The Elegant Variation: WRITERS BEHAVING BADLY

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May 16, 2007

WRITERS BEHAVING BADLY

It's understandable for an author to be miffed by a bad review but we just can't understand what an author has to gain by browbeating his critics. First it was Graham Swift, going after Eileen Battersby for not much caring for his new novel Tomorrow. The article is locked up behind Irish Times subscription walls but Sinéad Gleeson sends us the relevant portion:

"I can't understand how you failed to see my book as I meant it," Swift continues. At the beginning of his career, Swift was a teacher and it is the disappointed teacher, not the writer, who is present. Early on, I put to Swift that he can have the last word in the interview as it appears on the page - and that word or sentence will be his telling me "go read the book again". He seems to agree.

It is the first time I have ever had a major international novelist quote lines from my review back to me. "You said she is not 'sympathetic'; she is, she loves her husband and her children. She is happy in her life. You seem to have a problem with the fact that she is middle class. You like George, maybe you only like underdogs?" Is he commenting on my approach to fiction in general? Or merely to the book in question? I don't have a problem with middle-class characters and I don't only relate to underdogs, but I do know that I don't much warm to "cool and complacent", which is how Paula struck me, so perhaps Swift has a point.

And now Jenny Shank blogs about being name-called by Sherman Alexie for having the temerity to speculate about the trade paper nature of his latest novel.

I wondered why the first novel by Alexie in over a decade would be brought out as a paperback original, and I wrote, “Unfortunately, Flight is disappointing, and the signs are that the publisher knew it - why else would a novel by such a major writer be brought out as a paperback original?”

Before the review ran, I asked the Rocky’s Books Editor, Patti Thorn, whether she felt that this assertion seemed accurate enough to run. She thought it was a fair statement, so she ran it. Then, yesterday the Boulder Weekly ran Dale Bridges’ interview with Sherman Alexie, in which he said, “It was shocking to me that someone with very little experience in publishing like Jenny Shank would even have a guess at that. The arrogance was astonishing.” That’s right, he actually remembered my name, something that I sometimes have trouble doing myself. He goes on to call the newspaper “the Rocky Mountain Fucking News,” a name catchy enough that it just might increase circulation if they were to switch to it.

Perhaps the most shocking part is that she only makes fifty bucks a review.

Now, maybe a year from now we'll feel differently and be busy chasing down every reviewer who doesn't care for our novel. But from this perspective, it's hard to see the upside - it doesn't change the review and it just makes the writer look petty and thin-skinned.

Posted at 12:30 AM in Words Fail | Permalink

Comments

When I first started out as a novelist, my mentor (who'd been publishing for years by then) gave me two things always to remember:

1. that a review--any review--is better than silence, as long as they get your name and the title of your book right; and

2. never respond to a bad review unless it contains inaccuracies.

Posted by: JP Smith | May 16, 2007 at 05:26 AM

Eileen Battersby is something of an exceptional case, though. There are many writers wandering around Dublin and the wider world who still must be wondering what they did to deserve being interviewed by her.

The horror stories are numerous, legendary, and in some cases sub judice.

Posted by: Niall | May 16, 2007 at 07:03 AM

I see this as part of the wider Save The Book Review strategy: publish lots of Dale Peckish reviews and then sit back and watch the shitstorm roll in. Why else would the letters section of the NYTBR be devoted mostly to writers pissing and moaning about their reviews? Thin skin is in, baby.

Posted by: Jimmy Beck | May 16, 2007 at 07:53 AM

Oh, it can be tough getting a bad review especially if the review indicates, on its face, that the reviewer did not read the entire book and that the review was based on some kind of personal dislike for the subject matter or even the author. I still cringe when I think about a 2003 review published in the Dallas Morning News that really stuck it to me on one of my short story collections in a nasty little piece. I held back and did not write to the reviewer or his editor but I stewed and stewed. Anyway, a few weeks later, the L.A. Times gave the same book a rave review by a writer I respect, Jim Sallis. So, as George Herbet said, "Living well is the best revenge." One thing I learned as I've become a book critic: I do not make personal attacks or snotty little asides; I think some book critics love to show just how clever they are and the easiest way to do this is in a bad review.

Posted by: daniel olivas | May 16, 2007 at 08:08 AM

I do agree with JP - setting straight inaccuracies is probably the exception here. However, even that's not always worth it - I remember John Banville's hilarious rejoined to John Sutherland's "correction" about his NYRB Saturday essay. JS pointed out that JB had gotten the outcome of the squash match wrong, and JB began: "Summoned, one shuffles guility into the Department of Trivialities."

Posted by: TEV | May 16, 2007 at 08:15 AM

I have to say, that although I might not have done it publicly (or, who knows, I might have), I understand Alexie's anger over the reviewer's supposition concerning the book's release as a trade paperback. It has nothing to do with the content of the book itself, probably has very little to do with the publisher's thoughts on the book, and simply felt like a cheap shot after she'd already -- with perfect clarity -- explained the book's shortcomings.

My first book was published by the MTV Book line at S&S and I can't tell you how many times reviews noted that it couldn't possibly be any good because MTV was involved with it -- that it wasn't any good, in fact, had nothing to do with the fact that MTV books ultimately purchased and published it, as it's not as if Martha Quinn was over at my house all day asking me to make changes. I never had a problem with people saying the book wasn't very good provided it was judged on what was on the page and not by who happened to pony up the money to publish it or the form in which said publication took place.

The fact is, Alexie's fiction probably doesn't sell as much as we'd like to think (or as much as he'd like) in hardback, which makes a trade paperback a very wise decision to get the book into more hands from the initial jump. But there's no room for that in a review of the content of his fiction.

Posted by: tod goldberg | May 16, 2007 at 11:39 AM

Tod, so this means you don't know Matt Pinfield, either?

Drat.

TPB's can reach more readers, with much less risk. Richard Russo's first novel came out as a Vintage Contemporary paperback, with a run of 35,000. People ate it up. At the hardback price, who knows how many people would have given that book a chance? But the run would have been less than 6,000 -- and I think it's important to give more people a chance to find the book.

Posted by: Andrew Scott | May 16, 2007 at 02:54 PM

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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*Now in Paperback*

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

May 16, 2007

WRITERS BEHAVING BADLY

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

May 16, 2007

WRITERS BEHAVING BADLY

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism