From the comments to a james_nicoll post: Reviews and good books

[womzilla]

In a discussion of a magazine that purportedly only runs "positive" reviews, rosefox makes the case for writing and publishing reviews of bad books:

Unless the goal of the review is to talk about the interesting parts of a book and how they damage or point to flaws in the genre. "Interesting" is not always the same thing as "good", and it's certainly not the same thing as "not worth examining critically". Sometimes a book's flaws are the most interesting thing about it.

montoya makes the counterargument:

Most of the bad books I read are bad in boring ways. Too dull, characters I don't care about, cliched, whatever. Very few are bad in interesting ways.

I add:

Yes. As I think I said in a comment elsewhere, one of the types of review of a bad book that we will sometimes run is one that points to a larger failing.

Of course, discussing the weaknesses of good books usually points out those larger failings as well--it's a rare book that has a flaw that nothing else in the world shares.

("We" of course is NYRSF; we were not the subject of the original discussion, as nearly as I can tell--it was all done without proper nouns-- but our stated policy is that we desire reviews "which reveal the strengths and weaknesses of good books". These tend to be positive reviews, although sometimes they're not.)

Interestingly, the only other venue for which I've ever written reviews professionally--Games Magazine--also only publishes reviews of good games. There, it's definitely because they only have room to discuss four board games per issue, so the editor doesn't want to waste space on bad games.

Comments

[washa-way.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who has both published a few bad reviews (and created one or two shitstorms in the process) and received a few bad reviews (about which I remain firmly silent), I do have to express a general approval of the idea of the bad review.

The review is a weird form because it demands to be read because of two different sets of qualities: the qualities of its subject and its own qualities as a piece of writing. And sometimes, the bad qualities of the former can make the good qualities of the latter much better. Lord knows some of my favorite reviews over the years have been pans. Heidi MacDonald taking Chris Claremont's X-Men to task in The Comics Journal... J.D. Considine summing up Cher's "Take Me Home" album with the single sentence, "Not if you sing like this"... David Foster Wallace pounding his beloved John Updike for his failure in "Toward the End of Time"... I'd hate to think such sublime bits of analysis (and yes, occasional snark) would be disqualified for publication merely because of their stances.

In a crowded marketplace, I suppose it makes sense to concentrate on good works, though that sort of suggests that there's an equivalence between Works the Editors Thought Were Bad, Works the Editors Thought Were Middling, and Works the Editors Didn't Have Room or Time to Consider. I also worry that, if all reviews have to be good ones to be published, there's a tendency to damp down honest analysis; will the bad points of the generally good work be mentioned, or will the reviewer self-edit such comments to keep his review from being too negative for publication?

Interesting question, though.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I do remember fondly one of your reviews of a very bad book indeed, and I'm not saying that reviews of bad works don't have a place. There's certain a role for the autopsy of a bad work--though again I maintain that it's usually more interesting to analyze the failures of a good work, it's sometimes very useful to discuss the work of a once-good author like Claremont or Updike, especially if the author is still influential.

Further, "not if you sing like this" isn't a review; it's cheap-shot standup comedy. "Tonstant Weader fwowed up" isn't a review, either. Neither of these says anything about the works beyond "I, a particular person, want to make myself look clever by being insulting." Once you open the door to negative reviews, it's very difficult (not impossible) to keep reviewers from using their reviews to push themselves up while pushing others down.

And, again, we at NYRSF at least are very careful to stress to our reviewers that they must discuss the weaknesses of the good book. But again, we're in an odd situation because people most review for us out of a sense of obligation to the field, not for money.