Tom Wolfe (The Right Stuff, The Bonfire
of the Vanities) once wrote that the best way to raise one's reputation is
to tear down someone else's. I thought about Wolfe's remark the other day when I
read that BuzzFeed has changed its policy on book reviews. Seems the popular social sharing site will no longer publish negative book reviews, a decision that has
generated controversy, including an op-ed piece in the New York Times.
Is there a place for negative books
reviews? Should books and authors be publicly reviled because a reviewer
doesn't feel a work is up to scratch? Those are loaded questions. If a book
contains a litany of factual errors, or if the writing is egregiously bad, then
a reviewer has a duty in telling it like it is. Criticism - good or bad -
doesn't need to be sugar coated, but it also shouldn't contain malicious personal
attacks.
On Inferior Planet, I purposely avoid writing negative reviews. To
indulge in such an exercise is petty, juvenile and unfair. If there are aspects
of a book that are irritating or deserving of valid criticism, I'll say so. If I
can't find finish a book or can't find enough qualities to justify a fair
review, then I won't review it. Period.
A case in point: There is a
best-selling author whom I'd never read before and whose novels are universally
praised. His work has been translated into dozens of languages and adapted for
the movies. This author is frequently interviewed on radio: he is smart, eloquent,
thoughtful and engaging. The longer I avoided reading him, the more of a
literary ignoramus I felt.
About two months ago, I finally bought
one of his novels and began to read it.
After 300 or so pages, I gave up.
The characters were bland. There were too many random, unexplained events, and the
narrative thread was weak. It was a struggle to finish each chapter. The
writing was good, even brilliant in spots, but a novel needs more than good
writing to sustain it over several hundred pages.
When I encounter a book that I
can't appreciate, I'm not going to slam the book or the author. That's not my
style. I'll find another book - there are far too many great ones deserving of my attention to worry about the books that don't measure up.
Writers spend an inordinate
amount of time alone with their thoughts and ideas; the effort required to
produce a work of fiction or non-fiction is intense. Such intellectual rigor
deserves a steady and unbiased eye, and reviewers have an obligation to weigh
the good with the bad.
Plus, I believe that a fate worse than being trashed is to be ignored, especially in this digital and mobile age
when relevancy and attention are the new currency.
I applaud BuzzFeed's decision to
ban negative book reviews. I believe that reviewers can provide honest criticism
without resorting to personal attacks and trying to destroy a writer's reputation.
Besides, trash talk often speaks more to the attacker than it does about the intended
victim, and readers are far better served without it.
