. Or to put it another--probably offensive to some--way: literary fiction is just another genre.

So is literary criticism.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by caleb72

In short - I agree.

I have been a long-time subscriber to the New York Review of Books. One reason why I like the reviews is that the people who write them are often known experts in the field. For example, it is not unusual to have a review of a war history written by the historian Max Hastings.

What these reviewers bring to the table is the ability to compare the book under review with similar books. In addition, they tend to flesh out circumstances that surround the book's topic so that there is a broader and more in-depth understanding given of the subject.

I find the NYRB unbeatable for the reviews it does. Unfortunately, the number of reviews are limited.

[Rob Lister]

What a great thread. Both types of review have value, clearly. If a book has literary value, you can bet your bottom dollar that some critic, professional or otherwise, will pontificate on the nature of it. Finding the worthy critics--or your favorites--isn't difficult.

[QuantumIguana]

If it is non-fiction, then an expert review is good. It depends on the expert, of course.

For fiction, what I care about is whether or not I will like the book. What other readers think might be an indication of whether or not I would like it. An professional reviewer might simply be extolling the virtues of the emperor's new clothes.

[stonetools]

I agreed with the OP, and added karma.
I think Amazon reviews are useful for a sort of general feel about how good a book is. In that way, it supplements the "expert" reviews.
There are also better community review sites.
Goodreads>> Amazon.
SFF >>Goodreads for Speculative Fiction.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

For fiction, what I care about is whether or not I will like the book. What other readers think might be an indication of whether or not I would like it. An professional reviewer might simply be extolling the virtues of the emperor's new clothes.

I find fiction reviews to be very problematic, both those in dedicated magazines like the New York Review of Books and fellow consumer-reader reviews like those found at B&N or Amazon, for the very reason you state: What I care about is whether I will like the book.

I think part of my problem is that I consider fiction to be disposable; that is, read once, then delete (or if a pbook, put in my library never to be opened again). In contrast, nonfiction books tend to be read and consulted (I buy nonfiction only in hardcover so it can be added to my library and opened again in the future). But my experience with consumer-reader reviews is that the reviews rarely ever give me a clue as to whether I will like the novel. Most of the reviews are superficial ("great book" "outstanding" "couldn't put it down" etc.) and those that are more in-depth are unable to communicate whether I will like the novel.All they seem capable of communicating is whether the plot appeals to me, which is different than whether the writing appeals.

I expect nonfiction to be drier, more "academic" in writing style, so what matters most to me is whether the content is of interest. With fiction, however, both content and writing style are of equal importance to me and it is nearly impossible to convey writing style.

It is largely because of this inability to convey writing style quality that I am reluctant to pay much (not more than 99 cents) for an initial read of an unknown-to-me indie author and why my ebook library is so largely populated with free ebooks whose plots appeal to me.

[caleb72]

Sorry - I posted something pretty brief earlier because I was in a hurry.

I run a review site and review 3 or so books per month. I'm aware of the fact that there is an element of reviewing I am not able to supply. Hell, I had to look up the definition of the word "trope" and that's hardly in the realms of literary academia.

It has quite a bit to do with where I was as a reader when I left school. I studied English Literature and I enjoyed it, but decided this was not the way I wanted to enjoy my reading. I moved on and I haven't really regretted it.

However, sometimes when I'm discussing a book here or elsewhere with people who probably went a bit further than I did in this area of study, I often find the experience rewarding. That extra knowledge opens up a text more than I've been able to myself and I'm quite happy that people out have that knowledge and are happy to share it with others.

In the same way I'm glad that knowledge and understanding exists in the world of book reviews.

I can't have all the knowledge in the world, only that which I've decided to pursue. I'm glad that others are pursuing what I haven't and the combined learning enriches us all.

[Rizla]

I find rottentomatos totally useless for movie reviews. They seem to hate almost everything. I prefer to read the Amazon reviews and glean what I want.

In general, academics seem to enjoy books that most people don't. As such, I'm not sure what value their opinion is to the majority. Throw egoism into the mix and you may as well dismiss the literary snobocracy as irrelevant. Ultimately it's elitist, exclusive and self-reinforcing.

[petrucci]

I tend to side with the professional review crowd. However, I think that familiarity with the reviewer is more important than his level of expertise. For example, a professional critic, whose work I do not know, may hold a certain view which is contrary to my own. If I take his review at face value, then I am likely to be disappointed with the book. However, if I am familiar with his work, then I can infer something about the content of the book.

I thought that I would also play the devil's advocate and bring up the problem of bias in professional reviews. Particularly troubling are the countless cases in which favorable professional reviews have been purchased. The democratic star system helps to avoid such corruption.

[VaporPunk]

Originally Posted by Rizla

I find rottentomatos totally useless for movie reviews. They seem to hate almost everything. I prefer to read the Amazon reviews and glean what I want.

In general, academics seem to enjoy books that most people don't. As such, I'm not sure what value their opinion is to the majority. Throw egoism into the mix and you may as well dismiss the literary snobocracy as irrelevant. Ultimately it's elitist, exclusive and self-reinforcing.

Oh, the irony of dismissing snobbery in a snobby post. I know you said in general but dismissing literary reviews by professionals and academics as egoistic and snobby is just too simplistic for me. Its so easy to classify people into groups, all neat and tidy. People are just way more complex than that. I wouldn't be surprised if many academics read and enjoyed Harry Potter and Tolkien, I know at least two for sure that have. And they read classic literature as well, and enjoy it.

My experience with RT is quite different. What's interesting to me is that, in general, the user reviews score higher than the ones from the professionals, especially for blockbuster/big budget flicks. If I like a genre, like SF for example, I tend to agree more with the public. If I watch something outside of my "normal taste", the flick has to be pretty damn good to impress me and then I find myself siding with the pros. I suspect its much the same with books.

Prestidigitweeze makes some very valid points. So does FJtorres. One thing we can all agree on, life is too short to read bad books. We all have our sources and methods to discover what we should read, be it Amazon, NYTBR, Goodreads, or just a friend with the same (AMAP) taste.