Reviewer

“ The reviewer, sitting surrounded by them, tier on tier, may rail at the productiveness of the age, and wish that there might not be more than one new book each week. And the omnivorous reader, anxious to keep up with the literature of the day, might fairly re-echo the aspiration. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If it be a poem, the reviewer’s head already rings with the whole gamut of the world’s metrical music; he can recognize any simile, recall all turns of phrase, match every sentiment; why seek to please him anew with old things? If it concern itself with the philosophy of politics, he can and will set himself to test it by the whole history of its kind41 from Plato down to Benjamin Kidd. How can it but spoil your sincerity to know that your critic will know everything? Will you not be tempted of the devil to anticipate his judgment or his pretensions by pretending to know as much as he? ”

“ On the other hand, too much of what is now called criticism is the improvised chatter of a raw lad, portentously ignorant of the matter in hand. It is not the 'indolent reviewer' that we now suffer under, but the 'lightning reviewer,' the young man in a hurry with a Kodak, who finally disposes of a new work on the day of its publication. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Saying that my books should be dealt with by specialists, and tacitly announcing himself as an expert in Physics, the reviewer takes me to task both for errors in the statement of physical principles and for erroneous reasoning in physics. That he discovers no mistakes I do not say. It would be marvelous if, in such a multitude of propositions, averaging a dozen per page, I had made all criticism-proof. ”

“ 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 good reviewer is like the good teacher and the good preacher. He is not rare, but he is precious. He has qualities that almost escape analysis and therefore deserve more than a complimentary discussion. He must hold his book like a crystal ball in which he sees not only its proper essence in perfect clarity, but also his own mind mirrored. He must—... In other words, the good reviewer deserves an essay of his own. He is a genius in a minor art, which sometimes becomes major; a craftsman whose skill is often exceptional. ”

“ There are, of course, practical problems with revealing reviewer identity to which I will return in the pragmatic path that I suggest in Chapter 5, but there is something to be said for a system in which people publicly endorse others’ work, as is done in the marketing blurbs of monographs.10 Going even further, it is curious to think that the pages upon pages of feedback that academics write for one another as part of the review process are discarded after use every year. ”

“ I heard a successful young journalist say the other day to a very conscientious young reviewer. "Good work won't get you anything. Play politics, office politics all the while." Doubtless sound advice, this, for any gainful employment.
Now about that prime department of the press called the business office. Many people firmly believe that all book reviews—and dramatic criticisms and editorials—are bought by "the interests." One of the principal librarians of New York holds this view of reviews. I never knew a reviewer who was bound to tell anything but the truth as he saw it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That it is constantly done, proves the reviewer to be a man skilled in his petty craft; but we are merely paving the way to disappointment if we expect subtle analysis, or fervent eulogy, or even very discriminating criticism from his pen. He is not a Sainte-Beuve in the first place, and he has not a week of leisure in the second. We might console ourselves with the reflection that if he were a great and scholarly critic instead of an insignificant fellow-workman, our little books would never meet his eye. ”

“ This may seem to many people—especially to critics—a degrading conception of a book-reviewer’s work. But it is quite the contrary. A great deal of book-reviewing at the present time is dead matter. Book-reviews ought at least to be alive as news. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We think the office of the reviewer is, indeed, in part, to point out to the public attention deserving works, which might otherwise slumber too long unknown on the bookseller's shelves, but still more to present to the reader as large a cluster of objects round one point as possible, thus, by suggestion, stimulating him to take a broader or more careful view of the subject than his indolence or his business would have permitted. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ A reviewer promulgates his opinions, which clash with those of an author, and the public, if interested in the discussion, soon shows its leaning. When the reviewer has done honour to Lady Hester Stanhope’s noble qualities and her virtues, the Author can readily forgive what is said of himself, although, “peradventure,” not altogether said with fairness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When a reviewed author, as very often happens, writes to the editor of the reviewing journal to complain of what has been said of him, he frequently—even more often than not—complains of 'your reviewer.' He sometimes presumes that 'you' have, 'through inadvertence' in this instance, 'allowed some incompetent person to lower the character of your usually accurate pages.' Sometimes he talks of 'your scribe,' and, in extreme cases, even of 'your hack.' All this shows perfect ignorance of the journal system, except where it is done under the notion of letting the editor down easy. ”

“ A sharp, sententious, cavalier, dogmatical tone is therefore necessary, even in self-defence, to the office of a reviewer. If you do not deliver your oracles without hesitation, how are the world to receive them on trust and without 216inquiry? People read to have something to talk about, and ‘to seem to know that which they do not.’ Consequently, there cannot be too much dialectics and debateable matter, too much pomp and paradox in a review. To elevate and surprise is the great rule for producing a dramatic or a critical effect. ”

“ You might think that these qualities would displease the reviewer’s editor. Not at all, look at any column of short notices, and you will occasionally find that the critic has anticipated my advice. There is no topic in which the men who write about it are so little interested as contemporary literature. ”

“ Coldly, palpably real is the next critic of my acquaintance, the academic reviewer. He does not write for the newspapers, for he despises them, and they are rather scornful of his style, which is usually lumbering, and his idea that 1921 is the proper time in which to review the books of 1920. ”

“ They may detect their reviewer, and they may be safe in attributing to him the general matter and tone of the article. But about one and another point, especially if it be a short and stinging point, they may very easily chance to be wrong. It has happened to myself, and within a few weeks to publication, to be wrong in two ways in reading a past article—to attribute to editorial insertion what was really my own, and to attribute to myself what was really editorial insertion."
What is a man to do who is asked whether he wrote an article? ”

“ 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. ”

“ A reviewer of new books should be a rapid reader and of quick understanding. A reviewer should also be a person of judgment. The vast number of books now published might afford employment, and a good compensation, we suppose, to those so engaged. ”

“ After this splendid example of style and lucidity, it may be that even the ordinary, every-day, unostentatious reviewer whom we so liberally despise will be admitted to possess some few redeeming virtues. ”

“ 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 ”

“ People fed on sugared praises cannot be expected to feel an appetite for the black broth of honest criticism. There was a time, now happily past, when the reviewer's skill lay simply in the clever detection of flaws ”

“ He looked upon most living writers through the eyes of the somewhat jaded reviewer, who, though susceptible to a romantic thrill from one or the other, is usually on his guard against spurious blandishments and reluctant to admit the claims of new pretenders. ”

“ The character of a new work would likewise claim greater attention, from those who are in any degree acquainted with the merits of the reviewer: and, though a plan of this nature may probably, at first, meet with many objections, especially by those authors and publishers who are supposed to live upon friendly terms with the dictators of the secret tribunal ”

“ But, passing over these, and three or four more cordons bleus, what are reviewers in general? men of a degree of talent below that of the author whose works they presume to decide upon; the major portion of whom, having failed as authors, are possessed with but one feeling in their disappointment, which is to drag others down to their own debased level. ”

“ 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. ”