On Writing Reviews

 

I am reading a book that I enjoy, but that I don't believe is very well done. While reading it I feel that I am reading a student's attempt at a dissertation, a work researched long and hard, but written without the expert touch that comes with experience as a writer. I say that knowing that I would probably do no better were the project mine. I say that wondering why the author didn't get a better editor.

And I wonder how the professional critics and reviewers do it. How do they, under such strict constraints of time, and only allowing themselves a single reading, make the kind of notes that make for responsible criticism? If it comes by experience, how do they obtain such experience?

I have asked a similar question before. Maybe it was even the same question. I seem to remember writing these very phrases before. When you criticize, you do nothing if you cannot engage ideas and problems that actually occur within a text. I imagine that I must give a first reading to get a sense of the text as a whole, and then go back very carefully to note those areas that I have found difficult. But there isn't often enough time for that, and so we criticize without weighing. We know that something is wrong, but we don't know quite what. Or in the reverse, we know that something magnificent has occurred, but what?

There is much folly in the writing of reviews. There are also many dangers.