Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

At any rate, did anybody else pick up on the fact that Schickel turned an observation about comments and on-line interactions into, well, Reviewing and Criticism? These are all related, but assuredly not at all the same thing.

Because I can certainly agree that raw opinion does not a review nor criticism make; on the other hand, I don’t think all those qualifications are necessary to write a perfectly serviceable review of a piece of art. He offers no compelling reasons why this might be so, either in this paragraph or in ANY part of the article. His standard cry is this:

Opinion — thumbs up, thumbs down — is the least important aspect of reviewing. Very often, in the best reviews, opinion is conveyed without a judgmental word being spoken, because the review’s highest business is to initiate intelligent dialogue about the work in question, beginning a discussion that, in some cases, will persist down the years, even down the centuries.

I honestly fail to see why having comprehensive knowledge of the critical traditions, the artist’s entire oeuvre, the socio-political context or how low Hemingway’s left nut hung vs. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s is required in order to write a cogent, entertaining, mentally stimulating and perfectly valid review. Having more information and expertise can certainly help inform the review and enrich it, but none of it is strictly necessary. This man has it ass-backwards. The best reviews and critiques are grounded in an opinion--an informed opinion, though not necessarily an expert opinion--and it is this opinion that forms the thesis of the piece. It is, in fact, the whole purpose of a review (though not a critique, which is an animal of a different stripe).

Schickel also utterly ignores the primary reason why reviews exist in the first place: to inform people if something is worth their time and money. Stimulating discussion is all well and good, and I occasionally read reviews for that reason, but for us unwashed plebs, what we ultimately want to know is: is this thing worth my time, money and attention? The best reviews tells us not only what the reviewer liked or loathed, but why she felt that way, and perhaps most importantly, whether YOU’D feel similarly about it, too.

Look, I get it. Internet reviews have suffered from Klausnerization. We feel your pain, we really do. But tarring us all with the same brush and then insisting on impossible elitist standards for something like an everlovin’ review is not doing anybody any favors.

And now, for the Howling Irony parts of the discussion:

For example, French critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, a name not much bruited in the blogosphere, I’ll warrant.

I’m as fond of a pretentious and archaic turn of phrase as anybody else, but if this man sounded any more self-satisfied, he’d explode like an overfed tick.

In the middle of the 19th century, his reviews appeared every Monday for 28 years. He was a humane, tolerant and relentlessly curious man who once summarized his method in two words: “Just characterization.”

That “just” did not mean “merely.” It meant doing justice to the work at hand and to the culture in which it appeared.

Given how concerned this clownboat is with just characterization, he isn’t doing an especially good job with blogs and bloggers, is he?

Finally, there was George Orwell, scrambling to make a living by writing reviews for London’s intellectual press for maybe $20 or $30 a piece. He was more pointedly political than Wilson, and more attuned, perhaps, to the vagaries of trash culture, but his defense of honest vernacular prose in the face of bureaucratic (and totalitarian) obfuscation remains a critical beacon.

For somebody who seems to be praising the virtues of “honest vernacular prose” and appears to seek, as Twain advises us, to eschew obfuscation, he certainly avoids doing both in one relatively short opinion piece, doesn’t he?

I do think, however, that a simple “love” of reading (or movie-going or whatever) is an insufficient qualification for the job. That way often leads to cultishness (see the currently inflated reputations of Philip K. Dick or Cornell Woolrich, both easy reads for lazy, word-addicted minds).

And we have to find in the work of reviewers something more than idle opinion-mongering. We need to see something other than flash, egotism and self-importance. We need to see their credentials. And they need to prove, not merely assert, their right to an opinion.

True, a love of the arts is insufficient for somebody to write a review; if nothing else, decent writing ability and critical thinking capabilities are also necessary. But one needs to prove one’s right to an opinion?

What?

Did this man not, just a couple of paragraphs above, applaud Orwell for his opposition to totalitarian influences on literature?

He’s also wrong about Dick. Dick may not have written the most elegant prose in the world, but his stories and ideas are consistently thought-provoking and have been tremendously influential, especially in SF. Being able to overlook the occasional bit of clumsy writing does not mean we’re word-addicted or lazy-minded. In fact, if I were a (heh heh) dick, I’d ask Schickel what his qualifications are for that particular opinion, how well-versed he is in the SF canon in general and Dick’s body of work in particular, and whether he understood Dick’s inspirations, especially as rooted in his socio-political milieu.

Frankly, for somebody so intent on the importance of qualifications in order to have a valid opinion, he does precious little to prove to us his qualifications himself.

The act of writing for print, with its implication of permanence, concentrates the mind most wonderfully. It imposes on writer and reader a sense of responsibility that mere yammering does not. It is the difference between cocktail-party chat and logically reasoned discourse that sits still on a page, inviting serious engagement.

Maybe most reviewing, whatever its venue, fails that ideal. But a purely “democratic literary landscape” is truly a wasteland, without standards, without maps, without oases of intelligence or delight.

This is probably where we disagree most radically. He sees the lack of structure and hierarchy as a threat, as a destructive force. I see what we have as a beautiful thing. Yes, there’s a lot of chaff and chaos because of the low barriers of entry, but that just means the potential for something truly wonderful emerging is that much higher. People suddenly have these handy, convenient venues to talk about books. They’re getting excited, engaging with other readers and exchanging *gasp* opinions. This is most assuredly a good thing. The tone may not always be to my liking, but that’s the beauty of having such a multiplicity of venues: I can hare off and look for one more to my tastes, or (and hold on to your panties, sports fans, because here comes the shocker) attempt to create a community of my own. The cure to bad speech--or at least, speech that you don’t like--is more speech, not less.

Sarah: It’s like a whole new realm of dissection and dissery in the Bitchery.

I hear him on the idea that real (and worthwhile) criticism isn’t merely an opinion. It’s certainly true that not all opinion pieces are legit. Take, for example, all the “This book was bad and I didn’t like it” opinions that pass for a review on Amazon. Not at all a review, and in addition the opinion is useless without some kind of exposition or at the very least description of what the writer found to be flawed. I can’t make a buying decision based on HootchieMommaR657 (and that’s her Real Name™!) pronouncement of mass suckage without backup as to why the suckage was so rampant.

But how and where on the bus stop of pretentious crap do you get off saying that, and thank you for using simple terms that I can understand:

Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author’s (or filmmaker’s or painter’s) entire body of work, among other qualities.

Sounds like the ranting assertions of someone who is afraid he is not so special anymore, hm? You have to have qualifications to review? You have to be familiar with the details of an artists oeuvre? What Ever. I’m a bitch; that’s plenty of credential. I’m familiar enough with the format and variations of romance to know what does and does not reek; I should have to read every book by every author and study up with flashcards to erect a foundation of scholarly authority beneath my every word?

Limiting the collective of who CAN review is as bass-ackwards as the limit of who IS reviewed. To address the specific genre to which we Bitches devote our attention, let me ask a pertinent question: How many romance authors are on the NY Times Best Seller list currently? As of today, May 23, 2007, there’s two on the hardcover fiction best seller list, and four on the paperback bestseller list. 

And how many of them are reviewed in the book section? That’d be zero, there, Dick. So already the door of your privilege is half-shut to nearly 50% of a top-10 list of bestsellers. Better get behind the door and shove it closed before any bloggers (GASP) come through and try to review some of those books.

But in the Unintentional Irony department, there’s much to celebrate. The purpose of the review, according to this exclusive definition, well, sir, you totally shoot yourself in the foot there:

[T]he review’s highest business is to initiate intelligent dialogue about the work in question, beginning a discussion that, in some cases, will persist down the years, even down the centuries.

And you know where that dialogue takes place? Where the discussion happens? On blogs. In comments. In message boards and email threads and places where communities are constantly interacting. How is a discussion supposed to take place between a newspaper and a reader? You talk to yourself on a park bench reading the paper, and people don’t assume you’re erudite and educated. They assume you’re off your meds.

Of course, this could all be further support to the elitism effort in place already: only fellow readers of the New York Times or the LA Times or the Pretentious Buttnoid Times who’ve read the review in full can participate in the discussion, because it’s the elite review and it’s location that become part of the dialogue in addition to the book itself.

What really sets me off in response to this diatribe against the unwashed misspelled masses yearning to state their own opinions is that this guy and his ilk wouldn’t set foot near a romance if you paid him. Granted, the author is a film critic (and you must make “Film” a two-syllable word of course), but it’s not like he or any other reviewer in a major newspaper would “initiate dialogue” about a Roberts or a Gaffney novel, or “begin a discussion that...will persist” about the relative merits of Crusie or Kinsale’s works. So what’s with all the elitism that attempts to classify who is and is not a reviewer? We need MORE elitism? I mean, last I checked, sites like ours existed because there wasn’t enough legitimate critical review of romance anywhere, much less in major newspapers.

Maybe most reviewing, whatever its venue, fails that ideal. But a purely “democratic literary landscape” is truly a wasteland, without standards, without maps, without oases of intelligence or delight.

Yes, the Bitches once again have gone too far, we’re bottom feeding trashy bitches with no brains… in a wasteland. At least our wasteland has Fabio.

Personally speaking, I’m enough of a misanthrope that I have no interest in MySpace. I attempted to enjoy Friendster and it annoyed the hell out of me; the hot-pink sparkly squee OMGBFF mania of MySpace is too much for my hermit-like tendencies. And yes, I know this here site is hot pink. Our site is hot pink because it is ironic. This is ironic hot pink. There’s not the slightest little bit of irony on MySpace.

I’m curious about using MySpace as a book promotional tool, particularly when sites like Fresh Fiction are offering a Web 2.0 package that for $229 a month (or more) will “create and/or maintain up to three (3) profiles on up to three (3) social networking sites of your choice.”

What now? Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up - from the Fresh Fiction site:

Maintaining a virtual relationship with your fans takes hours, hours you need to create and write new characters and books.  Because of the time involved, many authors contract individuals to create and manage web 2.0 profiles, and maintain an overall virtual community presence.  Everything from filling out the basic information, to maximizing the number of views and friends connected directly to the profile.  A media specialist creates a streamlined web 2.0 profile, updates it regularly, and keeps your name active within your network.  The most successful users have thousands of friends, hundreds of comments, and an active following who visits his/her profile regularly for updates.

I’m not sure that hiring someone to create a profile for you at MySpace, del.icio.us, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, or Digg will guarantee book sales, but I have been on the wild wily internet enough lately to know that many an author keeps a MySpace page and updates it regularly. But those same authors who are on MySpace also have independent author websites and other online methods of presence aside from their networking space.

If your MySpace is kept by a publicist or by your own tappity fingers, what’s your take on MySpace as a promotional tool? Is this the best way to reach a readership? Does having a MySpace page increase book totals or are the statistics published in Crain’s somewhat unquantifiable or at the least impossible to attribute solely to MySpace?

Speaking solely for myself, MySpace does nothing for me, and knowing that an author has a page there wouldn’t influence my book buying by much, if at all. However, I realize that I’m a minority in my aversion to MySpace. What about you?

Candy and I were emailing each other about this yesterday:

Candy: I get that it’s all about the All-Powerful and Mysterious Other Who’s Hugely Rich And Takes You Away Like Calgon, etc. etc. It just amuses me that the fact that the dude’s probably Muslim and would make his wife convert and wear the hijab is almost always neatly avoided. Lucy Monroe went so far as to make her Sheikh a Christian in one of her books, which was godawful and hilarious. I get that it’s pure escapism, but its unblinking oblivion at how badly it’s butchering the culture needles me just a touch. It’d be like somebody writing a romance featuring Chinese characters who can’t pronounce Rs properly going around quoting Confucius all the time.

I wonder if people in the Middle East write romances featuring charismatic billionaire Southern Baptist televangelists rescuing some hapless habibti from her workaday drudgery?

Sarah:LOL like AOL at the idea of hajib-wearing women reading escapist fantasies about having hot toupee sex with some conservative coalition member.

I’m always flummoxed when I look at sheikh romances considering the amount of Arab distrust in the US. It’s a strange dichotomy: Arab men of that age bracket are often feared, distrusted, and objects of suspicion, except in romance, where men of that age in that culture are objects of sexual fantasy.

Now granted, I haven’t read a sheikh romance, save for Silver Angel, which I barely remember the salient details of, save for the old school cover with that woman who went prematurely grey and grew her hair to the floor. But judging by the recent releases, there’s sheikhs-a-plenty available for your reading pleasure.

Aside from my vicarious thrill at seeing an old-school romance shelf that embraces some really gawdawful titles that are so very very similar to my own, I have to stop and wonder some more at the prevalence and popularity of sheikh romances (attention: if you’re still playing the drinking game, rumination means that’s 1 more sip). If I head past the new releases at Borders or B&N, there’s still a selection every month of sheihks doing what-all with young women. 

Fess up - have you read them? Did you secretly like them? What’s the deal? And if my romance education is 100% incomplete without one, an idea I’d dispute except for how freaking many of them there are holy crap, which one must I read?

Now, here comes the part where I talk out of my ass--even more than usual, I mean: I think the way certain women run their business is in a way a reaction to the male dominance in the business world, which is often perceived as cold, impersonal and cut-throat. And so some women-centered businesses skew the other way and personalize their business dealings to an unhealthy degree.

I will say that from what I’ve observed, bugfuck nutty fans and cheerleaders exist in every sub-genre, but the fans seem to be nuttier and more vocal in genre circles like SF/F and romance. Other circles are every bit as vicious, they’re just a bit more quiet about it--I’ve heard horror stories from professors of mine about the incredibly bloody (and largely pointless) infighting in academia, for example.

I’m not sure if the inability to not personalize every goddamn thing is a major part of the reason why romance isn’t taken seriously, but I do think that people use kerfuffles like these to justify their prejudices about the genre, its readers and its producers.  It doesn’t necessarily create the prejudice, but it certainly doesn’t help dispel it, know what I mean?

Sarah: I think the “should’ve I or shouldn’t have I” question screened the issue so much that my reaction to it is to consider why there was such a reaction. As someone pointed out in comments to that entry, email is forwarded to news outlets all the time and with verification of the source, it’s news. It’s not like the FWD phenomenon is a new one.

But I am curious about the idea that some women-run presses skew to the overly-personal. There are certainly some that are run by women and are exceptionally professional, but then I wonder if the personal-professional mix just happens with certain types of people regardless of gender.

Either way, being called a slimy trashy bottom feeder was certainly a bit of a surprise. I feel like I need to put that on a tshirt.

Candy: As far as I’m concerned, the only legitimate beef with our posting was the inclusion of the TMI--but that struck me as a careless mistake, not a malicious one, and one that you fixed with much quickness once somebody showed you the light AND BE HEALED IN THE NAME OF JEEEEEEEE-ZUS.

The continuation of the slanging match even after you removed the info strikes me as, well, people focusing on something irrelevant so they don’t have to address the meat of the issue, i.e., what the fuck is going on with Triskelion. It’s easy to pile on and say “ZOMG LOOK AT THE MEAN GIRLS LET’S BAN THEM FROM THE INTERNETS” because it allows them to attack something utterly peripheral (our tone, whether or not we should’ve done it, etc.) without addressing the substance of what’s going on.

And yeah, I’m not saying that all women-run businesses work that way, just some of them. And I think you’re probably right in that the personality regardless of gender tends to affect the way the business is run, though I think women are more likely to face cultural pressure to behave and interact in ways that lead to “rah-rah happy fuzzy cheerleader with OMG PONIES and never say an unkind word and pleeeeze be my BFF” attitudes.

Sarah: I think you’re right that the “OMG kittens and ponies BFF” contingent might be on the estrogen side of the spectrum, and not just in publishing. But seeing as we are usually writing about romance and the business thereof, it definitely recurs within the business world du romance with a shocking frequency. And really, it’s the thing about the romance business world that drives me batty the fastest. What is the damn problem?! It is ok to disagree and have dissenting opinions.

Fractious communities exist all over the wild, wicked internet in just about every subject, so I’m not saying that romance is the only one that hosts a community of nutty crazysauce people who can’t argue without resorting to name calling - and can I just say how bummed I am that the Stupid Style of Arguing reared its pathos-laden head, when for a really long ass time we’d managed to have fractious yet respectful and somewhat professional discussions, with helpful interjections from the BUTTSECKS owl?

Ah, well. Back to our regularly scheduled Bitchery. As you pointed out, the internet, it is serious business.

Whoa. The book itself has 379 reviews, which is certainly buzzworthy, but among the 1-star reviews are comments, corrections, and rebuttals from Bardoll, along with, as Amy says, “a few people who’ve tried to remind Ms. Bardoll that it’s extremely bad form for her to reply to negative reviews this way, not to mention making her look very insecure.... To me, it’s as if Bardoll is really destroying her own credibility. It’s one thing to go on a rant on your own site or some obscure blog somewhere, but to repeatedly post snotty comments on a very popular and public site like Amazon?”

We’ve had authors argue with our reviews publicly and in email to Candy or myself, discussing our opinions and wanting clarification of a point or two that we made. No harm no foul. And I wouldn’t think it odd to see an author disagree with a reviewer - in a level manner. People have been pointedly disagreeing with Harriet’s reviews for awhile, authors and other reviewers alike.

But the snide tone and bucketful of sarcasm present in Ms. Bartoll’s responses is rather striking, and confusing. I’m not sure if she’s banking on the news of her behavior spurring discussion and ergo more press for the book, or if she’s not concerned with the effects of her commentary responding to the reviews on Amazon. Either way, given the reaction I’ve seen on SBTB alone from readers who say that the behavior or comments of authors makes them not want to read or buy an author’s books, I’m not sure her reactions are wise. Beyond the question of whether an author’s behavior should affect sales or if the product should stand apart from the relative crazysauce of a specific writer, comments I’ve read indicate that author behavior can affect sales.

Personally, I don’t care what an author does or says so long as the books are quality entertainment, but if an author espouses beliefs that I find truly offensive, I might be more likely to eschew a royalty-generating purchase in favor of a library procurement. But short of kitten-hating, pathos-spewing diatribes about how gays are teh eeeevil, for example, it takes a lot to get me to the library as opposed to clicking a sale online.

What about you - does author behavior affect your intent to buy? And how would you respond to reviews of your work?