Inside the Critics' Circle

 
 
Inside the Critics' Circle

Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times

by Phillipa Chong

Princeton University Press

2021

 

 

Inside the Critics' Circle is part Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology series, like Banding Together and American Zoo, which I enjoyed earlier this year. Chong conducted interviews with newspaper book reviewers, most of whom are working authors who write reviews on a freelance basis. One purpose of her book is to understand the feeling of crisis that surrounds the practice of journalistic book reviewing, which is separate from longform literary criticism and academic writing about literature.

 
Chong argues that book reviewing is characterized by several forms of uncertainty, and that reviewers' sense of vulnerability, and the field's sense of crisis, is largely a reaction to all this uncertainty. First is 'epistemic uncertainty,' which means that reviewers do not have an objective standard they can judge books against, and can't be sure in advance if other people will feel similarly about the books they review. One thing Chong observes is that because book review section editors can't know if books are good or not before they assign them to reviewers, they pick 'important' books rather than 'good' books to be reviewed. Editors also try to make a 'good match' between the book and the reviewer, by picking someone who either is similar to the author they're reviewing, or writes about similar topics or in similar ways.

Reviewers also operate under 'social uncertainty,' because they don't know how other people will react to them based on what they wrote. This is especially due to the 'role-switch reward structure' where authors who will want their own books reviewed in the future are the ones writing reviews. In general, this gives them an incentive to 'play nice,' both because they know how it feels to get a negative review, and because they have reason to fear professional retribution, such as getting revenge reviewed or snubbed for a literary award when the shoe is on the other foot. Reviewers are more willing to 'punch up' against famous authors.

 
Reviewers also experience 'institutional uncertainty,' meaning that the very rules of the game they're playing are unclear. Since most reviewers work full-time at other literary activities and only review occasionally, they have no sense of themselves as 'real critics.' They feel threatened from below by amateur reader-reviewers (like me!) and from above by academic literary criticism. In defending the value of what they do against what they perceive as a widespread question 'do we even need book reviews anymore?,' the reviewers defend their work as both being more accessible than academic criticism, and as being of higher quality and addressing the artistic quality of the work rather than just giving it a thumbs up or star-rating.

 
I have to tell you, I liked this one a lot, both because I enjoy reading book reviews on the New York Times, Lit Hub, and Tor, and because I've been writing so many of them this year. Obviously I'm immune to the 'switch-role reward structure' here - I'm not a working author myself, and also, no one who writes these books will probably ever see my reviews. But I do care about writing these things well. And actually, in the amateur rpg world I sometimes hang out in online, there are the same issues of reviews often being written by people who are themselves writing things for others to review.