THE FATE OF THE REVIEWER
By DEREK VERSCHOYLE
MRS. VIRGINIA WOOLF has produced in pamphlet form a supercilious but elegantly phrased demand for the abolition of the reviewer. Its destructive arguments could not be described as novel, and were it not written by Mrs. Woolf it could well be ignored even in a paper devoting to reviews a quarter of its space, for its solitary constructive proposal is as pointless as its preliminary assumptions are fanciful. Mrs. Woolf claims—without stooping to the lowly task of producing evidence to support the claim—that the review has ceased to have any value for reader or for author, and that it does a disservice to the general cause of literature. The things which distress her most about reviewing today are the number of reviews, the fact that reviewers often differ about the merits of a particular book, the brevity of reviews and the speed with which they sometimes have to be written. Also prejudice has been known to creep in. Her accusations she oddly confines to the reviewer of " imaginative literature," holding that the reviewer of history, politics and economics fulfils his office " so adequately and indeed admirably that his value is not in question." Mrs. Woolf gives no reasons for her belief that the reviewer of these subjects works under less pressure of time, is allowed more space, or is less prone to prejudice than the reviewer of " imaginative literature "; and if she really imagines that the congruity of opinion which she so much desires is to be found among reviewers of politics and economics her reading of reviews must be restricted in scope ; they are precisely the subjects on which opinion among reviewers is normally most various, and around which controversies between author and reviewer most bitterly and interminably rage. These controversies have been known to be of positive value to economists and historians ; to the writer of imaginative literature the effect of anything but a uniform reception is—according to Mrs. Woolf, though it is odd that there should be so few signs of it— merely to induce bewilderment and indifference to all reviews.
Even worse is the position of the reader, of whose per- plexities Mrs. Woolf paints a sad but whimsical picture. " Sixty reviewers at once assure him that it is a masterpiece —and worthless. The clash of contradictory opinions cancel each other out. The reader suspends judgement ; waits for an opportunity of seeing the book himself ; very probably forgets all about it, and keeps his seven and sixpence in his pocket." Quite apart from the fact that an extremely low percentage of books receive as many as sixty reviews in the whole daily, weekly and occasional Press, in London and the provinces combined, is there any recorded instance of anyone, with the exception of the author and publisher of the book in question, reading all those sixty reviews? And reducing the matter from the fantastic to the practical sphere, what is Mrs. Woolf's evidence that the reading of three
Reviewing. By Virginia Woolf. (Hogarth Press. 6d.)
divergent reviews—three is a generous ration for the average reader—does in fact normally deter a potential reader from buying the book concerned? Granted that three enthusiastic reviews would do more to encourage sales, it is a common- place among publishers that a controversial reception for a book is to be preferred to one that is uniform but tepid.
But it is on the belief that conflicting reviews intimidate the reader that Mrs. Woolf has based her attack, and it is to remedy this state of affairs that she puts forward her con- structive proposal. This is as follows. The reviewer as he exists should be abolished, and his functions delegated to two new officials. One, facetiously named Gutter, would have the duty of paraphrasing, and perhaps briefly quoting from, the book ; the second, called Stamp, would affix to this paraphrase an asterisk or a dagger to signify approval or the reverse of the book's aims and achievements. This, in Mrs. Woolf's view, will satisfy author, publisher and reader alike. Precisely why it will do so is not made clear, for these Gutter and Stamp compilations seem on the face of it to have an excellent chance of reproducing most of the alleged demerits of reviews as we know them ; they will presumably be no less numerous, they will be written no less under the pressure of time, they will certainly be as short, they will be as liable to be dictated by prejudice, and in all probability asterisks and daggers will be among them in the same proportions as now are approval and dislike. They are likely to differ only in being too summary to be helpful to the reader unprepared to take everything on trust.
Mrs. Woolf tries to persuade her readers that reviewing is a worthy profession gone to the bad, and draws a picture of a golden age in which reviewers were useful because they were unanimous. In fact, unanimity among reviewers has never been known in the history of English literature, as the study of newspaper files of any period will prove. And in any case who, except Mrs. Woolf, really wants reviewers to be unanimous? Reviews arc read, and papers are read, because readers have confidence in the recommendations and warnings which they are accustomed to read ; if they find that they habitually disagree with a paper's or a reviewer's opinions, they take their custom elsewhere—precisely as they do if they find no value in the leading articles (if they are primarily interested in politics) or if they find the articles on racing misleading (if they are primarily interested in racing). What they do not do, despite Mrs. Woolf's convictions, is to decide not to read reviews at all. Of this there is available in plentiful quantities the evidence of authors, publishers, booksellers, reviewers and readers, if Mrs. Woolf will take the trouble to look for it ; and it is confirmed by the fact that these tedious and undocumented protests against review- ing always come, not from the public to whom reviews arc addressed, but from writers, whom the reviewer should ignore.
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