I bombed a review the other day. I got most of it right, but I screwed up one bit and as far as I’m concerned, that makes the whole thing worthless, like a house of cards that comes tumbling down.
It’s not the first time, either. Earlier this year another review passed judgement on a book partly because I didn’t like the characters, and this wasn’t great either. I was taken to task by a number of people on Twitter and told I’m intellectually lazy. Which, okay, maybe you’re stanning for the author, but maybe that’s a good point, too.
Which brings me to this newsletter. Why is it that I do what I do? Why do I, a person with a high school education and a couple of years at a community college, think I’m able to pass judgement on books written by people with degree after degree.
Indeed, right now I’m looking at a pile of books on my coffee table and each one of them was written by someone with a MFA: Summer Fun, A Dream of a Woman and The Atmospherians. All three are books I’ve either written about or were planning on writing about. These are smart people - people to whom I’ve asked advice, paid to hear at readings and generally just look up to. And here I am, thinking I can pass judgement on these books and tell you if they’re any good or not.
It seems pretty silly, if I’m being honest. Criticism shouldn’t be about passing judgement, it should be about starting a conversation. For Detransition, Baby it could be about queer relationships and motherhood; for Nobody Is Talking About This, it could be about the ways online spaces and attitudes are slowly dripping into offline society. Looking at my pieces now, I don’t address these things - I make summary judgements, like some kind of New Yorker critic from the 1970s.
Music’s the same way. I’ve picked up bylines at a bunch of places for music: Exclaim Magazine, Aquarium Drunkard, BGM. And yet: I don’t play anything. I can’t read music. I can look and be like, oh okay that’s a F sharp and this is in the key of B Flat Major, but I can’t translate that to an instrument. And here I am, saying I think an album is full of cliches or empty ideas. And again - I’m making summary judgements. Who am I to think I can do this?
It goes back to journalism school, I think. I remember being told that criticism is about using descriptive language - I got kudos for calling guitar playing “swirling” once - but nobody ever told me I had to be qualified or anything. I remember blindly pitching reviews to the Globe and Mail and getting firm, yet polite, replies that they plan their book section weeks in advance and I should try and get my stuff in earlier. I remember pitching myself to the Toronto Review of Books and writing stuff that was picked apart by people who could actually write, but that was also a learning experience.
I eventually decided on my own rules:
Always quote a section at length from the author, to give the reader a taste of how the prose is written
Never spoil the ending, but give enough of the plot that readers know what the book is about and if it takes a turn or two that might upset people. (This is why I had a hard time with The Local Cowards Gun Club and it’s depictions of emotional and physical abuse)
Don’t go on too long and lose the reader: keep it to about 1,000 words or so
Try and make the argument if it’s worth the money
You’ll notice none of these have anything to do with starting a conversation.
I learned by emulating. I still read every book of book reviews I can, and I still find myself copying the form and styles of writers like Hitchens or John Updike, the two people I think I learned the most from. I try to show some insight, and to put things in context. But I still think I don’t think I do that great of a job. If I did, would I be writing this?
I do this because I want to. I read Rolling Stone in high school and I used to hate how everything got three stars, except the low-hanging fruit, or the flavour of the month. I hated buying a record that got five stars and taking it home to discover I didn’t like it. It made me feel foolish when people at the record store would say “Fell for that review, eh,” even as they’d leave a copy of the magazine at the counter. I thought I could do better, and so I started writing stuff back around 2006 - well over a decade ago - and I’ve been doing it ever since. I’ve branched out from music into other things: there was a TV blog I wrote for a while back, and occasionally I’d write about movies. But mostly it was books.
Book reviewing is a good racket. You email the publisher and if you’re lucky, they send you a book for free in the mail. All you have to do is read it, and then write about what you’ve read. It’s a scheme that seems too good to be true, but here I am with a pile of Advance Reader Copies from Simon and Schuster, Soho and Arsenal Pulp Press. They never asked me my qualifications, about if I really knew what I was doing. Neither did my editors: I think I just pitched a recurring column where I’d write about new books, and they said sure. I feel like I’ve been getting away with something.
Some people might call this self sabotage, and maybe that’s fair. But I’m writing this because I feel like I need to, like I have to explain myself and justify what I do - because I make sloppy mistakes and focus on the unimportant stuff.
Maybe I should go back and learn again from scratch, maybe I should quit while I’m ahead and have only made a few mistakes. I don’t know. I just know someone else could do what I’ve been doing, and they’d be doing a better job at it, too. It’s time to go back to first principles, to read reviews again and look into getting a MFA. Or even take a remedial class in how to read a novel. I don’t know, I just think about the mistakes I’ve been making and I wonder how I got away with making them for so long.