My wife recalls her mother, who
was a fine musician and teacher, with this anecdote: Following a recital in
which the student’s performance was embarrassingly poor, she said to the
still-doting parent, "You must be very proud of your daughter.” Not a word she
didn’t believe and nothing to offend or be cruel. These principles should apply
to literary reviews too, although if the degree of consideration afforded a
grownup poet were the same as that for the young student, we might find
ourselves covering up the very points a review is intended to highlight.
The independent, or small,
presses of this country contribute vitally to the culture by keeping up
production of books for which the readership is thin and scattered, even when
those books deserve more exposure. Given the difficulty of getting noticed at
all, it is understandable that we, the writers, are eager to see our books
mentioned, examined, and (here’s the rub) praised. We may not notice it happening,
but a healthy and fair-minded approach to reviewing can slip away beneath a
tide of good intentions when review pages reflect the desire to make up for
what is lacking elsewhere and grant exposure to new works rather than
subjecting them to a critical reading.
Once in a while, something
happens to illuminate what can go wrong with the review process. One poet
followed up the sending of the book with personal postcards encouraging a
review. I’ll confess that I wrote one but withheld it. The poet’s parents were
not present for me to suggest how proud they must be. Another enthusiastically
offered a second book before the review of a first had appeared. When it did,
there was no further communication. And one poet, having been given a
preliminary read of a review, asked that it not be published. As did the
reviewer. Our enterprise is not designed to incite tempers.
Reflecting on what reviews ought
to offer, I think back to Robert Peters' Black & Blue reviews and his
insightful, often sharp, comments. He wrote something once about a poem of mine
to the effect that it was overly romantic and bucolic. Not something to place
in my file of useable quotations. A few years later, we came to know each other
as friends and I learned more about him. He may have been a critic to be wary
of, but if the author of a book he had hated wrote another he liked, he was
eager to say so. His comments were always candid, his motivation always to
serve the greater interests of literature.
The first realization I had when
an editor sent me books to review for his magazine (the first time this
happened) was that reviewing and reading for one’s own pleasure are different,
and that we should see beyond our biases in order to look at what the author
sets out to do and comment appropriately. There’s no use in complaining about
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry because it doesn’t rhyme. Beyond this, any publication
has to decide on its goals with reviews. Many serve as centers for information
on new publications, with the authors’ colleagues often serving as their
reviewers. I think this is fine in that someone who knows more about the
origins and circumstances of a work may be able to shed light on it for a
potential reader even though a sterner evaluation isn’t attempted.
I’d like reviews to help us find new books and authors, not necessarily be merely texts to mine for inclusion
in resumes. I’d like to feel that we who value reviews also value discussion
and the ability to differ in a way that leaves us all knowing more about each
other. I’d like to see a review that refuses to flatter the author challenged
elsewhere by one that supports her/him and not have an offended author vent in
a manner that can become uncomfortably personal to all concerned.
Anyone submitting a book for
review should expect objectivity. Anyone reviewing a book should expect that of
themselves, wherever it leads them. And anyone reading a review should expect
commentary that begins with the text at hand and reflects on writing issues in
general. So we learn. It has taken a while for me to accept it, but Robert
Peters had a point about that poem of mine with the bucolic reference.