realthog

Most often when I get a mediocre review I treat it on the basis -- well, at least after Pam's persuaded me to stop blubbing and unlock the lavatory door and come out -- that, well, yer wins a few and yer loses a few. But there are some that really piss me off.

They're the ones that are bad bits of reviewing. (Do note that I've been known to get upset, although obviously I keep it to myself in such instances, when I get a rave review that I regard as an incompetent piece of reviewing.)

The art of reviewing is a lot more than just reproducing the kind of guff you might exchange at the pub after seeing a movie ("Woo, blimey, you should see Julia Roberts's bum in that one"), yet it seems fewer and fewer self-styled reviewers are aware of this. There are certain pretty goddam obvious dos and don'ts, foremost among them being that you review the book (or movie, or story, whatever) that's in front of you, not the one you think the author should have written.

This particular review starts:

John Grant wanted to highlight the human tendency to affix blame everywhere but upon themselves for misdeeds, errors and misjudgment. He chose dragons to be humanity’s scapegoat . . .

and it ends:

While an entertaining and somewhat engaging story with a fascinating inspiration point, this fails as a cohesive satire of human nature.

Some of the intervening criticisms I'm prepared to take on board (well, not really, but I know I should display magnanimity here), but what incenses me is that I didn't set out with the intent of "highlight[ing] the human tendency to affix blame everywhere but upon themselves for misdeeds", etc. Yes, that was a small part of the original setup, as it were -- part of the swill of ideas that got me going -- but it was nothing more than that.

To present it as a primary objective is simply false, an invention of the reviewer. What I wanted to do was to put the boot into the Bush Administration and the society that allowed it to happen as hard as I fucking well could while being as (nastily) funny as I could manage. Rick Kleffel, in The Agony Column, put his finger on it precisely when he described the text as "illuminated fury". I was aiming for Jonathan Swift (or even Philip Roth in Our Gang, and certainly my friend John Brunner [but with jokes]), not Anita Shreve.

This makes the reviewer's self-induced conclusion -- "this fails as a cohesive satire of human nature" -- a complete nonsense. I had no notion of anything as grand (or as twee) as satirizing human nature, let alone cohesively; I was more concerned with lampooning people like Il Buce, Darth Cheney, Alberto Gonzo and the rest as the moronic sociopaths they are.

I'm further puzzled as to why the reviewer didn't realize that this ostentatiously slapstick political satire was, well, an ostentatiously slapstick political satire. The publisher's strapline on the front cover says:

The fierily satirical, bitingly funny political fantasy!

That's I think accurate, and it does seem -- with its focus on "political" -- quite a long way from the Jane Austenish "cohesive satire of human nature", which is something I never thought to attempt. Maybe I should, one day.

(Hm. Perhaps the reviewer's a wingnut who thinks Il Buce is True Fab and dislikes my centrist politics? That's possible too. And maybe I should critique the review on the entirely unproven basis that this is so. "This wingnut reviewer set out to . . .")

As I say, I get fed up when bad reviewers give me good reviews; obviously I'm grateful for any sales that might accrue, but I feel more than slightly dishonest about accepting the praise. (I've had a few rave reviews since joining LJ that I've not posted about here on exactly this basis.) I get very pissed off when reviewers try to make themselves seem interesting by reviewing books they've invented rather than the books I've actually written. It's shoddy work. They should learn better.