Book reviewer

“ There remains the work of the true artist, the work that the reviewer himself admires and enjoys: say one book in fifty, or one in a hundred. The reviewer reads that through.
Brief reflection will convince any one that it would be economically impossible for the reviewer to fulfil this extraordinary behest of the man of the street to read every book through. Take your London morning paper, and observe the column devoted to fiction of the day. It comprises some fifteen hundred words, and the reviewer receives, if he is well paid, three guineas for it. ”

“ The comparison of a review to a portrait fixes attention on one essential quality of a book-review. A reviewer should never forget his responsibility to his subject. He must allow nothing to distract him from his main task of setting down the features of his book vividly and recognizably. One may say this even while admitting that the most delightful book-reviews of modern times—for the literary causeries of Anatole France may fairly be classified as book-reviews—were the revolt of an escaped angel against the limitations of a journalistic form. ”

“ We can see little value in a review of a book after every reading man in the community has perused it, and formed his opinion upon its merits. Thus to lag behind the march of current literature, deprives the criticisms of the reviewer of much of their value and weight. ”

“ He is the only individual in the whole learned lexicon that can never exhaust himself, never write himself out, let him sit before the ink-glass for centuries, or tens of centuries. For while the Scholar, the Philosopher, and the Poet produce their new book solely from new materials and growth, the Reviewer merely lays his old gauge of taste and knowledge on a thousand new works; and his light, in the ever-passing, ever-differently-cut glass-world, which he elucidates, is still refracted into new colors. ”

“ All these sorts of reviews are either injurious to knowledge or useful only by way of advertisement. I need scarcely point out to you that the reviewer, as a reviewer, is a man of many books and many subjects, the author is generally a man of one book or one subject. ”

“ The reason is that the historical book review still maintains the traditions of the essay in criticism. The reviewer is expected to put his best pen for ward, and, besides giving all necessary bibliographical information, to make some remarks of a general nature appropriate to the occasion. Knowing what is expected, the faithful fellow does his best ”

“ But you will find him in the weeklies, and rampant in the technical journals.
The academic reviewer is besotted by facts, or their absence. The most precious part of the review to him is the last paragraph in which he points out misspellings, bad punctuation, and inaccuracies generally. Like a hound dog in a corn field, he never sees his books as a whole, but snouts and burrows along the trail he is following. If he knows the psychology of primitive man, primitive psychology he will find and criticize, even in a book on the making of gardens. ”

“ Some thirty essays, and critical reviews reprinted from various magazines, and about twenty poems, serious, sentimental and satiric, which were written between 1881 and the author’s death in 1903.
“The book intrinsically strikes us as a failure.”
“In treating a writer who pays such attention to the small points of style, and who incidentally sneers at ‘the shallower sort of American scholars,’ an American reviewer feels justified in pointing out minute defects.”
“Among the essays, the best, we think, are those which deal with the technique of literature. ”

“ The author of a work of information who does not give an index is sure to be called over the coals, and with reason, for how else is the reviewer to pick out the plums unless he actually reads the book? ”

“ When there is no other payment they always get the book they review free for their libraries, or to sell cheap to the second-hand man. Reviewers are spoken of as "the critics"—by simple-minded people; when their printed remarks are useful for that purpose, the remarks are called "leading critical opinions"—by advertisements; and reviewers are sometimes invited to lunch by astute authors, and are treated to pleasant dishes to cheer them, and given good cigars to smoke.
Occasionally somebody ups and discusses the nature of our literary journalism and what sort of a creature the reviewer is. ”

“ The reviewer in Nature remarked on the First Edition of this book, “It has often been said that the practical man does not write books, but THERE IS HERE A COMPLETE REFUTATION OF THE CALUMNY.” The sale of two large editions has justified the opinion of the reviewer, and shows that the book from the practical man is valued. ”

“ One of these sentences is: "This book furnishes capital reading;" another says that this book "is welcome;" and he holds as a general principle that, "the reviewer who reads the book is lost."
Occasionally, very occasionally, there is found among reviewers the type of old-fashioned person who used to be called a "man of letters." This is a wild dream, but it would be a grand thing for American reviewing if every one of our young reviewers could have for an hour each week the moral benefit of the society of such a man. ”

“ It contributes to his pleasant conception of reviewing as a fine thing to do. It makes him more alive than the anonymous thing. He meets people who brighten at the recollection of having read his name. I know a man who was a very witty reviewer (when he was young) ; that fellow used to get love letters from ladies he had never seen, just like a baseball pitcher, or a tenor; there was a rich man who ate meals at the Century Club had him there to dinner, because he thought him funny; he got a note from a Literary Adviser asking him for a book manuscript ”

“ The space allotted to book reviews in any newspaper is at best wholly insufficient for anything like adequate criticism, and very generally the reviewer is a person imperfectly equipped for the writing of such criticism. ”

“ Book reviewers nowadays direct their attention, for the most part, to the worthy books and they habitually neglect those that seem beneath their regard. On a rare occasion they assail an unprofitable book, but even this is often but a bit of practice. ”

“ People read a review of an author's book and are told that it throbs with a passion so intense as almost to be painful, and are on the point of digging seven-and-sixpence out of their child's money-box to secure a copy, when their eyes fall on the man's photograph at the side of the review, and they find that he has a face like a rabbit and wears spectacles and a low collar. ”

“ It is best for the aspiring critic to practice herself on book reviews first. In these she can with profit display her power to analyze the artistic construction of books, and so develop her abilities as a manuscript reader. ”

“ When they had finished writing the dictionary, they joined the army of the unemployed, and became reviewers. I am acquainted with one reviewer who has been everything, almost, under the sun—a husband, a father, and a householder; he has been successively a socialist, an aesthete, a Churchman, and a Roman Catholic. He is an eager student of the universe, a prodigiously energetic journalist, a lively and a humorous writer, a person of marked talent. ”

“ When a critic who has risen high enough to be allowed to sign his reviews in a daily paper calls a new book "a great human novel," you may be absolutely sure that the said novel consists chiefly of ridiculous twaddle. ”

“ It aims, on the one hand, to record truthfully the scope, character and subject content of books as they appear, and, on the other, to supplement this descriptive information from month to month with excerpts culled from the best current criticism appearing in forty-five English and American magazines which make a prominent feature of book reviews, thus furnishing to the librarian and bookseller a basis for the evaluation of books. ”

“ But just now the method is a little crude, and lays us open to the charge—which every intelligent person of this scientific age will repudiate—of being content with the superficial; for instance, of trusting wholly to others for our immortal furnishing, as many are satisfied with the review of a book for the book itself, or—a refinement on that—with a review of the reviews. ”

“ The instinct to teach, to reform, to explain, to improve lies close to the heart of nine out of ten of us. It is commoner than the creative instinct. When it combines with it, one gets a potential reviewer.
The reviewer as a liaison officer is a homelier description than soul affinity or intellectual mate, but it is quite as honorable. Books (to the editor) represent, each one of them, so much experience, so much thought, so much imagination differently compounded in a story, poem, tractate on science, history, or play. Each is a man's most luminous self in words, ready for others. ”

“ An author, that is to say, reads a highly-complimentary review of his work, and looks for an immense and immediate demand in consequence for that work. Well, every good review helps a book, undoubtedly, but to a much smaller extent, from the pecuniary point of view, than is generally believed. ”

“ Then reviews—nature of the subject—the reputation which a book quickly gets—cause or do not cause—a demand, and so the book succeeds or fails. I hate to discourage people, but I have always entreated you not to expect too much. ”

“ When the sight of a book to either, is like water to a mad dog: particularly the sight of their own books, which represent such an amount of headache, and bother, and sleepless nights, to enable a critic to notice only a printer's mistake in a date, which is generally set down to the author's "want of knowledge of his subject?" ”

“ Many men and women—novelists, barristers, professors and others—review books in their spare time, as they look on this as work they can do when their brains are too tired to do anything which is of genuine importance. A great deal of book-reviewing is done contemptuously, as though to review books well were not as difficult as to do anything else well. ”

“ All this may change again, but at present the magazines—we have no longer any reviews—form the most direct approach to that part of our reading public which likes the highest things in literary art. Their readers, if we may judge from the quality of the literature they get, are more refined than the book readers in our community ”

“ He interested his hearers with humorous stories, as if his business were first to entertain the public and then to pick up a living, and for the first time it struck me that book-knowledge did not embrace everything, that people who simply read get but a second-hand experience. We must observe form and recognize the rules which good taste has drawn, but after all the finest form and the most nearly perfect rule is an inborn judgment. ”

“ I have never known a reviewer to answer this insinuation straightforwardly in print, but I will answer it: No, I do not.
And the man in the street says, shocked: "You are unjust."
And I reply: "Not at all. I am merely an expert."
The performances of the expert in any craft will surprise and amaze the inexpert. Come with me into my study and I will surprise and amaze you. Have I been handling novels for bread-and-cheese all these years and not learnt to judge them by any process quicker than that employed by you who merely pick up a novel for relaxation after dinner? ”

“ INTRODUCTION Of all the difficult, hazardous and thankless tasks which well-meaning persons can choose for the improvement of their fellows, perhaps none is so unproductive, in some quarters, as book-selection and the recommendation of reading matter. In ninety cases out of a hundred, persons who read books recommended by others will contemn the judgment and taste of the recommender, and even hint at a certain lack of knowledge and critical perception. ”

“ My friend answered,—‘By no means, my dear sir; a damned bad author generally makes a very good reviewer. Indeed, sir, to be candid with you, I never allow any gentleman to review for me, unless he has met with a misfortune similar to yours. It is one of the necessary qualifications of a good reviewer that he should have failed as an author ”

“ The unfair criticisms which are made, and the erroneous notions diffused by interested reviewers, would in a great measure be corrected, in the minds, at least, of your readers.
You might object that such précis would be as partial as the reviews of which the whole literary world complain. But, in the first place, these abstracts would be written by literary men who are not dependent on booksellers for their livelihood, and would not therefore be likely to write up trashy books or detract from the merit of valuable works, for the sake of the book trade. ”

“ But what gives an additional and more ludicrous absurdity to these lamentations is the curious fact, that if in a volume of poetry the critic should find poem or passage which he deems more especially worthless, he is sure to select and reprint it in the review; by which, on his own grounds, he wastes as much more paper than the author, as the copies of a fashionable review are more numerous than those of the original book ”

“ In the second place, a contributor knows that he is supplying an editor, and learns, without suppressing truth or suggesting falsehood, to make the tone of his communications suit the periodical in which they are to appear. Hence it very often arises that a reviewed author, who thinks he knows the name of his reviewer, and proclaims it with expressions of dissatisfaction, is only wrong in supposing that his critic has given all his mind. ”

“ In the old days, when reviewers held themselves bound to read through a book before they recorded their impressions of it, I should no doubt have had my weak points discovered by the eye of unfriendly criticism; to-day, one can still hope that one’s deficiencies will pass unobserved! I am afraid, now I come to look back over the record, that after all it is a chronicle of small doings; if I had known that I was to write reminiscences in my old age, perhaps I would have travelled further in search of impressions, and striven higher so as to satisfy my readers with the story of greater things. ”