Here’s the second installment on the subject of reviews and what’s expected from the contemporary book or film critic. There were a few more interesting opinions that came out of my recent readings on the subject, generally related to those explored in the last blog.
Writing for Salon, Laura Miller describes the traditional model of literary criticism where critics pretty much made the classics by pointing out which books should matter for a cultivated, educated audience. This meant the critics were the arbiters of taste, and the audience took their advice because they wanted to be seen as cultivated and intelligent. Publishers were also, presumably, swayed by these critics’ opinions which slapped down anyone unsuitable who thought they could write a novel. Miller thinks this is an outdated model, and that critical readings should be saved for the classroom. Her view of the critic’s role is to point out the books he or she likes in particular so the audience can find them.
Of course, the problem with this is that authors and publishers quickly get the idea they should offer inducements for critics to point out their books. Writing for The Baffler, Rafia Zakaria calls reviewers an “extended marketing operation” who are expected to “arrange the book in a bouquet” like blooming flowers to help attract an audience.
Writing for Slate, Ben Yagoda gives us a current classification of critics:
• Over-intellectual nitpickers – Try to rate popular books as something they’re not.
• Soft touches – In the pockets of publishers.
• Quote sluts – Write notices for display ads.
• Chummy logrollers – Relentless enthusiasm for the blogosphere.
• Careerist contrarians – Try to stand out with unpopular opinions.
Yagoda also suggests a reason for large audience vs. critic discrepancies in ratings. He thinks this means the work is unpleasant to sit through in some way. In other words, reviewers will hold out because they’ve got to write a review, while causal readers or film viewers will take off and find something better to do.
Also writing in Slate, Jacob Silverman describes the “safe space” atmosphere of the Twitter/blogosphere where all books are wonderful and every writer is every other writer’s fan. He calls this shallow, untrue and chilling to literary culture. After all, he says, what critic will write an honest review in an environment where authors are valued more for their social media following than for what they write? What he doesn’t say is how fast this social media following can turn into trollish attack dogs. Silverman says it’s not publishing that’s threatened; instead, it’s the body of reviewers who are trivialized and endangered by this system.
Another issue Silverman doesn’t identify in this analysis is generational characteristics at work. Everyone likes praise, but a constant need for it is fairly well identified with millennials. Writing in the New York Times in 2015, Alex Williams points out some of the tendencies we can expect from Generation Z (aka post-millennials), now displacing the millennials as the largest, richest and most sought-after generation of consumers. Gen Z is generally the children of Gen X, who are coming of age post Millennium. Compared to millennials, this group has grown up in uncertain times, so they tend to be more conservative than millennials and heavily concerned with privacy, risk and safe spaces. They tend to be less binary and more biracial, are heavily oriented toward technology and social media and tend to lose interest in things more quickly.
Is this the group Silverman has identified as so intolerant of critical reviews in the Twitter/blogosphere? When will the upcoming Gen Z start to change what sells in the marketplace?
Mar 08, 2018 @ 09:36:07
“When will the upcoming Gen Z start to change what sells in the marketplace?”
When they start buying their own toothpaste, and move out of Mom’s basement. ~:D
If you want to see what they like, just go to the nearest Hot Topic. They like anime, video game characters, Dr. Who, emo bands like My Chemical Romance (when the Black Parade starts playing on the overhead, half of them stand to attention and the other half start crying), they love Marvel movies, they LOVE Wonder Woman, and so forth.
I think the Crit-osphere of professional movie/book critics has finally understood them a little, as evidenced by the 100% Fresh Rotten Tomato rating for Black Panther. That movie is a solid middle of the bell curve action flick, not what critics usually like. Thor Ragnarok, another solid middle, another high score.
I presume this means the Gen Z crowd has tired of critics complaining that Black Panther is not Moliere.
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Mar 08, 2018 @ 10:52:13
I think it’s hard to say much about Generation Z yet since (depending on how you count it) the oldest ones are just turning 18 this year.
Speaking as a reviewer, the strongest temptation in favor of only writing positive reviews is that it allows you to abandon bad stories and to not even start reading stories by authors you don’t like. Far and away the worst part of reviewing for Rocket Stack Rank is reading and reviewing the bottom 15%.
Yeah, there’s a group of authors on the extreme left there who’ve convinced one another that bad reviews are immoral. The irony is that they don’t see how their author-centric view is no better than what the puppies were pushing. “Why did he give X’s story a bad review? X is a really nice person!” Good reviews are about the stories–not the authors. They are written for the benefit of readers–not authors.
Just a month after we started Rocket Stack Rank, we wrote an article titled “Getting More From Short-Fiction Reviews where we laid out what we thought readers wanted from short SFF reviews. It’s all about the stories; authors shouldn’t enter into it.
Any reviewer who loses sight of that would do well to find something else to do.
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Mar 08, 2018 @ 11:22:30
Well said, Greg. Extremity itself is usually the problem, rather than the question of which extreme.
Note, though, the difference between puppies–sads and rabids– is like the difference between a sheepdog and a prairie dog. They might partake of the same terminology, but they aren’t the same animal. The sads were not extreme, except in the extremist views of their mirror opposites. It’s important not to lump them in together, IMO.
The whole Hugo kerfuffle is proof positive that dispassion and objectivity are eternal difficulties when evaluating and reviewing subjective art and craft. Critics can try to point out flaws in works, but sometimes one person’s flaw is another’s feature–and the subjectivity itself draws commentators ad hominem, especially when sales, “success” and prestige (awards) are on the line. One only has to look at the petty attacks currently surrounding Taleb’s groundbreaking work to see this in action–there’s more heat than light, mostly about his personality rather than his ideas.
And, as each succeeding generation derives more and more of its self-worth from others rather than themselves, mostly via social media, it seems inevitable that this is the way and wave of the future. Objectivity and truth (fake news!) are harder to come by as they becomes both rarer and less valued–a vicious cycle. In the style of Black Mirror’s “Nosedive” episode, everything becomes a matter of schmoozing and exchanges of favors–what we baby boomers still call “corruption.”
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Mar 08, 2018 @ 12:38:30
I don’t think it’s possible for a reviewer to be unbiased–not and still be interesting anyway. (E.g. you’d be unbiased if you based reviews strictly on the number of words in the stories–or if you just rated stories randomly.) I’m biased against stories that get the science wrong, and biased in favor of stories that have “ah ha” moments (where you are taken by surprise and yet realize the surprise makes everything else make sense). Being unbiased isn’t a practical goal for a reviewer.
But I do think it’s possible to be impartial, meaning reviewing the stories without placing any weight on things like who wrote it or who’s recommending it or even what other people are writing. (Just because this is the third werewolf story I’ve read this month doesn’t mean I should review it negatively.) I want to write impartial reviews that express my honest opinions about the stories I’ve read. I think that’s what all reviewers should strive for.
As for deriving worth from the opinions of others, I’ll just note that that’s exactly what small-town life was like. People fled to the anonymity of the cities, but social media is, to a degree, bringing some of that hyper scrutiny back. Just with a different set of arbitrary, irrational rules of conduct. Anyway, social media is a game one doesn’t really have to play. Not yet, anyway.
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Mar 08, 2018 @ 20:35:52
Thanks for mentioning Taleb, David. He has very interesting ideas. I looked up a article he’s written, and some of it should figure in a future blog.
Why do you think the issue is about personality rather than his ideas? I’d think it would be the other way around. Is it the tone of his writing?
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Mar 09, 2018 @ 11:41:33
Re: Taleb, he doesn’t suffer fools (in his judgment) gladly. He attacks classes of people who cause damage to society, and occasionally individuals if they are public figures who have done damage IHO (such as Greenspan) or if individuals have attacked him personally (rather than his ideas) AND who belong to one of those bad groups, he does seem to hold a grudge. But he’s a smart guy, and knows a certain level of controversy sells books and gets his ideas out there. Some call him petty, but most of those are pots talking to the kettle. Me, I like the fact he calls things as he sees them AND supports his arguments, unlike some other public figures who are frank, but often clearly wrong.
I think Taleb would point out that hardly anyone gets upset when someone like Weinstein gets lambasted, a guy who has “only” damaged hundreds (at a guess) of people’s lives, perhaps thousands. Yet, when he calls out certain individuals involved in the 2008 financial crisis or other scandals, situation that arguable damaged far more people, including prompting suicides, and had the potential to crash the world economy and bring on poverty, famine and killing wars, people think he’s being petty and uncouth.
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Mar 09, 2018 @ 12:35:52
I hadn’t heard of Taleb before, but I note that some of the criticism of him is that he makes claims without citing his sources. That’s okay if you’re just writing self-help books, but it doesn’t work if you want to be taken seriously as an academic. (Since I’m too lazy to go back and find my sources for this criticism, feel free not to take it seriously.) 🙂
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Mar 09, 2018 @ 17:37:40
Re: Taleb–he’s not an academic, by his own definition. If fact, he detests academics. He only respects those who have actually done, rather than merely studied, which is what defines 99% of academics. Everything he writes about flowed originally from his years of options trading. He only studied math and stats and philosophy and history after doing the trading and learning by doing. His attitude is, his assertions are largely self-evident and plain. They need no greater footnoting or proof than, say, moral principles such as the Golden Rule. Take them or leave them, use them or not.
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Mar 08, 2018 @ 20:48:22
Good reviews are about the stories–not the authors. They are written for the benefit of readers–not authors.
Greg, this seems to be the point that’s under contention just now, where authors are so heavily invested in promotion for their work. They often have to make personal appeals to get the works reviewed, and take criticisms as either a betrayal or an attack on therm personally. I think they’re expecting a review to be promotion for them, rather than a criticism for the benefit of readers.
Interestingly I got to talk with a sometimes reviewer for the NPR website tonight, and she says she gets 4 books a day from hopeful authors. She generally looks at these and passes them on as donations unread. One person whose book she reviewed told her they had sent 45 copies to reviewers at the NPR site before capturing her attention.
Thanks to the link to your article. I think Clarke’s quote works nicely with the discussion here: “Could it be that most people are looking for “read this,” rather than “here’s a bunch of stories I read?” That would be similar to Laura Miller’s model for reviewers, where they point out stories they like so readers can find them.
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Mar 09, 2018 @ 10:33:11
I would be interested to hear whether there are any readers who are not authors who actually believe that reviews are better if they’re biased based on who the author was. 🙂
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Mar 08, 2018 @ 20:59:27
Phantom, sources disagree, but the oldest Gen Z may be entering their twenties now. I think the market is still grappling with what they will be like. Clearly there has been a sea change in society in the last five years because of their advent on the political landscape.
If their political leanings do turn out to be more conservative, then this will seriously impact the current left and, considering the publishing industry, what messages are considered appropriate by editors and publishers. The oldest millennials are now pushing 40 and may soon find themselves losing influence in the marketplace to this younger generation.
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Mar 09, 2018 @ 09:37:27
Lela said: “Clearly there has been a sea change in society in the last five years because of their advent on the political landscape.”
Taking the strict definition, they’re 18 this year because it’s 2018, so they really haven’t done anything except graduate from high school. Granting that they’re 20-21, they’re in university or working some entry-level shit job. Most or all were too young to vote in 2016. They won’t start having kids for another five years or so.
Most of the teenagers I know live out here in Hooterville, so they naturally tend to have the conservative church-going upbringing. The few teenagers I know in Toronto, they like to talk about the gender roles thing, and some of them like to “cosplay” the gender roles rainbow… but what they actually -do- is much more conservative than what I did at that age. All the young men I’m aware of are ferociously working at their studies, or their careers, to the exclusion of all else. No girlfriends, no wild partying, no frivolous use of money.
Example, kids don’t build out their cars anymore. There’s few teen hot-rodders to speak of. Even in Phoenix, the new mecca of hot rods, -kids- are not showing up at the car show with hood scoops on their Toyota. Young guys doing that are late 20’s, usually with the baby carrier in the back seat.
With the kids, the girls are driving. Boys are in the passenger seat if there is a boy present. They don’t seem to be participating at all, largely because they don’t have any money and don’t see how they’re going to get any. They’re worried.
Statistics I’ve seen indicate that teens and 20’s are not moving out of their parents houses. They are staying home either to study, or because their teenager jobs don’t pay enough to cover rent/food/car. That’s what they’re worried about.
Something else that’s interesting is the sudden and phenomenal success of Dr. Jordan Peterson. Young men are grabbing on to his 12 Rules book like a life-preserver in a shipwreck. What’s the most interesting there is that the more the mainstream media slag him, the more followers he gets. Quite aside from anything Peterson says or represents, young men are rejecting the media narrative. If its in the paper or on TV, they don’t believe it.
What does that mean for a reviewer of science fiction? First thing off the top of my head, if I’m a depressed, pissed-off teenager living in Mom’s basement, I do not want to be reading Moliere. The more highbrow it is, the more I’m going to think it sucks. I want a job, I want a girlfriend/boyfriend, and I want to get the hell out of Mom’s house. (Or Grandma’s house, because Mom probably moved in with her ancient Hippy Boomer parents after the divorce, and Dad’s new girlfriend is the uuuuugly wicked stepmother.)
So, the Gen Z kids do not want some political message fic because that’s marketing and they hate marketing. They don’t want some heavy philosophical grind with gratuitous torture in it because it’ll only depress them more. They want Thor Ragnarok, Black Panther, the Avengers and Wonder Woman. They will listen to a reviewer who understands what they want, and doesn’t -lie- to them with a bunch of publisher’s marketing bafflegab. The finely crafted sentences, I’m pretty sure they don’t care.
They want the story that lies deep in their hearts. They will listen to a reviewer that rates the stories on that basis.
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Mar 09, 2018 @ 10:41:09
I looked at a number of reports about how many Millennials were living with their parents, and I saw numbers as high as 40%. Then I noticed that a) they counted everyone from age 18 to age 35 and b) college students living in dormitories were counted as living with their parents.
Then I found “It’s becoming more common for young adults to live at home – and for longer stretches,” from the Pew Research Center. Among people aged 25 to 35, it’s 15%. That’s still up a lot from the 8-11% that was the rule from the 1960s to 2000, but it’s still just a fraction of the population. Other studies show these numbers are sharply lower for people with college degrees or even just with some college.
Not to put too fine a point on it, I don’t think these are people who do much book reading.
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Mar 10, 2018 @ 18:05:02
Greg Hullender said: “That’s still up a lot from the 8-11% that was the rule from the 1960s to 2000, but it’s still just a fraction of the population.”
Yes, there’s an increase in kids living at home. There’s also an increase in kids coming -back- home after college, something that used to be comparatively rare. The model is go to school, then move out and do the career. It isn’t quite going that way as much anymore. Those are the Gen Y Millennials, they aren’t doing as well as the Boomers and Gen Xers did. Gen Z is still living at home, because under 20 years old mostly.
Looking at who’s buying books, I’m not sure we really know that. I would hazard a guess that Gen Z is on Kindle a lot more than paperbacks, because its cheaper. They don’t have money, that’s why they’re at home.
But the relative demographics of comic book sales are somewhat known, as are movies.
Comics are dying. Kids are not buying them at all, dedicated adult comic nerds like myself are reluctantly giving them up. Reviewers of comics are either “Everything is awesome!!!” like I09 or they’re getting physically threatened by comic book authors and slagged by SJWs on twitter.
http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2018/03/comic-book-industry-digs-harder.html
I would argue that “Diversity and Comics” reviewer Richard Meyer and his YouTube channel probably has more Gen Z audience than Marvel comics. Their sales on many non-flagship books is dipping under 10k copies per issue. They just gave the Captain America book to Ta-Nehisi Coates, despite his crashing failure on the Black Panther book. Cancelled at ~8K copies per issue. This move demonstrates they don’t care about the books or the company at all, and explains why they’re going after reviewers on social media.
Honest reviews are the enemy of dishonest publishers/authors. When I see people going after critics because they don’t give 100% glowing reviews, that’s what I suspect is behind it.
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Mar 10, 2018 @ 22:24:14
You mean publishers/authors who are trying to force their viewpoint on the market?
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Mar 11, 2018 @ 21:45:16
Oh yeah. You look at who is gong after the critics in the comic book world, they are very open about their aim to force their viewpoint on the audience. Ta-Nahisi Coates has an article in The Atlantic telling us all about what he’s going to do with Captain America and why. None of it has anything to do with pleasing the audience, its all about him.
Somebody like “Diversity and Comics” isn’t going to give Coates a glowing review just because he’s Woke with a capital W. He reviews what’s on the page, from what I can see. They can’t stand that.
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