Avi

word craft

blog

Reading the reviews

Rotten ReviewsIn our time when pro­fes­sion­al book reviews and blog reviews have become so entan­gled, when everyone’s per­son­al opin­ion is con­sid­ered informed crit­i­cism, when sub­jec­tive feel­ings are prof­fered as knowl­edge­able crit­i­cism, every writer should have a copy of Rot­ten Reviews on their desk. Then you could read…

“I am at a loss to under­stand why peo­ple hold Miss Austen’s nov­els at so high a rate, which seem to me vul­gar in tone, ster­ile in artis­tic inven­tion, impris­oned in the wretched con­ven­tions of Eng­lish soci­ety, with­out genius, wit, or knowl­edge of the world.”

Or so wrote Ralph Wal­do Emer­son in 1861.

“We fan­cy that any real child might be more puz­zled than enchant­ed by this stiff, over­wrought story.”

A con­tem­po­rary review of Alice in Wonderland

“An eccen­tric, dreamy, half-edu­cat­ed recluse in an out-of-the-way New Eng­land village—or any­where else—cannot with impuni­ty set at defi­ance the laws of grav­i­ty and gram­mar… Obliv­ion lingers in the imme­di­ate neighborhood.”

Or so wrote Thomas Bai­ley Aldrich about Emi­ly Dick­in­son in 1892.

“Recent war nov­els have accus­tomed us all to ugly words and images, but from the mouths of the very young and pro­tect­ed, they sound pecu­liar­ly offensive.…the ear refus­es to believe.”

Con­tem­po­rary book review of The Catch­er in the Rye.

3 thoughts on “Reading the reviews”

  1. Avi: I got into mis­chief once by telling a major review­er that it was much eas­i­er to write a review than to write a book! He nev­er reviewed anoth­er book of mine.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.