BOOK REVIEWING REVIEWED. KATHY LETTE.
January 2004

If there were an Olympic Games for Hypocrisy, writers would win Gold. Especially when it comes to critics. A glowing review, and we're sycophantic with praise - "Critics! So perspicacious! Such literary taste and discernment!" Feelings explode in you like champagne. I once had a glowing review printed on a t-shirt and wore it for weeks. Hell, I had to be restrained from getting it tattooed onto my forehead!

But when we get a bad review critics become no better than pond scum. " Critics! Ugh! Cyborgs which eat human flesh are less alien than book reviewers!"

There's no need for a printed t-shirt now as you're running away to Goa to live naked in a hollowed out tree with the next Lord Lucan look-alike. Welcome to Dumpsville. Population one. Two or three years of sweat, angst, artery slashing and hard literary labour (with no creative epidural) dismissed with a little third degree sarcasm. A spiteful review can make you go as limp as an 80's perm in a sauna. All the good notices you've garnered are instantly forgotten as you curl in on yourself, like the crusts of an old sandwich. Friends ask tentatively if it's time someone removed your belt and shoelaces. "Are you okay?"

Of course, loss of feeling in the legs doesn't always indicate a brain tumour, does it?

Some fellow scribes tell you to rise above it and behave magnanimously by inviting the offending critic to your upcoming book launch pool party at the Savoy Hotel. This strikes you as a very good idea, because how else can you hit the reviewer over the head with a coconut, push him into the pool and make it look like a drowning accident? You begin to understand that there is a very fine line between book reviewing and homicide. Thoughts of murder cross your mind. The only thing which stops you, is the hideously unflattering prison uniform. Although, you find yourself thinking, after a drink or two, at least the stripes are vertical, which would be vaguely slimming, no?

Occasionally you do bump into someone who has reviewed you badly, at say a party and a few responses occur to you simultaneously.

1) Why can't you see her lobotomy scar?
2) How the hell does she fit her cloven hooves into those Prada shoes?

When they see you headed their way, smiles cling to their lips like biscuit crumbs. The critic will whimper a bit and beg you to at least try to see it from their point of view. To which there is only one possible response. "Oh, I'd like to but I just can't stick my head that far up my own rectum."

Sour grapes, you say. Well, you bet. A whole vineyard full. But we writers wouldn't feel so aggrieved if reviewers were also reviewed. I mean, how does the reader know whose opinions they are reading? And whether they are worth the reading of? Critics' bi-lines should include more biographical detail. For example, "Angry And Just Down From Oxbridge" or "Failed Haiku Poet" or "Author Once Shagged My Husband". If only the tradition of calling people by their defining characteristics hadn't gone out of fashion. "Hagar the Horrible", or "Ivan the Terrible" - what convenient sociological shorthand. "Chronic Lying, Bitter Jealous Bastard Book Critic" (otherwise known as the "spawn of Satan") for example, would allow the reader to make a more informed decision about the reviewer's objectivity.

I published the first of my nine books when I was 19 and I would have to say from experience that, along with Milosevic and Attila the Hun, book critics would be eliminated early in the heats for Mr Caring and Sharing. Most seem to suffer from high self-esteem. These are people who do their crossword puzzles in ink. They can just smug you to death. Being "old hat" is a favourite barb in the critic's armory. Or "unoriginal". (Condescending reviewers seem to believe that no contemporary comedy of manners can ever be written with all work and no plagiarism.) Occasionally you hurl a foot up into the stirrup of your High Horse and declare that
you'll sue. But lawyers merely charge you an enormous amount to tell you what you already know - except they would tell it to you in Latin. And what they would tell you is that malicious reviews are an occupational hazard. In other words, the Author is Screwed-Maximus.

My L.M. (Literary Mentor) Julian Barnes assures me that a bad review doesn't mean it's time to renounce novel writing to go live in a cave somewhere and study calligraphy. He wisely assures me that a "bad review is never as bad as you think it is but also a good review, never as good."

Author and critic, Amanda Craig, also offers astute counsel. "Some people assume that only the critical hatchet job is honest. It isn't; it's usually just coarse entertainment for the kind of reader (usually other critics) who sees reviewing as a blood sport. Secondly, there is the question as to whether hatchet men and women are so very moral, or so genuinely witty. Demolition is always easier than construction. Outstanding critics of our time, such as Lorna Sage and Anthony Lane, review with wit, elegance and love; and it is the love that makes them worth reading. Those who enjoy a critic's descent into malice and personal abuse should ask themselves what precisely they find so very admirable, and whether it is braver to write criticism - or the stuff that it crawls about on."

Constructive criticism - that's what authors crave. Analysis which points out stylistic weaknesses, without malice or sarcasm can make the author focus on how to become better, which, after all is the only thing a critic can do for a professional writer.

But for any budding authors out there, believe me, book writing would be easier if you could be strapped into a publishing simulator to experience the terrors and exhilaration, and see if you have what it takes. The honing of cheerfulness to chat show perfection; the haemorrhaging of charisma; the reviewer rottweilering. But authors do have some redress. You can always impale enemies on the end of your pen. ("Poetic justice" is the only real justice in the world and I say that married to a lawyer!) Or you can just wait until the reviewer has his or her own book out - then return the critical favour. Well, after all, we authors do have double standards to uphold!

Yes! Dear Reader, I am going for Gold!

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