November 21st, 2006
John Sutherland, web reviewers and the “degradation of literary taste”
The Guardian book blog has revealed this riveting literary weirdness spawned by Sunday Telegraph critic John Sutherland’s criticism of online reviewers.
Round 1: Back and forth hair-pulling on Amazon about Victoria Glendinning’s biography of Leonard Woolf.
Round 2: Sutherland writing in the Telegraph about how Amazon reviewers and bloggers only review for freebies and because they enjoy “shooting their mouths off”.
Round 3: Author Susan Hill (who blogs herself) defends the right of book bloggers - only to receive and email from a prominent (but undisclosed) newspaper Books Editor saying that none of her books will be reviewed again in their Literary pages.
The debate about citizen journalism has become quite cyclical and it generally fails to address two things: the number of journalists blogging, and the high standard of quality to be found on various blogs that review. Sutherland’s fault-finding is another example of the hoary old high ground often taken by some, not all, established print media that they are “real” reviewers. The Tart of Fiction/Fiction Bitch puts sums it perfectly when she says:
“The thing which concerns me is the lack of logic (or knowledge) which appears to be leading Sutherland to assume that all blog reviewers are untrained, that all untrained reviewers are not be trusted, and that readers cannot be expected to discriminate between good and bad reviews (or biased and unbiased reviews) and should therefore only trust the establishment (his word), ie newspaper reviews.”
November 21st, 2006 at 4:03 pm
It’s not even that many blogging reviewers are newspaper writers or novelists/poets/nonfiction writers in their “real” lives. Where is the evidence for what distinguishes “trained” and “untrained” reviewers? It’s back to Tubridy and his moaning about wanting to read writers with a college degree, yet the case of book reviewing is perhaps the one in which the argument that some sort of formal qualification is needed falls flattest of all. Look at the literary pages of any newspaper, and make a survey of the reviewers and why they’re reviewing. Generally, they’re other authors, academics, politicians or broadcasters. Except in the case of academics (and there are many who would argue that the academic critic and the newspaper reviewer, i.e. journalist, are two very different beasts, and that they can’t do the same job), none of those people can be said to have anything resembling formal training in the practice of reviewing literature. Journalists have training, yes, but not specifically in reviewing. Literary pages are generally a hodgepodges of backgrounds and perspectives, which is what makes them interesting, if they’re interesting at all. As well as reading most of the books pages, I read several literary blogs; to me, they’re just literary pages on a screen. Entitlement or credentials doesn’t come into it, as long as the reviewer in question can engage with the book, ask interesting questions and draw me into thinking about writing. And to be honest, that is a GREAT deal more than many published book reviewers, in the Irish, English or American media, can do.
November 22nd, 2006 at 9:04 am
ESV, lots of very valid points there. Particularly in relation to what constitutes ‘trained’ and ‘untrained’. Some of the finest quality writing about books that I’ve come across has been on the web, specifically blogs like Mark Sarvas’ Elegant Variation and Bookslut. I don’t know the qualifications or occupations of the writers, but I know quality, analytical writing when I see it.
November 23rd, 2006 at 1:21 am
The Methuselah of literary criticism, Gore Vidal, has nothing in the way of formal training. No degree, no university, just a few years in the military, as far as I know.
November 29th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
[…] But seeing as it’s the time of year when many of the papers do their Christmas books end-of-year round up I thought that maybe Adam’s idea could be expanded. Sinead Gleeson touched on the topic about bloggers as reviewers, arguing that some of the finest quality writing about books that she’s come across has been on the web, specifically blogs. Having looked around the LibraryThing catalogues of other Irish bloggers I pleasantly surprised how well-read everyone is (in some cases very, very well-read). Considering how articulate so many Irish bloggers are, it obviously follows that they’d be excellent book reviewers. […]