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

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I don't think the point is whether a bad book is "bad in interesting ways." I know that I like to be warned off bad books, particularly in a genre in which I read extensively, so I know not to waste my time/money on them. Of course, in all reviews, it's important to indicate why the reviewer considers something bad (or good, for that matter) so readers can evaluate the review based on their own preferences and prejudices. One person's "This book is bad because the hero had too many flaws and I found him annoying" is another's "I love well-rounded heroes who aren't portrayed as perfect all the time."

[nppyinzer.livejournal.com]

I stopped writing theater reviews because I disagreed with my editor on this subject. The last play I reviewed was quite bad in a number of quantifiable ways. I wanted to include them in the review, because I thought the only way that the director, actors, or theater company would get better would be to know about the flaws so they could correct them in the future; my editor told me, "If it's good, say that it's good. If it's bad, don't say anything."

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Granting arguendo the premise that the primary point of a science fiction book review is to serve as as buyer's guide, let's say you have a magazine which publishes somewhere between three and four reviews a month. Would you rather that magazine spend its real estate pointing people toward good books or away from bad books? I would prefer the latter.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

"I have good taste, but I have other kinds of taste too." -- Kate Worley

My reviews are technically recommendations, so I have an excuse to concentrate on the good stuff. Still, not everything I enjoy is necessarily top quality. Many end with something like, "If you don't mind a few missed notes and a poor production, you'll like the CD." Indeed, I've written up Acquired Tastes That I Haven't Acquired Yet.

The balance, for me, is to explain why I liked it and why someone else might as well. You may find that you won't, in which case I've done my job too.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Was the play overall good, but with flaws, or just bad?

I would never expect a reviewer to review a work and not discuss its weaknesses as well as its strengths--that's dishonest all around. That's why NYRSF's is phrased the way it is--"reveal the strengths and weaknesses of good books".

There are some differences in the dynamics of a theater review column (or a TV or film review column, for that matter) than in a book review column. It's possible for a publication, especially a newspaper, to review a significant percentage of the major theatrical works, movies, or television shows in the course of business; in such a case, noting the strengths and weaknesses of a bad work would be part of the endeavor of reviewing everything. (And there are very few major works so bad that they don't have some strengths.) No publication I've ever seen can review every book, even in a limited genre--rosefox is the f&sf review of PW, which reviews I think a dozen f&sf books a week, which is a small fraction of the total output of the field--and those reviews are only 200 words long, which is too little space to provide any real support for the reviewers' assertions.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

This always comes up but it always ignores the fact you don't know whether a book is good or bad until you've read it.

A reviews editor, particularly one with space that is as limited as in your example, will make decisions about the reviews they wish to commission. This will be based on various factors, one of which is likely to be a guess about the quality of the novel. Anything beyond this would require magic.

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

I bet for most books it's the name of the author that's the important decider. A Neal Stephenson book, shitty or not, will get many more reviews than a book, good or not, by an unknown.

[thetalkingmoose.livejournal.com]

I'm onboard with the basic idea of only printing positive reviews, if only because with limited space in most publications, you don't want to give bad stuff any publicity. However, I have to admit that I had a rather cathartic experience the one time I chose to write a bad review and print it in Some Fantastic (I think you know the book of which I speak). Sometimes, when a big name author writes a book that is particularly onerous in some fashion then said author needs to be called on it.

[avram]

Don't you mean "the former"?

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

We don't ignore that fact at all--we encourage our reviewers to stop reading books if they don't think they're good, or send them back if they can't review them for some other reason.

(A book which collapses at the end can still be good enough in other ways to be worth reviewing.)

It helps that we are mostly volunteer-driven. (Our reviewers get a small honorarium, but not nearly as much as they deserve. Our reviewers are very good indeed.)

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Argh yes of course yes.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

I was talking about the argument generally, rather NYRSF.

However, I am surprised that you say: "we encourage our reviewers to stop reading books if they don't think they're good, or send them back if they can't review them for some other reason." This certainly wasn't communicated to me when I reviewed for NYRSF.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Really? I thought it was in our standard cover letter. I'll have to check that, because it's certainly our intent, and if it wasn't communicated to you, that's a failing on our end.

[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.