I’d love, like you, to see more deep thinking on literature instead of summaries disguised as reviews.
The internet is a big place though—surely this is out there. Do you have any suggestions for quality reviews for us to contrast with the... less subtle?
Aug 27, 2023·edited Aug 27, 2023Liked by Henry Oliver
As happenstance would have it, I had just read the review of The Fraud earlier this Sunday morning and had the thought that it was lazy and generally terrible criticism (it was a frau… no, can’t do it). Then I popped over to the Anna Gat’s website which linked to the Common Reader essay about how to approach the canon (thanks, Gat!), then found this piece that commented on the ZS review! I was following your admonition to explore the threads and ended back where I started, which was a very satisfying exploit.
I review books and films some on my site as a hobby, and I've sort of fallen into banishing the plot summary rather than banning it. I typically write one, just as a way to review the book I just read for myself, then I put it in its own section, with the analysis afterward. Weirdly, actually including a summary helps me keep from summarizing in the analysis. (It's also probably useful for my readers since I don't always review new books, so it might have been a bit since they read it too.)
I internally ranted about this the other day. Two kinds of book reviews I hate - 1) the plot synopsis with one sentence of lukewarm "criticism" and, 2) an "expert" reviews someone else's work primarily by listing all the things the book failed to discuss that this "expert" totally would have included.
The reviews in New Statesman are usually pretty good. Worth a look; not sure how you’d see them if you don’t already subscribe, but you could always try the old fashioned way and buy a paper version at WH Smith!
Aug 16, 2023·edited Aug 16, 2023Liked by Henry Oliver
💯
Also looking forward to ZS’s new novel and, thank you, I will not read that ‘review’! Surely critics shall have to up the game to compete with AI who can whip up an easy summary.
Someone once told me there is a huge difference between a book REVIEW and a book REPORT. It appears that readers expect the former most of the time, but I still see a need for reports; if only there was a way to clearly signal which one the reader is about to get into before the damage of plot-spoiling is done.
I suspect an important but unvoiced reason for the increase in plot summarizing is another case of Twitter-style Politics of Everything taking over our minds. Does Zadie Smith’s new novel say the right things about racism and capitalism and ableism and gender, or will it just be a nuanced depiction of the human condition with all its ambiguities and complications? I need to know these things as a reader so that I don’t waste my time reading things that will get me in trouble with strangers on the internet!
Except for Huckleberry Finn on "Pilgrim's Progress": "about a man that left his family it didn't say why."
Great!
Indeed! Huck get honourable exemption from all rules. (Though that’s a nice critical summary, not a page filling one.)
I’d love, like you, to see more deep thinking on literature instead of summaries disguised as reviews.
The internet is a big place though—surely this is out there. Do you have any suggestions for quality reviews for us to contrast with the... less subtle?
This was good: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/poetry-biography-and-the-unknowable-on-two-new-books-about-phillis-wheatley/
100% I thought the same exact thing about the Zadie Smith "review"
Great points. Most movie previews now commit the same sin of spoiling the plot.
The best book reviews take a position on a book's impact on the reviewer and what the book might be able to tell us about the way we live now.
https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/about
As happenstance would have it, I had just read the review of The Fraud earlier this Sunday morning and had the thought that it was lazy and generally terrible criticism (it was a frau… no, can’t do it). Then I popped over to the Anna Gat’s website which linked to the Common Reader essay about how to approach the canon (thanks, Gat!), then found this piece that commented on the ZS review! I was following your admonition to explore the threads and ended back where I started, which was a very satisfying exploit.
Any so-called critic who used "hybridity" should be cast into Out Darknisity, IMHO.
It sounds like a word you would find in a car advert
I review books and films some on my site as a hobby, and I've sort of fallen into banishing the plot summary rather than banning it. I typically write one, just as a way to review the book I just read for myself, then I put it in its own section, with the analysis afterward. Weirdly, actually including a summary helps me keep from summarizing in the analysis. (It's also probably useful for my readers since I don't always review new books, so it might have been a bit since they read it too.)
I internally ranted about this the other day. Two kinds of book reviews I hate - 1) the plot synopsis with one sentence of lukewarm "criticism" and, 2) an "expert" reviews someone else's work primarily by listing all the things the book failed to discuss that this "expert" totally would have included.
The reviews in New Statesman are usually pretty good. Worth a look; not sure how you’d see them if you don’t already subscribe, but you could always try the old fashioned way and buy a paper version at WH Smith!
💯
Also looking forward to ZS’s new novel and, thank you, I will not read that ‘review’! Surely critics shall have to up the game to compete with AI who can whip up an easy summary.
Someone once told me there is a huge difference between a book REVIEW and a book REPORT. It appears that readers expect the former most of the time, but I still see a need for reports; if only there was a way to clearly signal which one the reader is about to get into before the damage of plot-spoiling is done.
I’m not entirely against reporting but summarising the plot isn’t good enough. Reports should still be critical.
I suspect an important but unvoiced reason for the increase in plot summarizing is another case of Twitter-style Politics of Everything taking over our minds. Does Zadie Smith’s new novel say the right things about racism and capitalism and ableism and gender, or will it just be a nuanced depiction of the human condition with all its ambiguities and complications? I need to know these things as a reader so that I don’t waste my time reading things that will get me in trouble with strangers on the internet!