Saturday, May 19, 2012

A believer in goodness …

… Higher Gossip | John Updike, edited by Christopher Carduff | Review by The Spectator.


In a piece listing his personal rules of book reviewing (reprinted by Carduff), Updike wrote: ‘If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author’s oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it’s his and not yours?’ This is not the way of the gossip, who deals in resentments, degradation, proscription and blackballing. Instead, ‘try to understand what the author wished to do’, Updike advised; ‘better to praise and share than blame and ban’.

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