新GRE阅读能力提升素材分享贴四十

KnightBM

Should writers review each other?
'Peer reviewers' tend to be gentler than full-time critics, particularly if they know each other – does this mean we should never write about each other?
Something you rarely read in a peer review of fiction is a juicy, negative truth. When you do, it often develops into a thrilling feud or a grudge that lasts for decades – witness Maurice Sendak's startling recent diss of Salman Rushdie, in response to a bad notice that the youthful Rushdie gave him. Rushdie's response to Sendak's attack was as revealing as it was characteristically magnanimous: "I love you too, Maurice. (Actually I do. Grumpy old bastard.)"
Like many novelists I write a few book reviews, and they're always positive. As my mother suggests: if you have nothing nice to say, don't be afraid to keep your mouth shut. When I receive a book for review, I read it straight away and if it isn't great then I quietly return it in good time for the editor at the newspaper to round up someone else.
Professional critics are different. Occasionally they have to excoriate a writer. If they didn't do this – and in an entertaining way – then they wouldn't be doing their job. I once had a review from Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times so lethal that it left me wounded and bleeding into my keyboard. I lost so much blood that I had to be transfused with six or seven units of Côtes du Rhône before the doctors could even operate.
Novelists write gentler reviews. Primarily this is because they have felt the sting of a nasty notice and they can't bear to inflict it on a fellow writer. There is a secondary reason, of course, which is as self-serving as it is self-evident: that what goes around comes around. Whenever I consider calling out another writer in print, I get a very strong mental image of Don Corleone, with dinner jacket and slicked back hair, growling: Never tell anyone outside the Family what you are thinking again.
The fear makes me honest about books I do like, and silent about books I don't.
Between peer reviewers and professional critics, then, the apparatus exists to give all novels the write-ups they deserve. Novelists write nice reviews, bloggers and pros write reviews both nice and nasty, and that's the end of it.
Except that it isn't. Ambiguity creeps in when the reviewer and the reviewed are in some way connected. When I started out as a writer I knew no one, meaning I could safely review anything and frequently did. The longer you spend as a novelist, through, the more you inevitably make friendly connections.
Two years ago I had to turn down an offer from the Washington Post to review The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, on the grounds that I like him, share an agent with him and had given a quote for his book. Last week a newspaper kindly offered me the chance to review Tsiolkas's Dead Europe, which I had to decline on the same grounds. The perception of boosterism between writers in the same agenting stable would undermine the credibility of a paper that published such a review, and since there is no way for the literary editors of newspapers to know of all these connections, it's down to the writer to be honest in fessing up to them.
Last week, then, was the second time I had declined, for ethical reasons, to review the work of a writer who I think is a big-hearted, risk-taking and phenomenally talented novelist. Is that crazy? I wondered if it would be interesting to throw the issue open to comment, to see where people think the lines ought to be drawn.
First, do we think it's good to keep peer reviews in the critical mix? If so, then we should understand that the more involved someone becomes in reading, writing, reviewing and blogging, the more they make personal and professional connections - until eventually they might be able to review almost no one. Since we tend to gravitate towards the people whose work we admire, the irony is that we might reach a position where writers could no longer review the work they liked most.
Is there a useful distinction to be made, therefore, between a peer appreciation and a critical review? Or do we need mandatory disclosure in every books article? If so, then which of the infinite possible degrees of closeness ought to be disclosed? If you're married to the author, then fine. But what if you only follow each other on Twitter? Or fancy each other? Or fantasise about… oh, never mind.
Where should the boundary be established? Which reviewers can you really trust? And why shouldn't you hasten directly to your nearest independent bookstore and pick up a novel by the excellent Christos Tsiolkas? Your comments, ethical and otherwise, eagerly awaited.