Reviewing books for a living has to be a thankless, challenging job since writing, particularly at a level where you’re going to get some hot shot reviewer to deeply scrutinize your work, is equally challenging — if not more so. But who’s critiquing the critic? What if they swing and miss? Where’s the backlash?
Unless you’re some insane writing machine like Stephen King, John Grisham, or (can’t anybody stop him?) James Patterson, writing is not overly rewarding financially. Except for those folks and the current flurry of best-selling women writers like Kristin Hannah, Colleen Hoover, Sally Rooney and a few others who are rolling in the dough, most of the rest of the world’s writers — and I certainly include myself in that category — aren’t raking in the chips. Perhaps because of that, how your work is reviewed, IF it is reviewed, tends to be a sensitive topic among us writers.
I admit that when I spotted the big, thick paperback volume “The New York Times Books Of The Century” in a second-hand bookstore, I bought it because I wanted to see what the big-time, high-level critics thought about some of the books I’ve read and which ones they may have steered me away from.
While it may seem an enviable job — you get dozens, maybe even hundreds of free books, a new few arriving every day — and you’re expected to (A.) keep up with them, (B.) spot promising newcomers, (C.) warn your readers when to go elsewhere and (D.) make sure you cover all the hottest writers, even if you think what they’re writing is verbal plankton.
As you would expect, the AUTHORS of those books that are critically reviewed often have a pretty strong resentment about the way their book, their baby, is written about by these critics. You would, too.
So far, and I say this somewhat tentatively, my books have been very kindly reviewed on Amazon, there just aren’t a lot of reviews. (Hint!) Probably the nastiest review was someone who returned my “Teaching Huckleberry Finn” book - “for full price” he wrote, since I had implied that a certain Republican con-man candidate for the Presidency, whom I did not name, reminded me of Twain’s principal exaggerator and nonpareil braggart, one Tom Sawyer. Sometimes the truth hurts.
Depending on how quickly you work, an author might spend six months, a year or even more on a project, get it published (which means it had to get by some editors) and then some bespectacled nerd in some cubicle somewhere lays into your work as if you owed him something. Frankly, being a critic is easy. Anybody can do it. People are restaurant critics all the time.
Heck, I once wrote a review of a rap record — in rap. “Some rap’s good, but not this here. Just words and a beat without an idea…” Nothing to it.
What made me think of this topic is re-reading somebody named Richard G. Stern’s swung-on-and-missed review of Joseph Heller’s classic “Catch 22,” which is offered below in its entirety.
Then, the mea culpa that appears in “Books Of The Century” offers NO byline.
Now, that critic, Richard G. Stern, an author of some 20 books of fiction I see online, was a generally well-respected author and educator. But by calling the book “monotonous and repetitive” — which it INTENTIONALLY is, Stern misread Heller’s intention and his artistry, which, to be fair, took some insight.
Heller’s circular structure for the book, introducing a character, sharing a little about him or her, perhaps including a scene, then moving on to another character and so on, was done on purpose. He’d come back to those characters again, share a little more and the gradual and very carefully crafted revelations come together in an extraordinary sense of all-at-once discovery — Heller’s carefully crafted intention — so that this meant that in Chapter 3 and that meant this in Chapter 5 and when you find out what happens in Chapter 22, well, it hits hard.
Heller took a very long time with the book and when he handed the original manuscript in, it was way longer than what made it into print and probably, as he said himself, more repetitive.
Working carefully and extremely successfully with editor Robert Gottlieb — editors you CAN work with are to be treasured — they whittled and tightened the book where it needed it and came out with what we now regard as a masterpiece.
Sometimes critics or even comments can lift a writer’s heart. Imagine my delight when yesterday a reader wrote: “What a good sense of humor you have in your writing. You write like a person might talk, telling a story. It's an easy read and something is learned or remembered along the way. Thanks, John, for sharing. You are my 206th bedtime story.”
What a kind and generous comment. I was thrilled. Some months ago, a friend had asked me what my intention with Substack was. I said: “Well, I see it as a one-sided conversation.” So thanks!
When I had a chance to chat with Heller many years ago at Florida State, I had read about the hefty cuts and asked about that editing process and if it was difficult to hack away pages that he had so painstakingly labored on. Heller was a notoriously slow writer which, he said many times over the years, drove him absolutely crazy.
“No,” he said, cheerfully. “What we cut was just longer and more repetitive. I’m very easy to work with.” Gottlieb later confirmed that they had worked very well together, slicing away page after page with no apparent regret.
After struggling for so many years to get the precise word count for that column down the left side of sports page — no jumps — I cringed at the thought of an editor doing that to my writing. Whenever I went a little long and I’d call in to the desk to alert them, their response was always a cheery “That’s OK. We’ve got guys who can cut.” (That’s what I was afraid of!)
As for that nasty review in the New York Times, why Heller, all those years later, could almost quote it verbatim. “Grasps for want of craft and sensibility…” He went on for a few minutes, quoting it, then sat there laughing. A winner’s laugh.
It was a little while later when a smarty pants interviewer suggested Heller had never produced anything else as good as “Catch-22.”
Heller smiled. “Who has?”
Fell in love with Catch-22 from the get-go. One of the books we gave our children to read during their summers off from school (they got to pick 10, we picked 10)no censorship.
I’m going to look for your books.