Sarah forwarded on “Not Everybody’s a Critic,” an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times by film critic Richard Schickel. I would’ve dismissed it as the choleric rantings of an old man who didn’t understand kids these days with their rock music and their colored chalk and their 23 Skidoos and their fanny packs and their rollerskates and their listening to the Becks and their pierced I-don’t-know-whats and their Internet tubes, except that in the process of his rant, he expressed some truly repulsive ideas.
So Sarah and I duly dived in and waxed lyrical. And by “lyrical,” I mean “Hot damn, why won’t these two women shut up?”
Candy: OK, here are some thoughts inspired by the article on reviewing, dismantled point-by-point:
“Some publishers and literary bloggers,” the article said, viewed this development contentedly, “as an inevitable transition toward a new, more democratic literary landscape where anyone can comment on books.”
Anyone? Did I read that right?
Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger 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.
Oh, that is beautiful bit of condescension. Language even a busy blogger can understand. I beg your pardon, dear sir—I’m afraid your proliferation of syllables obfuscated the point for this busy blogger.
Oops, sorry, I didn’t mean “syllables.” I meant “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.
blah blah blah…
his comment: 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.
I just wanna know if the book is worth 5.99 or not.
Klausnerization
Hehe.
Not quite the same impact as “truthiness”, but do you think it’ll make it’s way into the OED, too?
(see the currently inflated reputations of Philip K. Dick…easy reads for lazy, word-addicted minds)
WTF?
Is there a lynch mob forming yet?
(No, seriously not a fan-girl. So I’d like to see his justification for that comment before joining the mob.)
“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”
“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).”
This is almost on the intellectual mud slinging level of Cat In The Hat
I feel Dr. Seuss moment coming on…
They make me sick
With their Philip K. Dick!
Richard Schickel pointed out in judgment
All the Blogs down in Blogville…
and his brain grew three sizes that day!
…but he was still not capable of identifying irony.
This is just one in a long line of elite newspapermen trying to explain why we should read the papers instead of blogs and online journals. Schickel is trying to explain why only he and his ilk are real critics, most likely in an effort to draw readers back from blogs like SBTB, which offer information free and (gasp!) without published credentials. It’s the yelp of a man going down for the third time, a dog whose day has done.
And really, don’t reviews exist to help us decide whether we’d like something? Candy and Sarah review a book and tell me if they liked it or didn’t like it and why; I value their opinions because I know that they’re intelligent people, and I could care less if they use the word “oeuvre” or not. Being smart isn’t just about the ten-dollar words.
Interesting that his defence of the art of reviewing comes at a time when lots of newspapers are getting rid of or severely curtailing their book review sections ….
You have to ask, if romance reviews are scarce and book reviews in print becoming scarcer, where are we meant to go for comments, insights, criticism … if not to sites like the Smart Bitches’?
I think Sarah’s point that many of the most popular books don’t appear in newspaper reviews is very well made. Doesn’t that dichotomy deserve ‘serious engagement’? Or is there an assumption that people who read those books are not the types of people who would read book reviews (in print) and therefore the disdain expressed towards blog-based reviews is associated with the disdain for the books they review?
two theories:
Coffee isn’t enough for Candy and Sarah to get their blood pressure up in the morning. They need to take on a dose of asshat.
They wanted a chance to use the phrase
Either reason works for me. Thanks for employing pitchforks of snarkidoom on this guy.
I want him to agree to a Review Off. You’ve covered the work of Connie Mason, right? So someone should get him to do a book report on the Connie Mason oeurve.
This is the reason this wasteland called the Internet is such a beautiful place, to read witty and well versed criticism like yours for free on a blog instead of paying for a load of tired old bullshit from someone who’s on the losing side…
“We need to see something other than flash, egotism and self-importance.”
He’s absolutely right…he should stop writing and save us from all his egotism and self-importance.
*blinks innocently*
People write book reviews in the paper anymore? Huh. Who’da thunk it?
Srsly, someone needs to get over himself. He sounds like someone who reviews books I wouldn’t read if paid to do so.
You know what I bet happened that got his panties all in a twist? I bet the LA Times (which has recently laid off a HUGE number of employees in its print department to better focus on its online efforts) asked Schickel to start a blog on thier site. Ha ha.
Dude. Get a grip. We are the consumers, and our opinions matter. You are certainly not giving much credit to your readers if you think they are not smart enough to seek out relevant reviews for products they are interested in. It doesn’t say very much about this guy’s confidence in his abilities and his readership that he finds it necessary to write a whole article about how Your Peers are Dumb and You Must Listen Only To Me Because I Am Smart and Verbose. So There. I mean, clearly that means his reviews are the only right ones, and I should only read what he chooses to cover.
Asshat.
Wow. I’m just…wow. I thought *I* came across like a jerk in posts. This guy makes me look like a ministering angel. Sheesh.
“George Orwell . . . 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.”
Brilliantly said! Huzzah for critical beacons shining through bureaucratic obfuscation, and for the honesty of vernacular prose!
Of course, if I wanted to pose as a critical beacon amidst bureaucratic obfuscation, I might have chosen different words: “Orwell wouldn’t take this crap.”
Who gave the old geezer a Thesaurus for his birthday?
I love the implications that all opinions should be his opinions. This came off to me as just another example of someone trying to make sure everyone knows their opinion is the right one, and that if you disagree then you are someone who speaks in one syllable words with a mom for an uncle.
But of course, my opinion doesn’t count because I haven’t read every word written by the reviewer plus all the stuff he’s reviewed plus the back of the cereal box where he got the idea for that post.
OT1H, I can see a legitimate difference between a “review,” which is a thing telling a reader or moviegoer if the experience is worth their 10 bucks, and a “critique,” which I take in this instance to mean a critical analysis of a work, such as many of us learned to do in 400-level English classes in college.
OTOH, he’s a pretentious dipshit with not a scrap of understanding of how the internet works. Dude, if you want more highbrow criticism, write it. The folks who want to read serious scholarly criticism will seek it out and find it and read it. If you leave them a means to comment upon it, they will. They will perhaps write their own commentary on their own sites and link to your post (saving some librarians a world of trouble).
But first, he needs to learn what a cliche is, and how to avoid it. Sorry, I needed to include this snipe, because zomgwtfbbq maybe the man can critique, but he hasn’t an original turn of phrase in the whole mess. Or was he expecting that folks who know the origin of the phrase “concentrates the mind most wonderfully” would be pleased by his comparison of “writing for print” with Johnson’s “prospect of death”? GET OVER YOURSELF, GUY.
This was the bit that most amused me: …see the currently inflated reputations of Philip K. Dick…easy reads for lazy, word-addicted minds…
Oh dear. I never found Dick an easy read. Does that make me lazier than lazy? And…I don’t understand what “word-addicted” means in this context?
Apparently criticism doesn’t require clarity. No need to educate the unwashed masses by speaking to them in their own language. I bet this guy goes to a church that still holds mass in Latin.
So, basically his is the only right opinion and I cannot have an opinion even on his opinion because I have not read all of his reviews, plus the things being reviewed, plus the cereal box where he got the inspiration for that little diatribe that made almost no sense?
I also get the impression that he feels anyone who disagrees with his so well-formed opinions must be a toothless moron whose mom is her uncle.
Someone needs to review How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Sorry. I had trouble posting.
I believed this so much I wrote it twice.
This is just one in a long line of elite newspapermen trying to explain why we should read the papers instead of blogs and online journals. Schickel is trying to explain why only he and his ilk are real critics, most likely in an effort to draw readers back from blogs like SBTB, which offer information free and (gasp!) without published credentials.
Just for the hell of it let me play devils’ advocate here for a minute. I read the above comment and my first thought was:
Jesus. This is the first time I’ve heard SBTB is in direct competition with the LA Times. Wow. LA Times probably has a circulation of half a million or so give or take on Sundays. SBTB has – what? Twenty? Yeah. I can see where the Times is freaking the fuck out in their shoes.
HAS SBTB’s taken readers away from the reviews in the Times? Really? Are the reviews on this site that are in ANY way shape or form comparable to an LA Times review? The only way these two entities are alike is that they both take in ads. LA Times probably gets about 1.5 million a day in ad dollars.
More likely he is talking about BookSlut.com and Slate.com (Christopher Hitchens does some excellent reviews for them) which IS taking ad dollars and eyeballs away from the print press.
Wow. I’m just…wow. I thought *I* came across like a jerk in posts. This guy makes me look like a ministering angel. Sheesh.
Ok, this made me snort water up my nose. Which was still stinging from when Candy said the part about the overfed tick.
I am taking a mere moment out of my elite enterprises to offer this well intentioned criticism of Richard Schickel’s article…. it sucked. He sucks. His opinion sucks. He does not have a clue. Someone should take his keyboard and toss it out a window…. followed by … never mind, someone might be tempted.
I’m still trying to decide whether this guy is just a pretentious git who is terrified that he might be losing his special status, or a pretentious git who is smart enough to know how much attention he can get by starting a blog fight, and understands which buttons to push. At the moment I’m leaning towards “both”.
“Are the reviews on this site that are in ANY way shape or form comparable to an LA Times review?”
Probably not, but the article was basically a slag of anyone who DARES to write a book review on their blog. This is, according to the author, the perview of the “superior” mind not engaged in “cocktail party chatter.” Or somesuch. Eventually, all I interpreted reading the piece was “blah, blah, blah.”
Yes. He comes off as a supercilious snot. But in a way he has a point. What would happen to the Romance Genre as a whole if the only people even willing to review them took them seriously enough to analyze the work using some measure other than the number of batteries exhausted in their vibrator during a read?
He’s an elitist snob.
There, that’s my review.
Schickel wrote: (Criticism) 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.”
Gee, if only lit’rary critics employed that rule instead of offering broad, ignorant generalizations about entire genres of fiction they don’t regularly read.
“What would happen to the Romance Genre as a whole if the only people even willing to review them took them seriously enough to analyze the work using some measure other than the number of batteries exhausted in their vibrator during a read?”
Heh I can see that now the new SB rating system.
Sarah says Nora’s last book rated 2 D’s and 4 AA’s
You’re interpreting the original comment differently than I am—likely because I put a lot more importance on the phrase “like SBTB.” This, to me, implies the Blog Collective (“You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. We will achieve perfection through man-titty.”), which in totality would rival the LA Times in terms of readership and ad revenue—and that’s just counting the litblogs and review blogs. We’re not even counting other types of opinion-driven blogs, like the many, many, many, many political commentary blogs.
And you’re right, SBTB by itself is really, really small potatoes, though in terms of a niche blog, we have a decent enough readership (multiply your estimate by about 100, and you’re pretty damn close to how many readers we get in a day—like I said, fairly small potatoes). SBTB in combination with all the blogs and websites that not only review books and offer commentary and news, but allow the readers to interact and offer THEIR opinions? They add up. And keep in mind that the vast majority of people don’t just read One Blog. Back when I had enough time to actively blog-hop, it’d take me a good couple hours to make my rounds. And that’s not counting the hours people spend reading and responding to comments.
Skipping over your rather poor example (what bugs me most about Romancelandia isn’t so much the readers judging books solely by sexual content; what drives me up the wall sometimes is a lack of critical awareness/interest regarding form and art), and addressing the thrust of your point: I think the discourse would become considerably more homogenized. Just because certain aspects of the dialogue about romance novels infuriate me doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk to the people who read and think about the genre in entirely different ways than I do; neither does it mean that these people with different viewpoints don’t have valid opinions about the work. Because they do—well, most of the time, they do—even if I’m a snotty-ass bitch to them.
And really, who determines what’s “Serious interest,” and what’s frivolous? I think it’s not so much the specific topic as the form the discussion takes that informs how worthy or unworthy a discussion is. Sexual stimulation, to use your example, IS one of the goals of many romance novels, and it’s certainly one of the reasons why many of us read them. It’s not the sole reason—people who read something for pleasure rarely do it for monolithic reasons, and the pleasure derived from reading is complex. But even if I end up discussing romances with somebody who’s monomaniacal about that particular aspect of the genre, it’ll likely still be a discussion worth having, and I’m not going to ask her to bust out her credentials.
What struck me was equating the importance of the review or criticism with the work itself. (down the years??? WTF)
A couple of years ago, I recall many articles decrying the lack of private correspondence. They talked about the letters between EB White or James Thurber and their respective editors—Thurber’s had little drawings.
This year, I realized that bloggers and commentors are the 21st century versions. The little drawings are now photochopped collages and digital photos with captions.
Schickle is caught in the old 19th century ways. He will bemoan the changes, but in reality the message lives, the messenger has morphed.
Maybe he’s just trying to bring his own brand of bitchiness to the newspaper 🙂
“And let them eat cake, too.” This guy is so arrogant to think that the only opinion that matters is his own and his cronies. Maybe reading should be reserved for the elite as well, not the dirty rabble, like myself. (Although I did take a shower this morning…)
Why shouldn’t reviewing be democratic? What country is this guy living in? My money is as good as his (and I bet he doesn’t pay for his books), if I want to shout from the rooftops, “I hated this book!” that is my right as a free person in a free country.
Why do I have to be qualified to have an opinion? You can take it or leave it. It’s nothing to get worked up over.
I can just see him raiding a suburban housewives’ bookclub, just in case opinions about books are being shared. Oh, oh the horror! The horror!
When readers share opinions, authors and publishers benefit. I’ve bought many a book on the opinion of another blogger, whose opinion I respect.
Vive la revolution!
There’s always an outmoded character in Austen style family manners books, the one who cannot grasp that times, they are a-changin’—a snobby uncle or somesuch who laments the loss of an antiquated way of life. He’s that dude.
He doesn’t have a single point at all because
a) very few bloggers see themselves as actual replacements for published reviews and criticisms. Most literary bloggers read and blog about their favourite publications. The divide Schickel has created is false. The NYT article he linked to showed this but for some reason his quick Guggenheim mind failed to grasp tit.
Certainly in the case of romance, review blogs and sites (it is not only blogs that offer book commentary, reviews or criticisms) there are actually fulfilling a need that the establishment ignored.
b) Generalising book bloggers is a stupid and intellectually deficient tactic because the format allows the person to do so many different things with it. Some are review sites, some are chatter, some are publishing gossip, some do promotion, some do lengthier critiques, some are a mixture etc.
c) Many of these “elite institutions” *have* published reviewed by bloggers. Sarah Weinman is now at the LA Times, Maud Newton and Mark Sarvas published in the New York Times Book Review, Ed Chamption regularly at the Philadelphia Inquirer and across the pond, Stephen Mitchelmore at the great Times Literary Supplement.
So Mr. Schickel can take his uninformed opinion and stuff it.
Does this guy get paid to write this shit? I don’t read a book because someone I don’t know likes it. I would rather read a book that someone who I know thought it was good. Atleast I know my friends and other bloggers aren’t gonna say a bunch of mindless garbage just to earn a paycheck. I’m not saying all critics are like that, but I’d still trust my friends over this guy.
Y’know, I think my visceral “OH NO HE DI’IN’T!” reaction boils down to my little inner Anarcho-Syndicalist reacting with horror to his “Only the opinions of certain people have the right to be expressed” sentiments.
Because while I don’t think every opinion constitutes a valid review, and even while I don’t think every opinion is a valid opinion, I think people do have a right to have and express those opinions, no matter how wrongheaded or poorly-worded. Essentially, Schickel’s only-an-elite-few-have-valid-opinions spiel struck just a bit too close to my Freedom of Speech nerve.
What a dingbat.
Not only does he not understand the difference between a “criticism” and a “review,” but he also hasn’t kept up with the general academic opinion regarding criticism: useless piles of crap.
Seriously. Every professor I had (and I’m an English major at a VERY nice, VERY expensive and VERY reputable univerity in New England) who was forced to teach criticism began the lecture by groaning, “Sorry I have to teach you this useless crap. Ugh.”
But that’s just my opinion, Ideal Readers.
And they need to prove, not merely assert, their right to an opinion.
**boggles**
I can’t tell you how relieved I am that this twit doesn’t have control of the voting process in this country.
Semi-related to the rant:
Did any of the bitchery read Cynthia Ozick’s piece in Harpers last month? All about how the literary fiction community needs more literary critics—if there were more of them, the book review sections of papers wouldn’t be disappearing. With a long explanation of why reviewers aren’t critics, etc. Less trained, fewer skills, blah blah blah. Do these people have nothing else to write about?
Sort of on topic but possibly not …
The TVmedia critic for the paper was asking for general input on jazzing up the column so I pointed him to TWoP just as an example of what new and entertaining critiques on TV shows were capturing eyeballs.
I got back an email saying (paraphrased) , “WTH was that? What WAS that? I couldn’t understand anything on that site.”
Yeah. So. His column is still boring as hell.