Chekhov’s Mistess

May 06, 2008

What Makes a Good Review?

 

My last post about a poorly written review made me think about how book review sections are declining yet as far as I can tell there are plenty of interested readers and writers out there. A big part of that is economic of course, but I have to imagine that there’s some small part due to the absence of craft in a fair amount of book reviewing. In light of that, for no other purpose than to remind myself, this quote from John Updike:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending. (How astounded and indignant was I, when innocent, to find reviewers blabbing, and with the sublime inaccuracy of drunken lords reporting on a peasants’ revolt, all the turns of my suspenseful and surpriseful narrative! Most ironically, the only readers who approach a book as the author intends, unpolluted by pre-knowledge of the plot, are the detested reviewers themselves. And then, years later, the blessed fool who picks the volume at random from a library shelf.)

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author’s ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it’s his and not yours?

I lifted these rules from a post by then National Book Critics Circle president John Freeman. I pasted them in the writing program I use as a reference or reminder. What I didn’t copy from Freeman’s post is the following, but it seems apt given the review I was just talking about:

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in an idealogical battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never (John Aldridge, Norman Podhoretz) try to put the author “in his place,” making him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation.

I wonder if the “vaguer sixth” rule was necessary in 1975 when Updike wrote that passage?

• posted by Bud Parr
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• related:
• Anne on Highbrow lowbrow
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• Grayson’s Report on the NBCC Panel

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