Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 9

Reviewers Reviewed

Thus, any review is better than none at all, regardless of what a
bookstore manager says or of whether the review is good or bad. The
point is that if a review is favorable, great; if not, then the author
can count on a book buyer's remembering that he or she has read
something about it before and perhaps buying it. A reader will often
respond to a negative review by checking out a title for himself.
After all, an opinion that says a book is too sexy, or too violent, might
actually recommend a book to people who like that sort of thing.
About the only truly damning comment a reviewer can make is that
the book is boring or, perhaps, too intellectual.
Given the importance that reviews play within the publishing
industry, it seems odd that even a cursory glance through a collection
of weekly reviews suggests that few reviewers are professional or
even well-educated critics. Many are staff reporters, freelance
writers, college professors, graduate students, school teachers, or are
authors themselves; sometimes they are frustrated writers and poets
who have failed to see their own work succeed, and their attitudes
toward books by other authors may be tinged with envy or jealousy,
and they may sometimes write unfavorably of books they admire and
recommend books that fail to stimulate them in any way. Some
writers only accept review assignments for the money the publication
pays for them.
Most of the time, integrity runs high in the business of newspaper
editing, but few newspapers have budgets that permit book editors to
maintain a regular "stable" of paid professional book critics. For
years, one major city daily assigned the Sunday book reviews to
whichever editors were having a "slow week" in their own
departments; in another instance, according to a current book editor of
another metropolitan daily, a cleaning lady in the building reviewed
books for the "Arts Section" for years, although she never completed
high school and wrote out her reviews by hand. She needed the
money, and the editor, who had neither the time nor interest to invest
in book reviews, was glad to have her do the work. Today, there is a
"book critic" listed on the masthead of a large Texas city's daily,
who works without pay or guarantee that his reviews will even be
published; the critic for the San Antonio Express-News is among the
many book editors for major papers who work only part time and for
small salaries. But there is, of course, no way for the average reader
to know just how seriously a publication takes its book review pages.