The Guardian currently seems to be embarking on more crusades to save literature than Salman Rushdie’s Twitter account. Last week’s post by blogger Sam Jordison was no exception. He asked whether book reviews are “bland, boring and formulaic”. Fresh from judging Not the Booker (a Guardian online award designed to champion independent publishers and celebrate the vox blogerati), he should really have had something interesting to say.
Instead Jordison committed many of the sins which crop up in book reviews. He offered a couple of cute observations, hesitated a few suggestions, registered bemusement and skilfully evaded reaching any kind of conclusion with a hexacolonic crescendo of rhetorical questions (as painful as it sounds).
When it came to analysing why people might find reviews boring, he proffered two old chestnuts and tentatively prodded them as if they might still be hot from the raging debate. He mentioned the preponderance of white middle-class male reviewers and he posited that reviewers might be too chicken to write a damning review.
Utter rubbish.
Firstly a damning review does not guarantee interest. And a review can still entertain if it’s not a butchering job. It’s also wrong to say that bloggers are less wary of giving a negative review than their professional counterparts; Dove Grey Reader is not famous for her vituperative acuity. Michiko Katukani isn’t a revered critic simply because she knows how to twist the knife; if she wielded the hatchet for every review, the reader would quickly become inured.
Secondly, Michiko Katukani’s appeal does not lie in the fact that she is not a white middle class male reviewer, and her origins don’t automatically mean she’s a force against the white patriarchy. Either way that’s beside the point. I hate to say it but white middle aged men can often be very funny. I would read a book review by Paul Merton, Ian Hislop or David Mitchell. And white middle-class men don’t seem to have done the restaurant review trade any harm. In fact, it’s this patronising filler — rather than some sinister masonic cult comprising of white middle-class middle-aged male reviewers — that is responsible for literary criticism’s complacent self-satisfied funk.
It’s worth going back across the Atlantic to see how white middle-aged male reviewers fare there. Dwight Garner, literary critic for the New York Times, is charming. He can compare a book to a cappuccino and still make sense. He’s consistently entertaining, erudite and connected to reality. Just as good but different, is the Washington Post’s Ron Charles. He’s an outrageously funny cross between Woody Allen and David “Peep Show” Mitchell. His YouTube series Totally Hip Video Book Reviewer manages three things. They poke fun at the literary press and (his words — google them) “po-mo crap”. They tell you whether the book’s worth reading. And most importantly, they have a clearly defined purpose: “As any viewer of the Totally Hip Video Book Review can tell, I developed this web series for the kickbacks, the cranberry juice, and the women.”
Those two seem to have the secret to being a good book reviewer. And it doesn’t have anything to do with hatchet jobs or your ethnic origins. They not only tell you whether a book is worth reading, but they also make you want to be their friend.
Fleur Macdonald is editor of The Omnivore.
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