At the Bookseller, Adam Blades, a "lecturer in Publishing," attempts to defend "celebrity tastemakers" (those with "book clubs") by making this claim about actual literary critics …
I have no idea what a “lecturer in Publishing” is, but I am not impressed by what this one has to say. Are there bad reviewers and good reviewers? Definitely. Is reviewing subjective? Well, there sure in hell is a subjective component. But you can review a book and be impartial and unaffected by fashion and can honestly report on your experience of reading a book. I panned Cormac McCarthy’s The Road just a day or two after it won the Pulitzer Prize, because I happen to think it is a demonstrably bad book. Huge numbers of people disagreed with me. Fine. I disagree with them. Time will tell.
"It would appear that critics are harder on debuts than Amazon reviewers..."
ReplyDeleteGrandparents give tougher reviews to good-looking babies than Amazon reviewers give to terrible books.