Reviews, The Internet, And High School
You know, dear Readers, that I don’t comment on reviews for a variety of reasons. I’m the first to tell a fellow writer to buck up, ignore the effing reviewers, and be professional.
I saw Alice Hoffman’s Twitter fail the other day, where she called out a Boston Globe reviewer. I winced as I read it. Hoffman was irate because the reviewer had completely given away the plot of the novel–”spoiling” in a major newspaper. She called the reviewer a moron and posted the reviewer’s public email and publicly-posted phone number. Since Hoffman was new to Twitter (fifteen hundred followers when I looked, but I could be wrong and her Twitter account’s been deleted) the reviewer wasn’t deluged. But still, plenty of people have been gleefully trashing Hoffman since. Including people I used to follow on Twitter.
And you know…even though I think Hoffman was a noob for getting angry publicly, I understand.
One disclaimer: I am a big fan of Hoffman’s work. Seventh Heaven and Here On Earth are two of my favorite books EVER. She’s an autobuy for me, and I think she deserves the terms “genius” and “magical realist.” Plus I’m a fellow writer (though just a hack, and not in her league at all) and, well, I feel her pain. I’ve been tempted to sound off many a time, even knowing what a bad f!cking idea it is.
Here’s the thing: we are awash, on the Internet, with people calling themselves “reviewers.” Pretty much everyone’s got a dog in the fight. There’s Amazon reviews, which are a sinkhole of comments that may or may not be about the book or item in question. There’s Internet “review sites” that do follow Sturgeon’s Law–many of them are there to stroke the “reviewer’s” ego, and end up being crap. There are group review sites where the group dynamic has more in common with the locker room or a Plastics clique.
I think a review site that does low-bullshit, high-quality, and scorchingly funny reviews is Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Looking at it and comparing it to other sites of its ilk, you might be tempted to see the foul-mouthing and the bad grades and the cover snark as all alike. But I have always found the Smart Bitches to stand out from their contemporaries for two reasons: honesty and professionalism, both in short supply when we’re talking about “reviewers.”
Candy and Sarah have reviewed some of my books. They put disclaimers on the reviews because both Candy and Sarah have a personal (well, in Sarah’s case, as personal as emailing a little bit over personal questions etc. can make it) relationship with me, and they put that up front for other readers to be aware of. They savaged the books on some points (rightfully so, I might add) and noted their good points too (which I was grateful for.) I did not feel like the reviews were personal attacks, or that Candy or Sarah had anything to “prove” by the reviews. I was happy with them, even if they stung.
Such is not always the case. I’ve read reviews where the reviewers obviously had a personal problem with something I’d said on my blog, or something they thought I said, or even something someone else said or a bad hair day or something, and they took it out in the review, on my book. I’ve read screeds that don’t even spell the characters’ names right, where it was obvious they didn’t even read more than the cover copy, spoilers galore, and a whole host of inappropriate and highly inflammatory reviews. They stung, yes. They were out there on the Net for everyone to see. And in some cases there were the usual blog swarm of Yes Men piling on to show how cool they were by trashing the subject du jour. Which just happened to be my book on that day.
Yeah, it made me mad. Yeah, I’ve bitched about it to the Selkie over drinks. Yeah, I’ve written private, flaming responses and deleted them lest I be tempted. Hey, I’m only human.
This is why I understand Hoffman’s frustration. We are literally drowning in reviewers, online and off. The Boston Globe reviewer did give spoilers, and did clunk through an embarrassing (and in my opinion, unwarranted) bad review. (The review reads to me like the reviewer wanted to cause a bit of ruckus by panning the book, for her own reasons. But that’s just me.) The seduction of the easy response was there on Twitter, and Hoffman took it. When you’re mad you don’t think straight. I’m pretty sure that at some point in the future I’m going to be mad enough to break my own rules and cause an Internet kerfluffle. The flesh, alas, is weak.
But still, I’ll say it again: I understand and share Hoffman’s frustration. Being a writer means getting rejected and judged over and over again. We’re judged by agents, editors, publishers, and finally reviewers and readers. Every time we turn around we’re told our manuscript could be better with X or isn’t good enough because of Y. The prevailing attitude in our culture that devours the content we produce and kicks us in the teeth in myriad ways for being “artists” and producing it does not help. “Don’t be such a big baby! You chose to be a writer, you gotta have a thick skin!”
Just because I have a thick skin doesn’t mean someone has to attack me to prove it, and it doesn’t mean I need to put up with inappropriate crap. It also doesn’t mean inappropriate crap hurts less. And just because a writer chooses to write those books you do or don’t love does not make them your bitch, your property, or your punching bag/whipping boy. A lot of people, however, did not get that memo. A lot of people will never get that memo, and dealing with it as a writer is wearying.
“Wait!” you could say. “Alice Hoffman is (that magic thing) a NYT Bestseller! She doesn’t have anything to prove! Why couldn’t she just keep her mouth shut?”
You know…I try to feel better when I read reviews by people who obviously read and loved my work, people who got it and liked it, who maybe had some quibbles but overall liked it. The problem is, we’re trained to accentuate the negative, so to speak. We’re trained–and I don’t know if this is writers in general, or women writers because we’re women and taught from the cradle to make nice–to give greater weight to criticism, warranted or not, than to praise. Praise seems evanescent, while the hurt lingers.
I don’t think a writer ever feels like they’ve proved themselves. If they do, they tend to go down what I call the Anne Rice Road–I’m thinking about her famous comment (I can’t dig up a link, so this is as best as I remember it) about how she’d worked her ass off for many years to get to the point where she didn’t have to let an editor touch her beautiful prose. If you, as a writer, understand the danger of that line of thought and choose not to go there, the alternative is to listen and be vulnerable over some things. Including a crappy-ass review that dumps, for reasons that do not seem to you to be justified, all over work you spent years producing and agonizing over while it’s in production.
Which brings me back to the Internet. A lot of writers from even just-slightly-older generations do not get that the Internet is a huge effing echo chamber that isn’t ubiquitous even though it seems like it is to everyone on it. About the fiftieth time I saw a review site where the dominant tone was “we’re too smart for anybody, especially the writers whose work we’re gleefully insulting” and saw the long line of Yes-Men comments, I flashed back to high school and though, haven’t we f!cking outgrown this?
I think that a lot while reading a lot of reviews–and not just reviews of my own work, thank you.
No, we apparently haven’t outgrown high school. When I worked retail I was pretty sure 60% of the population never does. Since I’ve been on the Internet I’ve modified that slightly–I’m pretty sure 75-80% of the population never does. (What can I say? I’m an optimist.)
So, while I winced when I saw a writer I adore and consider a class act losing her sh!t a little on Twitter, I understood. God howdy, how I ever understood. The thing that comforts me is the cyclical nature of such things–in fandom, for example, you stick around for a year or two and you start seeing the patterns. “We’re having this argument again?!” is a cry I’ve heard many a time in fandom, and it seems to repeat itself on the Internet ad nauseum.
It doesn’t take the sting out of a vendetta-review, or even out of mildly bad reviews that hit on a really bad f!cking day and make the top of my head fly off. Still, it provides a grain of salt that keeps one from losing one’s mind some days.
That is, I’m afraid, the best I’m going to get. I am not resigned to it, but I am a realist. I don’t know if it’s ever going to get better, due to the nature of the Internet as a nondiscerning echo-chamber. But I do know that in a couple weeks it’s going to be something else, someone else losing their sh!t on Twitter, and another crop of reviews flooding around the bilges. There will be ones that hurt, and ones that don’t. In the end, the ones that hurt are just like every other voice in your head or elsewhere that picks at one’s self esteem and tells you to quit. You can’t let it get so loud it drowns out the story.
The trick is to just keep writing.
Play nice in the comments, folks. Thanks.
Related posts:
- Early in the morning, rising to the street, light me up a cigarette and I slap shoes on my feet…
- On Reviews
- It’s Not Personal. It’s Just Teh Interwebs.
Tags: fellow weirdnesses, pennyworth advice, shooting from the hip, what we know is true
June 30th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Believe me, this isn’t the worst hissy fit about a review I’ve ever read. My favorite still has to be the Allen Steele short story “Hunting Wabbit,” which was Steele’s way of attempting revenge on Steve Brown of Science Fiction Eye for daring to review his book Orbital Decay as anything other than a tour de force. I’m no longer friends with Brown, and I realized much later how many of his reviews were working on the high school mentality you mentioned (mostly because he treated his writers like the staff of a high school newspaper, complete with building the hope that if you kissed the editor’s ass long enough, you might be allowed to be one of the Chosen Kids), but the review was correct. The short story, though, was so petulant and honestly poorly written that I still can’t figure out why it was published in Science Fiction Age in the first place.
That said, you’re absolutely right on how little qualification goes into becoming a reviewer, for any publication. Film, television, music, books, art: high school journalism tends to attract the smartasses who regularly got punched out in gym class but who knew that their opponents couldn’t shoot back in print. (Self-loathing, you ask? You betcha.) The really pathetic ones are the critics that are nearly universally loathed but who keep going, no matter the hate mail, because they’ve cultivated a longterm relationship with an editor or producer who won’t put them back on welfare where they belong. (This goes double for the critics who expect indulgences in exchange for reviews, and attack subjects that don’t give them the supersecret freebies they expect. Here in Dallas, our sole weekly newspaper still retains one critic so notorious for decades for throwing tantrums over freebies and special access and then attacking the subject because the freebies were flowing that anybody in the music scene who gets treated in that way describes themselves as “wilonskyed”. Even as other, better writers are laid off or quit, he’s still staying because no other publication is insane enough to hire him, and friends and I have a dead pool as to how many days go by after his paper shuts down before he blows his brains out. We’ll probably find out toward the end of 2009.)
The problem is that the bad reviews are intended to hurt, just like the smartass cracks in the lunch line or in biology class, and it’s really hard not to give back as good as you get. Really, Hoffman’s response wasn’t any different from paying the halfback on the football team $10 to beat the shit out of the dweeb who pissed all over your recital. I can’t blame her for feeling that way. Problem is, enough of us realize that we’re out of high school (although fewer than the ones who bitch about they’ll never show up to a class reunion…until they’re rich and famous enough to make everybody else eat out their own hearts in envy), so we’re expected to behave better than this. As we all know from high school, sometimes taking the high road just makes it worse.
June 30th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
I’ve seen the ‘backlash’ anger take over an author. I belong to Goodreads, a site for book geeks where everyone can write reviews on books and everyone can read them. Authors also participate on sites. More than once, an author has taken personal exception to a negative review and made it known in comments on the review. One author accused the reviewer of taking food out of his children’s mouths. Others “rally the troops” to harass the negative reviewer.
In general, this is frowned upon. Sometimes such reactions are mocked, which does the author no good. Authors on the site do better to encourage their fans than attack their detractors — lots of books are read via word-of-mouth and friend recommendations. No one persuades someone NOT to like a book she doesn’t like, and certain trying to intimidate someone out of disliking a book will fail. The review might be removed, but gossip remains.
June 30th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
If she had railed about the bad review, I would’ve rolled my eyes and thought it inappropriate but… well… she wouldn’t be the first by far.
Posting the reviewer’s e-mail and phone number and requesting her fans harass the person was way, way, way over the top and absolutely unacceptable in my book. There is anger, and then there is freaking nuts. For me, posting the contact info falls into the latter.
June 30th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
To start off, I want to say that I love your posts on all the different aspects of writing aimed at we amateurs who are trying to learn the trade. Please, don’t ever stop. We need folks like you who are willing to teach, and who don’t sugar-coat things. Thank you.
Secondly, as a former book reviewer who quit because I ran out of ways to say “this is a great book, you readers should go buy a copy and here are the links to where you can do so…” I’d like to express my displeasure at my fellow reviewers who prefer to slam a book rather than send off a private e-mail to the writer (and/or) publisher stating that they “can’t publish a review because they didn’t like a particular novel & these are the reasons why…”
Book reviewers, it seems to me, should perform a different job than book critics- if one can see a difference between the two. A reviewer is, in ideal situations, part of the string of publicity people who attempt to get the word out that there is a new book that readers should be looking to buy. A critic, on the other hand, should be someone with enough writing creds to know if a book is well written or not, and enough lack of fear to say so. In short, and in my definition, a reviewer should stick to stating that they enjoyed a particular book and where it can be bought (or else just not write a review at all), while a critic should be able to discern if a book is well written and be willing to say so in a public forum of some sort.
Neither should post spoilers- again, in my opinion -or engage in personal attacks on a writer.
As a reviewer, I never posted a negative review. I knew that if I didn’t enjoy reading a particular book, I would be showing poor manners to attack a writer for turning out said book. Instead, I e-mailed the writer directly, *privately* (or the publisher who sent me the book if I didn’t have a way to get in touch with the writer) to explain exactly why I didn’t enjoy the book in question. One thing I did not ever do was tell my readers that they shouldn’t buy someone’s book just because it didn’t appeal to me. Sure, I own 5k paperbacks in various fiction genres. Sure, I’ve read easily 100 times that number of books I’d found in a library. But I’ve always considered myself a representative of the average reader, not someone with enough education to determine what flaws exist where in a given book. I’m just the average Joe who goes out and buys books to read. If I like a book, I figured that other folks would like it just as much, or even more.
In short, I’m sorry that some people would rather post nasty insults than just avoid posting a review of a book that they didn’t like. Please don’t judge all book reviewers by the faults exhibited by a few of the nastier types of people out there.
Dan
June 30th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
I second the note about contact info. Slamming a person on the internet is basically what the internet is for apparently. That’s fine.
But when a reviewer’s contact information is posted, with a remark encouraging direct harassment, the bar has been raised. Absolutely unacceptable.
June 30th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
I do disagree with you a bit here. One reason I felt Hoffman’s reaction was over the top was because the review wasn’t a screed or one-sided slam—it included some positive things about the book as well as negative. It’s hardly even close to the worst she could have seen.
But mostly, I’m aghast that anyone could post someone’s phone number and ask their fans to call and complain. I’ve seen how zealous (over-zealous, really) and vicious some fans can get in defense of their favorite authors, and honestly I’m a bit surprised the reviewer didn’t find herself getting threatened. To deliberately put someone in that situation is beyond poor form or bad judgment.
June 30th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
I like Alice Hoffman’s books and haven’t read the Boston Globe review, so I don’t know whether it really is unfair or not. I can understand getting angry at an unfair review – hell, I have gotten angry at unfair reviews of books/films/TV shows I love. And Twitter does have the drawback of being a very immediate medium with no time for reflection. But posting that reviewer’s contact info was way over the top. Even a bad reviewer should not be exposed to possible harassment.
I used to post informal reviews on my blog. I never received ARCs or was paid, I just blogged about books I’d read, films and TV shows I’d watched, etc… With books, I always tried to be fair and state both what worked for me and what didn’t. I also tried to find at least one positive thing to say about books I didn’t like. And in cases where I personally knew the writer but didn’t like the book, I never publicly said anything at all. I did savage the occasional film or TV show, but film and TV are collective efforts. Besides, I doubt a bad review from a nobody would have any significant impact on the viewing figures of a film/TV show.
Here in Germany, there recently was a court case where a teacher sued to get a website banned where students could review their teachers. The teacher inevitably ended up looking like sour grapes. I have worked as a teacher myself, teaching both university and highschool, and so far I have managed to resist looking up my name on one of those teacher or lecturer review sites, because those sites are not intended for teachers but for students as a forum to vent. A lot of those teacher reviews probably are unfair, but then we said a lot of nasty and unfair things about our teacher in my day, too, we just didn’t do it quite so publicly. Coming across a student venting about me on one of those sites would only serve to bias me against that student, which would be unfair towards him/her.
When/if I ever manage to get a novel published, I hope I will have the strength to refrain from looking at online reviews, particularly from amateur reviewers. Because otherwise the temptation to respond would be too strong and we all know where that leads. After all, the racism discussion which raged through the SFF community for several months also started with an author responding to a review.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:00 am
What’s that old saying?
You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time.
Any book written, is going to appeal to someone people but not everyone…when buying any book from a new author I’ve just found I always check reviews, however, I never take any stock in them, not completely anymore.
There’s professional and there’s unprofessional. Then there’s the basic quote of some people need to get a grip, and grow up.
Thanks again for covering a mutlitude of topics, I really appreciate the time you give your fans, between your busy schedule. Not to mention your say it the way it is, and your no nonsense, pull no punches attitude.
July 1st, 2009 at 7:16 am
This is such an interesting topic that I had to come back to read the comments, and ended up seeing a couple of other things I wanted to address.
Why do people make this assumption? Yes there are books I dislike so much that I stop worrying about whether I’m going to hurt the author’s feelings (note that this is different from deliberately intending to hurt them). However, I worry about hurting the author’s feelings when I don’t like something about a book. I’ve had books published & reviewed; I know what it’s like to receive both negative and positive reviews. I’ve spoken with a number of other reviewers as well who have a simple quandary: they want to be honest, but they don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. When one of those folks asks what to do, I always say, remember that reviews AREN’T FOR AUTHORS. They’re for READERS. And for reviews to be useful to readers, they have to help readers decide which books they would or wouldn’t enjoy. At some point, honesty has to be the top concern in a review—yes, even over hurt feelings—otherwise, IMO, you’re not being an ethical reviewer.
Which brings me to the person who said reviewers should simply not review any book they don’t like. I couldn’t disagree more. That doesn’t help anyone—author or reader. As a reader I want to know which books I wouldn’t enjoy as well as which books I would. And in that matter, what counts isn’t whether a review is positive or negative, but whether it provides enough information that I can make up my mind for myself. I feel pretty confident that I tend to accomplish this with my reviews, because the amazon links I put on my pages allow me to see that even my so-so or negative reviews of books sell those books to readers. As a former movie marketer once told me, “Good reviews sell tickets. Bad reviews sell tickets. No reviews don’t sell tickets.” The same is true for books—which means that avoiding reviewing any book you didn’t like could actually cost the author potential sales to people who read your review and say, “but that sounds like something I’d enjoy.”
So while negative or partially negative reviews may hurt, and I personally disagree with things like revealing spoilers, I utterly disagree with the idea that reviewers who say negative things about books are necessarily being spiteful or unprofessional. Remember that a negative review can sell books as well as a positive one, particularly if it sparks discussion.
July 1st, 2009 at 7:36 am
If the book is no longer worth reading (spoiled) once someone reveals the plot, it was not worth reading in the first place.