On book reviewing
Christopher Booker
If You gather together in your mind all the grief You have caused to others and concentrate it on Yourself as if those others had inflicted it all on You, and imagine as vividly as you can your own Jealous pride wounded on all sides by your own malice — you will then understand what hell is'.
Lines from Andre Sinyavsky's A Voice from the Chorus which might stand as the motto for every book reviewer-turned-author.
Every so often it seems to be my fate to publish a book which receives a barrage of extraordinarily hostile and disparaging reviews. My first book, more than a decade ago, was given the dubious accolade by a Sunday paper of having been 'the most savaged book of the year' (the reviews ranged from one in The Times. which began what can one say about this nasty book?' to a Page-and-a-half in the New Statesman arguing that it was not worth a moment's consideration by any intelligent person). My last, given a not dissimilar reception, so enraged one reviewer that he described it as one of the worst books I have read since Caxton' (whatever that meant). Its contents were 'atrocious', it was 'atrociously written' and, in his view (I might add that he is a regular fellow-contributor to the Spectator), the publishers ought not `to have permitted the book at all'. No author can complain unduly about such reactions. As my venerable relative Coleridge once put it every censure, every sarcasm respecting a Publication which the critic. . .can make good, is the critic's right. The writer is authorised to reply but. not to complain. Neither can anyone prescribe to the critic how soft or how hard, how friendly or how bitter, shall be the phrases which he is to select for the expression of such reprehension or ridicule.' In lny own case, any inclination to protest Would be more than usually inapposite since as a regular book reviewer myself (vide Sinyavsky's words above) I have in recent Years written some of the rudest reviews of Other people's books to have appeared ,anYwhere in the British press. Nevertheless, as I once again face the Ordeal of having one of my own books reviewed, I cannot help reflecting how the experience of being on the receiving end fdoes help to concentrate the mind wonder On just what is the proper function of this curious form of journalism, and on how those of us who review the fruits of other People's labours only too often, alas, fall down, The absolute essential of any honeSt book review — it is an old truth, but it cannot be restated often enough — is that it should give an answer to the three great critical 9uesti0n5: what is this book trying to say; is it worth saying; and how well does it say it? So long as a serious attempt is made to answer these three questions, the reviewer is free to dress them up in any way he likes. He can describe what he had for breakfast, or sound off about the decline of the novel or the joys of train travel in Patagonia; he can even, as Macaulay used to do, hang on the peg of his review a 70,000 word essay which derives far more from his own thoughts and researches than it does from the work he has under notice. But somewhere, from the result, it must be possible for the reader to glean a reasonable answer to the three primary questions and if this is not the case, then the reviewer has failed in the only aspect of his task which must be called a duty.
The crucial question of the three, demanding the most effort and honesty from the reviewer, is the first — what is this book trying to say? — because unless the reviewer answers this satisfactorily he is likely to get everything else wrong. Nothing is easier than to savage (or even sometimes to praise) a book for being something other than what its author has intended it to be. No temptation is stronger for the reviewer, if he dislikes a book, than so to caricature the gist of what the author is trying to say that the reader of the review is given a wholly false or inadequate impression. But this is the chief temptation the critic has to fight (few of us always manage to do it successfully). This is the point at which, however much he may dislike the author's views or intentions, the•reviewer must at least make a stab at an objective summary of what the author is trying to do, and convey something of that to the reader, otherwise he is not reviewing the book at all, but only taking shies at some Aunt Sally stuck up in hi S own imagination (incidentally, I am referring here only to the author's conscious intentions — particularly in the case of works of fiction; unconscious intentions may also be relevant, but that's another matter).
If something is judged to be worth saying, it is usually because the reviewer considers it to be new, interesting and true. If the reviewer's verdict is negative, it is because he considers what the book is saying to be old hat, boring or false. And here it must be said that it is not enough for a critic to condemn an author's views or intentions merely because he has a vague feeling, however strong, that he disagrees with them. As readers, we are all entitled to dismiss books we do not like simply by calling them 'rubbish' or 'this stuff' or any pejorative adjective which comes to mind. But the book reviewer is in a different position. It is incumbent on him to work out rather more explicitly why he thinks that an author's view of the world is faulty– and to do that properly he must command some more comprehensive frame of reference than the author he is dismissing. He must occupy a sufficiently lofty position, either in terms of superior knowledge or of wisdom, to be able to demonstrate where the author's view is inadequate. Otherwise he is likely to fall into that trap described by Coleridge of substituting mere 'assertion for argument', the making of 'arbitrary and petulent verdicts, not seldom unsupported by even a single quotation from the work condemned, which might at least have explained the critic's meaning, if it did not prove the justice of his sentence'.
Having stated and assessed the value of the author's intention, the reviewer can then pass on to the third question, in effect 'how well does he carry it out'?', the answer to which may cover anything from the adequacy of the author's research to the virtues or otherwise of his style and presentation. One might give a favourable answer to the second question – agreeing that the author's purpose is a laudable one – but fault him on his execution. One might even give a negative answer to the second disagree totally with what the author is saying – but be so impressed by the brilliant and witty way he says it that the book is nevertheless, in some respect at least, justified.
To sum up, it must be said, the book reviewer is in an unusually privileged position. The mere fact that he fleetingly holds in his hands some small part of the happiness of another must not weigh with him unduly, because he also has responsibilities elsewhere – to his readers, to truth, to his own opinions. But he does have some responsibility to the author on whose work he is passing judgment At is a widespread misconception that authors only appreciate favourable reviews, that – if they bother about such things at all – they merely comb the review columns in search of such words as 'brilliant' and 'masterpiece'. Certainly in my own experience, this is not the case. What the author is looking for is the reviewer who has really come to terms with his book – the one who has really made an effort to answer the three great critical questions, particularly the first, In the end, if the reviewer has not shown himself willing to, or capable of making that effort, it does not matter whether his verdict is hostile or favourable. Almost every author has had the experience of receiving a glowing notice from someone who has not really grasped what he is on about – and the effect is not all that different from that of being slated by some pompous half-wit.
What the author is really looking for is someone who has grasped the full purpose of his intentions, and then measured them – whether favourably or not, it does not in the end matter. The point is that battle has been joined, communication has been made – and that, after all, is why one produces a book in the first place.
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