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Posts: 4985
03/03/02 12:01 PM
The Fuzzy PhysicistAdministrator
Quote: THree of these books deal with subjects of which he is so ignorant that he will have to read at least fifty pages if he is to avoid making some howler which will betray him not merely to the author (who of course knows all about the habits of book reviewers), but even to the general reader.
Quote: All the stale old phrases - "a book that no one should miss", "something memorable on every page," "of special value are the chapters dealing with, etc., etc." - will jump into their places like iron filings obeying the magnet, and the review will end up at exactly the right length and with just about three minutes to go.
Quote: It not only involves praising trash - though it does involve that, as I will show in a moment - but constantly *inventing* reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feelings whatever.
Quote: None of this is remediable so long as it is taken for granted that every book deserves to be reviewed. It is almost impossible to mention books in bulk without grossly over-praising the great majority of them. Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books one does not discover how bad the majority of them are. In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be, "This book is worthless," while the truth about the reviewer's own reaction would probably be: "This book does not interest me in any way, and I would not write about it unless I were paid to." But the public will not pay to read that kind of thing. Why should they? They want some kind of guide to the books they are asked to read, and they want some kind of evaluation. But as soon as values are mentioned, standards collapse. For if one says - and nearly every reviewer says this kind of thing at least once a week - that King Lear is a good play and The Four Just Men is a good thriller, what meaning is there in the word "good"?
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