In the new issue of Prospect, I’ve written an essay on the state of book reviewing in Britain. As I point out at the start of the piece, several articles on this topic have appeared in the US in recent months. Here, for example, is James Wolcott’s fantastic essay-review in the New Republic of Gail Pool’s book Faint Praise. And here is Steve Wasserman’s long essay in the Columbia Journalism Review.
The problem is much more extreme in the US, where most newspapers have drastically reduced their books coverage in recent years. A similar contraction hasn’t happened in Britain—but my fear is that it may well do soon. In the face of new threats such as blogging and an increasingly commercialised publishing scene, book reviewing has declined in authority and prestige, and it will have to fight if it is to survive in its current form.
Many people’s reaction, of course, will be: who cares? What does it matter if book reviews cease to exist? They’re cliquey and increasingly irrelevant anyway. My response would be: yes, it does matter. A healthy literary culture is one where books can be publicly discussed in a serious and informed way. I don’t think the blogosphere comes close to providing such a space at present, largely because it is completely unregulated, but also because blogs are so bitty. What you get is little snippets of opinion and gossip—the virtual equivalent of a conversation in a pub. That is a valuable thing, of course. But sustained critical evaluation of books is different—and to my mind it is even more valuable. I’m not saying that good criticism can’t happen on the internet. Of course it can. But it doesn’t happen very much at the moment. And that is why the destruction of the culture of book reviewing would be a bad thing.
I found your article very interesting, particularly as a young person with both respect for the authority of print journalism and an interest in the democracy of internet publishing. Here in Australia the literary editor of our major newspaper, the Australian, recently wrote on the same topic, defending her newspaper’s book coverage and suggesting that the debate about the decline of book reviewing was an argument of little importance that recurred “every so often”. While I agree with her assertion that the Australian’s coverage of books is adequate - we have a weekly Review supplement as well as a monthly insert called the “Australian Literary Review” which is much like those you mentioned in the Guardian and Times – I strongly disagree with her contention that the threat is exaggerated. Just this week one of our oldest news magazines, The Bulletin, was abruptly closed after its new owners decided that it lost them too much money. Although it never published serious book reviews, I see its death as a symbol of increasing popular ambivalence towards serious print journalism. This abandonment of print journalism is being led by people my age who much prefer to get their news from the internet. Likewise, it is my generation that is abandoning literary fiction in droves. As you suggest in your article, the real problem facing book reviewers and indeed anyone who loves literature is not how and where books are reviewed, but which books are read and even whether books are read at all. The challenge is to somehow interest my generation in reading the serious, challenging books upon which a mature civil society is built.
William, if this is your view of the blogosphere, you’ve not been looking closely enough. I could point you to very, very many blogs of real quality, but with regard to blogging and blogs journalists seem to think that the received wisdom about it being “bitty” will do as far as research goes. There are 60 million blogs out there at least. Some — many — are woeful. Some contain some of the best critical writing around. You are right about one thing, though, the terrible quality of most literary journalism …
Again, another wasted opportunity for meaningful discussion. Your argument here is similar to this: William Skidelsky is interested in sodomizing rabbits. I know this because I have stated it. But I won’t cite specific examples when a blanket generalization will do.
A note for future journalists who wish to raise a stink: Instead of speculating foolishly upon the motivations of bloggers, why don’t you try ASKING us about it? Or if you’re too lazy to do that, there are endless articles out there explaining why bloggers blog.
That’s a fair treatment of the topic. Some book reviewers actually read and digest books before they write their reviews; others just bluff their way with elongated blurbs. Such insincere reviews serve as thinly disguised advertising, satisfying publishers and authors, but doing a disservice to discerning readers. Academic book reviewers like Frank Kermode or Denis Donoghue, writing in periodicals like TLS or NYR, have often been helpful to the general reader with their literary insights matched by elegant and lucid prose. Other academic critics have been inhumanly turgid in those academic quarterlies whose main function is to provide steps on the academic career ladder - and Eng Lit quarterlies are not the only prose culprits on this rarified periodical scene. I would prefer academics to write in a middlebrow-to-highbrow style. People like Edmund Wilson or George Orwell, who functioned mainly outside academia, struck the kind of stylistic note that I prefer. They tried to write their reviews in essay form, a literary genre that can be neglected in newspapers and schools curricula today.
The “degradation of literary taste” may also be due to the undeclared standards and unknown siphoning methods of well-publicised book prizes. I think the judging panels of all such competitions should issue a long press statement at the ceremonies outlining what they were looking for and how they arrived at selecting winners.
It is an interesting exercise to review book reviewing. It might also serve a purpose to judge the judging process.
Your article suggests that book reviews are declining in prestige due to the:
* increased commercialisation of publishing: supermarkets and TV shows,
* rise of technologies that democratize opinion, and
* declining authority of academic criticism.
I’d argue that there is no decline, and that even if there were, these are not reasons for it. They are merely observations. There is no correlation between them and ‘prestige’. Most of what you say has to do with economics. Publishers don’t rely, like perhaps they used to, on good reviews in traditional media to move product. You are equating prestige with selling power.
As long as there is an intelligent reading public there will always be room for considered, articulate expression of opinion about books. The fact that Judy or Oprah is excited, or that thousands of bloggers are opining, or that professors, abstruse or otherwise, are or are not weighing in on the matter, means little, at least to the discerning reader.
Prestige has to do with ability and quality: the ability to write persuasively, to be clear, consistent, amusing and interesting; the quality of speaking truth. This is the way prestige is earned. The best reviewers will always attract an audience, regardless of where they choose to write. And they’ll write because they are passionate about what they’re reading. Not for the money, because there isn’t any. Most earn chicken feed for their efforts. In this regard at least, it’s difficult to imagine much of a decline in ‘prestige.’
You are correct when you say that blogging is well suited to instant reaction, and it may well have an edge when it comes to disseminating gossip and news. Good criticism does require lengthy reflection and slow maturation. But you’re hopelessly wrong when you say that the blogosphere does not provide optimal conditions for its flourishing. There are no deadlines out here. There are no space limits. There are no editorial lines to toe. There are no buddies to please, debts to pay. Bloggers can take as little or as long as they wish to formulate their ideas. And they can do so on their own terms. If they have nothing to say, or say it poorly, and this may well be the case with a majority of them, then we who search for the light can move on.
Given the super abundance of information and opinion now available, the necessity of reliable, well-read ‘prestigious’ critic/reviewers is greater than ever. There is no shortage. The challenge is simply to find them.
You say, and I agree:
‘Reviewers rarely attempt more than a plot summary and some perfunctory reflections on style.’
This tendency, for a writer being reviewed,is immensely irritating. But you also go on to say:
‘Trends are rarely analysed.’
Were they ever? Clearly, academics did this - indeed it’s one of the raisons d’etre of the professional Eng Lit academic critic which TS Eliot claimed in To Criticise The Critics. I am not tremendously aged but have been reading book reviews for at least twenty years and do not recall a time in those two decades when trends in fiction were routinely analysed.
One other thing. You are highly critical of Susan Hill and write about her as if she were simply some self-opinionated blogger. I hope you know that she is actually a publisher and highly-respected novelist whose books appear on the National Curriculum?
“A healthy literary culture is one where books can be publicly discussed in a serious and informed way. I don’t think the blogosphere comes close to providing such a space at present, largely because it is completely unregulated, but also because blogs are so bitty. What you get is little snippets of opinion and gossip—the virtual equivalent of a conversation in a pub. That is a valuable thing, of course. But sustained critical evaluation of books is different—and to my mind it is even more valuable.”
Right and Wrong. Blogs do occupy the space of a pub and they do indeed spurt opinions and sometimes gossip all day - Isn’t that how people get along at a pub? Regulation comes in the form of oblivion; that is to say, from below instead of above. No editors, but if you don’t write well enough you won’t sustain an audience and will disappear (a great number of the oft quoted millions of blogs out there don’t actually exist for very long). Some of the blogs that become successful do so because there is and always will be a larger audience for wittily quick opinions over thoughtful discussion, but below the surface there are many fanatically informed and serious writers who devote their energies for little reward other than the potential for an audience that can’t be found in a pub (or I should say in a starbucks ) or via mainstream publications. However small they are, these writers have a readership most likely matching or exceeding what they might enjoy in a well-regarded journal with one difference being that the audience is theirs alone.
To amend your sentence: A healthy literary culture is one where [not just the books with the biggest marketing budget or buzz SHOULD] be publicly discussed. This, I believe is one of the greatest assets of the literary blogoshphere. It is here where translation is not a dirty word. It is here where the publicity schedule means little. It is here where literary authors from independent presses get equal or better attention than whatever hotty the New York Times is billowing about this week to accommodate the tastes of myriad general readers. This is where being bitty becomes an asset. It’s specific, it’s personal, it’s opinionated. Those traits aren’t mutually exclusive with being critical; in fact they are the very assets that gives criticism life and probably why so many professional writers are finding themselves writing online, inviting comments from their readers, discovering others who happen to share their interests, no matter how specific.
I watched in horror last year as a group of critics assembled by the Hudson Review to discuss “The Form and Function of Arts Criticism in Our Changing Cultural Landscape” demonstrated precisely why they are becoming irrelevant. Snobbishness and insularity are, it would seem from the behavior of these eminences, the true characteristics of a critic. I’ve also watched the unfolding debate over poetry (difficult poetry vs poetry for the people sort of thing) in the pages of Poetry and other journals where the exchanges were little more than embarrassingly tendentious and personal attacks, which, in and of themselves are truly a destructive force behind our critical ennui. Where shall wisdom be found? Probably not where we used to look.
So be skeptical about blogs. So am I. But don’t sit them out, stop paying attention to the “kerfuffles” and weed them out to find what’s serious. The verve and intellect to be found in the literary world online is there if you look for it and as a matter of fact it’s intimidatingly abundant.
And another thing
“Prestige” is defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary as: Influence or good reputation derived from past achievements, associations, etc.
And by the Penguin English Dictionary as: 1. high standing or esteem in the eyes of others, based on achievement or success. 2 an aura of glamour and desirability resulting from associations of social rank or material success
I took issue with Will’s suggestion that book reviews are declining in ‘prestige’. As I re-read it, I am inclined to think there’s room for some clarification. So: Book Review sections in North American newspapers are getting thinner, evidently because they aren’t making enough money. Publishers clearly don’t believe that book reviews in newspapers are worth supporting with advertising. This was confirmed to me by Kathryn Court, President of Penguin Books in a recent interview. ( http://nigelbeale.com/?p=706 )
If looked at through this lens, one could say that the prestige of book reviews does appear to be declining. Their aura of glamour isn’t quite so shiny now that fewer high ranking, materially successful publishers are associating with them.
While it’s not proven that the reviews themselves aren’t generating interest, publishers are not seeing any appreciable increase in sales connected to the targeted advertising they do in book sections. Evidently the influence (on sales) of a book buyer at a large chain is now greater than that of a books editor at a large newspaper; watered down, in part, due to the tidal wave of reviews now available on blogs and at Amazon and other book related sites and TV shows.
Among discerning readers however, I believe that the opinions of good, truth-telling critic/reviewers continue to have an important impact upon not only purchasing decisions, but also the appreciation of books reviewed. The ‘prestige’ of reviewers I respect and enjoy hasn’t declined, nor will it, because, to this eye at least, when done well, criticism provides some of the most stimulating and beautiful writing that one can read. Given the explosion in the number of titles published each year, the need for good critics is more pronounced than ever, regardless of how prestigious their status may be among the rich and famous.
Roger Bacon asserted: “Some books are to be tasted, others swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”
With such a flood of books coming on the market every year surely the public role of diligent, erudite and elegant book reviewers is to present their considered opinions as to which (detective novels and airport blockbusters) we might swallow, which omnibus collections (of essays, quotations and bizzarre facts) we might taste in those occasional moments of mental dalliance, and which thoughtful, sensitive and groundbreaking novels, biographies and other genres we might buy, chew and digest during those periods of our daily lives when we wish “to engage creatively with the text”.
While reading the piece I found myself wanting to shout YES! Bring it ON!
For those of us who aren’t signed by Random House, getting book reviews by the print media is practically impossible. They are such insufferable snobs! It appears that literature is judged by those “critic types” by the size of the publisher’s marketing budget.
Prospect notes:
John Sutherland (himself a prodigious newspaper reviewer) suggested that literary blogs and online reviews—particularly those on Amazon—were leading to a “degradation of literary taste.”
My message to Sutherland is “get stuffed you insufferably opinionated git.”
Have you ever seen a review of a book published by one of the excellent smaller presses in the UK, such as Bewrite Books or Do Not Press? No, I thought not.
My message to up and coming authors published by small presses, is not to bother with the old farts in print media, but to approach the bloggers and the specialist media.
E.G., If you’re a fantasy author, approach the fantasy mags and zines for a review. And if you’re a reader, take print media with a (very, very large) pinch of salt. They are beholden to the big publishers with deep pockets.
Some more comment at one of those terrible blogs
The mourning of book reviewing (like the death of painting, the novel, the great English murder, etc) seems to be a ritual that returns with every new generation. I’m thinking especially of Elizabeth Hardwick’s influential critique from the sixties which helped to launch the NYRB. But I enjoyed this piece, while thinking that the author has got blogs only half-right. On the one hand, it is true that the medium is suited for short-term reactions. On the other hand, though, there is a strange afterlife to blog posts, whereby pieces that are months, or even years old, tend to be read again and again thanks to Google keyword searches.
Finally, I wonder as to the extent in which the news cycles of paper publications are complicit as well in the decline of “sustained critical evaluation of books.” The NYRB excepted, the felt need for a news hook upon which to hang longer articles works to place the whole business on the ground of the contingent and fleeting. So on the anniversary of Beckett’s death, say, one gets pieces on Beckett - but why not whenever, just for the intrinsic interest of it? It seems to me that there are structural factors at work here that render things difficult, and these extend into the heart of the culture itself.
The problem with Skidelsky”s exhaustive, and sometimes exhausting analysis, is in its structure. The last paragraph–brilliant–should be first and go from there. Toward the end, he writes an equally smart analysis of book reviewers writing to obey a frozen form. This too should ride much higher in his article. Then there’s the central fact that writing–any kind of writing–is a fabulous priviledge. It is a chance to make miracles out of nothing. This holds as true for the reviewer as for the novelist. It’s not only a chance to tell a forgotten truth but to make words sing as they’ve never sung before. Isn’t that why we use words? But Mr. Time, which Skidelsky doesn’t mention, is behind most bad reviewing and bad writing period. People are in a hurry because reviewing doesn’t pay and they must get on to snotty activities which do pay. Your humble lterary servant, Guillermo O’Joyce.