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the cozy rashomon-lite feeling of sitting down to read the 6th review of a book you will never read. is this the closest we get, textually, in modern times, to reading a serialized novel? gonna try to describe this emotion below...
love how, with each new review you read, the further you are from reading the book...as if the reviews are coalescing into an alternate reality that will smother the book itself
it's also a mini-experiment in how PR permeates an ecosystem...you read 5 reviews that say exactly the same thing, parroting the PR copy, and then you get one that's genuine opinion, and then everything before is cast in doubt
like a novel with a self-contradicting unreliable narrator
also nothing better for the lazy reader than attacking a review-cluster...you already know everything about the book, you go to be lulled, to feel surprise with the least effort and/or investment
books are such disappointments; reviews are so certain. how can the former compete?
nothing more satisfying than the ultra-literary book that has been hyped for months, is released, and is met by a flock of timid critics who won't call it bad. love how elliptical reviewers get to avoid saying it. like reading 'remains of the day.' i become an opinion detective.
maybe the badness of criticism is a prerequisite for enjoying the review cluster. their cravenness keeps you guessing.
love meeting friends who have reviewed a book.
me: great review! sounds like an amazing book.
them: hated it.
me: oh.
a fun way to learn who is dispensing awards, MFA fellowships, racial/gender justice morality etc these days.
me: great review! sounds like an amazing book.
them: hated it.
me: oh.
a fun way to learn who is dispensing awards, MFA fellowships, racial/gender justice morality etc these days.
reviews are an alternative reality in which the word "boring" does not exist. another reason i never read the books: there's a high chance they're just...boring.
we like to say that the internet has created a situation in which we only read things we already know. au contraire. the review-cluster was there first. i was but a babe, at my high chair, reading review after review of the new rushdie novel...
. @TeddyWayne1999: "It’s funny how reading reviews of nonfiction is a legitimate way to grasp the book’s main idea but we lazily assume the same can be applied to fiction."
i have neglected to say something important here: a lot of critics write better than the authors of the books they are reviewing. it's one reason i am addicted to reading critics -- despite mistrusting many of their opinions.
. @xlorentzen points out the "thrill of watching the critic integrate a work into his/her own framework iteratively." i'd go further: i'd read a great critic even if it was revealed that the book he/she/they were reviewing didn't exist.
so i've got it all wrong: a book exists merely as an object for the critic to brilliantly pirouette around. what one wants, in life, is writing about something that barely matters. that requires little emotional investment. that's what a critic does.
i read criticism because it ISN'T news, it ISN'T sociology, It ISN'T fact, it ISN'T literature, it ISN'T confession and thank God: it ISN'T a fucking book. writing about writing is the purest writing.
I have probably read more pages of criticism--music, tv, books--than any other form of writing. What I've learned about craft from it comes not from the opinions in the piece, but the critic's style itself.
Certainty about politics or human nature constitutes a kind of stupidity. But certainty about books is cool.
In short, I want to live in a world full of extremely strong opinions about things that don't matter (books) because that is a world in which I feel safe.
i also go to reviews to cultivate a habit of not-thinking (or second-hand thought). i read a book or watch a movie, form an opinion, and immediately go online to read a review so that my thoughts may be obliterated by someone who thinks more deeply about these things. why?
the experience of modern life is the experience of a bunch of people shouting at you to like a thing they don't like themselves.
want to add here--because i have been asked multiple times--i am not subtweeting any particular author! i pity all fellow authors (who any way are not to blame for how their books are received!)
the more reviews of a book you read, the faster you can read them -- with each successive review you can skip the intro para (biographical details, whatsitabout), and get to the meat. eventually, you read only the last lines.
so it has to be said that the experience of reading a lot of reviews of a book is ultimately the experience of not-reading even the reviews, because after the first 3, it's just delicious skimming. you go to review-clusters to hedonistically not-read.
