Time to put the boot in
Max Hastings thinks that book reviewers tread too softly Leaf through a newspaper’s art pages — almost any newspaper’s. The distinction, indeed the chasm, between the tone of the reviews of films and plays and those of books, is striking. For movie and theatre critics, the poisoned quill is as familiar as the preview plonk: ‘an insult to the intelligence of a four-year-old’, ‘the most embarrassing Shakespearean experience since Peter O’Toole’s Macbeth’, ‘a Hollywood nonsense to make one hanker for Schwartzenegger’. Most book reviews, by comparison, seem as genteel as a Trollopean curate’s wife: ‘a welcome addition to the historiography of Venice’, ‘whatever the author lacks in scholarly rigour is compensated for by her enthusiasm’. When a reviewer breaks this mould and gets rough, one is often prompted to speculate about a private subtext.
Like most writers I love reviewing, because it enables me to be paid for sampling books I want to read anyway. But two small incidents have caused me to muse lately about the shortcomings of our trade. First, a schoolmaster sent me a letter, saying that he was minded to complain to a certain literary editor about the fact that his/her (I shall offer no clues to personalities) pages never tell him whether a book is worth buying or not, but merely summarise its contents.
Second, I moaned to my wife one night about the awfulness of a book I was reading, written by a prominent historian, and already described as ‘brilliant’ by two other reviewers. ‘Don’t put the boot in too hard,’ she pleaded sensibly, ‘he’ll only get his own back next time you’ve got a book out.’ These exchanges made me ponder about the corruption or otherwise of book reviewing. It may be argued that, while very bad films and plays get reviewed along with good ones, amid the torrent of new books literary editors can filter out the dross, so that only those worthy of attention get space. In other words, books which get noticed at all are unlikely to deserve the sort of brutality which many films and plays justly receive.
Yet we should also acknowledge a difference in the relationship between reviewers and reviewed on books pages and elsewhere. Few film or theatre critics are aspirant film-makers or playwrights. Most have nothing to lose by speaking their minds. The good ones always address the only question readers want answered: should we see it? The overwhelming majority of book reviews are more equivocal, and compromised. The usual credentials of a non-fiction critic are familiarity with a given subject, often deriving from writing books oneself. This means that each of us, even if only distantly, is in competition with the author.
The worst review of a book of my own a couple of years ago was written by an academic, one of whose books I once rubbished. I am sure that his contempt for my effort was sincere, but he would have been less than human if he did not remember my past remarks. A while back, I read an amazingly acid criticism of one of Simon Schama’s books, every sentence of which indicated that the reviewer was a fellow academic goaded almost to madness by envy of Schama’s wealth and success.
By contrast, a literary editor once told me of a bright young historian who operates on a simple principle, which he cheerfully avowed to her. He will review only books written by authors positioned some time to boost his own works. Though the literacy of his criticism is never in doubt, nor is the extravagance of the praise he dishes out. My lit. ed. friend said that she found his shamelessness disarming.
Many of us, I think, adopt the course of refusing to write a review at all if sent a really bad book. There is seldom much pleasure in composing 1,000 words of depreciation, though I must confess to having been so riled by the hubris of A. C. Grayling’s recent book on the wartime bombing of Germany that it was no hardship to say so.
Reviewers of non-fiction face a dilemma when they notice factual errors. Two years ago when I published Armageddon, a book on the end of the second world war in Europe, a historian whom I respect reviewed it generously. He afterwards sent me a succinct list of factual errors, some of them silly, which he had spotted in the text. Meeting him later, I said how grateful I was that he had not cited these in print. He said, ‘I liked the book, and it seemed petty to quibble.’ I agree with that policy, not only out of self-interest. When reviewers highlight authors’ mistakes, most often they are merely venting egotism, showing off their own knowledge. I recently noticed a book which got a lot of military terminology wrong, calling signallers ‘signalmen’, describing Guardsmen as ‘Guards’ and suchlike. Yet it seemed small-minded to mention this, when as a narrative of human experience the book was jolly good.
This brings me back to my schoolmaster’s point: what readers most want from reviewers, surely, is clear guidance about whether or not a book is worth their money. This is where I fear that many of us fail them. We do not provide consumer information with anything like sufficient clarity.
The motivation for weasel words is sometimes honourable. Fellow authors know that writing books is tough. Especially if a writer is not well-known, or indeed is making a debut, it seems meanspirited to wield the dagger. There is a further problem, that far more bad books are published than good ones. If reviewers told the unvarnished truth about all the titles we read, most of us would fall victim to the sort of blood-exhaustion which overtook Stalin’s executioners.
Yet I fancy that we should more often consider what we owe to readers, as well as our duty of generosity to fellow writers. The Sunday Times did the book world a big favour recently by exposing the monstrous practice of bookshops, including some of the most famous, which will only feature titles in their catalogues and windows in exchange for hard cash from publishers. This policy stinks, and debases the whole literary world. Reviewers and literary editors are not in the least venal in that fashion, yet could more energetically pursue frankness about the products we road-test, rather than sustain a quiet life or accommodate personal interests, benign or otherwise.
It would be unrealistic to propose that we should not review books by friends and acquaintances, because in the nature of things historians know other historians, novelists other novelists, and so on. If personal ignorance of the author became a condition for reviewing a work, criticism would be the prerogative of hermits, and poorly informed ones at that. There seems a good case, however, for literary editors to insist that when critics choose their ‘books of the year’, no writer should be allowed to recommend a title by another author personally known to him. At present, these lists are about as unbiased as Tony Blair’s view of Peter Mandelson.
I would also suggest that there is a case for even upmarket literary pages to adopt the star-rating system. This may be vulgar, an insult to nuanced reviewing, but it would oblige critics to offer clearly comprehensible verdicts to prospective purchasers.
Books pages are not very corrupt, but they possess significantly less integrity than do film and theatre criticism. All of us involved bear some responsibility for this state of affairs, of which the worst manifestation is the wetness of many reviewers’ judgments.
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