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In Reply to: REVIEW: Rain Tinge Resolution Enhancement for CD and DVD playback Accessory posted by chris.redmond2@bushinternet.com on March 2, 2003 at 14:27:05:
To be seen as pertaining to audio reviewers.clark
..............................................................
Read any good books lately?By David Sexton, literary editor, Evening Standard
24 February 2003Book reviewers always have one question, at the point of accepting a
commission: "How long is it?" They are not hoping, as buyers of
mass-market fiction usually are, that it's a really good substantial
read. They are praying that the book is not too long.Reviewing books is not a particularly well-paid form of journalism and
it takes time. A book of any more ambition than a thriller can't be
read for review at a rate of more than 40, or at most 60, pages an
hour. Some books are only 120-pages long and can comfortably be
digested in a couple of hours. Others, though, are 400, or 600 pages,
or, in some dreadful instances, even more, and they can easily take
days to get through.The reviewer's fee, however, usually remains the same. So, shocking as
it may seem, the truth is that some reviewers skip some books. And
there are a few who skip through all the books.They have to be good to get away with it. The more conscientious
reviewers enjoy a privileged position. They are able to see the book
before anybody else. So they can perform a useful task by simply
describing it to a readership which has not had that advantage. What's
more, while it is not so easy as you may think to have complete and
certain knowledge of a longish text, it's a doddle compared to
acquiring complete and certain knowledge of the outside world, which
most other journalists have to attempt. The whole thing is right
there, on your desk. You can check your facts until you are sure. Some
books even have an index.Yet, believe it or not, there are reviewers who just throw away such a
head start. In the States, one such has just come to grief. In the New
York Times Book Review, a professor of creative writing, Beverly
Lowry, reviewed a book by one of the people involved in the Whitewater
affair, The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk by Susan McDougal. An Arkansas
newspaper columnist, Gene Lyons, soon spotted that Lowry's review
contained a basic error about whether or not the author eventually
testified in court (she did)."Yo, Beverly. Next time, read the damned book," he urged, arguing that
"assuming minimal competence, Lowry simply cannot have done so".The New York Times has subsequently had to publish a correction.
Most reviewers who don't read the whole book take greater care than
this to avoid exposing themselves. They take issue only with specific
sections of the work. They never make sweeping negative assertions
("there is no mention anywhere in this book of ..."). They deliver
wellturned essays about subjects they already know about (Napoleon,
say, or the national health) and then add just a few kind words about
the publication in hand ("as X says, in this lively account").Most particularly, they do not write scathing condemnations, for
authors are more inclined to forgive errors when they come floating in
a warm bath of praise than when they come coated in vitriol. Evelyn
Waugh said that when he began reviewing he followed a simple rule,
never to give a notice to a book he had not read. Sidney Smith
famously went further: "I never read a book before reviewing it; it
prejudices a man so."Following these simple precepts, many of our best known and, in some
ways, our best reviewers have been able to carry on undetected for
year after year. These are the contributors that literary editors know
can be relied upon never to turn down a commission and then to deliver
publishable copy far quicker than the dullards who insist on first
plodding through every word. Indeed, sometimes our wizards don't plod
through any words at all.My predecessor as literary editor in this paper, A.N. Wilson, told a
remarkable story in a book of essays called Secrets of the Press. He
had rung the historian Paul Johnson to ask him to review a big book -
more than 800 pages - on the American Civil War. To give Johnson more
time, Wilson asked his assistant to have it biked over that same day.
The next morning, she admitted she had forgotten to send it and that
it was still sitting on her desk.At that moment, "the fax machine had begun to whirr into action, and
800 perfectly formed words on the American Civil War, with observant
comments on the merits and faults of the book, had dropped into the
intray. I saw no reason not to publish this review", says Wilson.
"Like all really good journalists, Paul had somehow intuited the true
nature of the thing under discussion."Now, A.N. Wilson believes all journalism to be a form of imaginative
literature rather than "an exact science", so this incident, too, may
have been somewhat shaped by the crebadative impulse. But we must
believe him, when in the same piece, he cheerfully announces: "I have
lost count of the number of dull books I have hailed as masterpieces,
rather than trouble myself to finish."Few other professional reviewers, however, so blithely divulge their
working methods. When it was suggested that he did not read all of the
books he reviewed, the historian Norman Stone protested and won an
apology - even though many of his undergraduates at Cambridge still
seem to remember him dictating pieces on the phone in somewhat
improvisatory fashion, while urgently riffling through the volume in
question.Literary editors say they can always spot such reviews - appearing in
other pages than their own. "I read a review recently of Paul Auster's
latest novel, which I also reviewed," says Erica Wagner of The Times.
"Throughout the whole review the main character's name was wrong. That
was striking to me."Another editor, on a Sunday paper, optimistically says of one
reviewer, a medical specialist, that he "may be a quick reader", but
he is a little more sceptical of another prominent historian. "Some
people turn it round so quickly they can't possibly have read it."
But, in any case, reading the words per se is not all that matters, he
suggests. With some well-known reviewers, a pre-lunch and a postlunch
review are quite different to the experienced eye. "If they do it
after lunch, they might as well not have read the book."Is this all so shocking? After all, in private life, nobody sane reads
all books through. Dr Johnson was positively scornful of the practice.
When told that a clergyman recommended it, he called it strange
advice. "A book may be good for nothing; or there may be only one
thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?"Pointing to Captain Cook's three volumes about his Voyage to the
Pacific, this Johnson asked: "Who will read them through? A man had
better work his way before the mast, than read them through; they will
be eaten by rats and mice, before they are read through." And he
followed his own advice. "He had a peculiar facility in seizing at
once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the labour
of perusing it from beginning to end," said Boswell.But although many reviewers would like to think so, they are not Dr
Johnson and they are not private citizens either. They are there
professionally, to try these books to the end on our behalf and save
us from the trouble. They are like the canaries that used to be sent
down the mines, to be asphyxiated if necessary, as a signal to the
rest of us.Or, let us say now, like the chickens that are to be carried into
battle in the Gulf on top of American tanks in a similar role - as
Poultry Chemical Confirmation Detectors. Tough work, yes, but
somebody's got to do it.So no shirking - and no skipping, please.
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Follow Ups
- "Journalism as Imaginative Literature" - clarkjohnsen 09:16:25 03/03/03 (0)
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