To snark or not to snark? The conversation continues on two fronts this week. Maud links to a piece bringing a Canadian perspective to bear on the great snark debate (which, if you’ve been living under a rock, started here). Kate Taylor puts her finger on the most absurd thing, in my eyes, about the anti-snark campaign: purveyors of snark are far, far outnumbered by “mealy-mouthed reviewers tiptoeing around the books they are reviewing, leaving readers to discern their real opinions between the lines.” The last thing we need is more reviews of this sort.
At The Morning News, meanwhile, the subject comes up about two-thirds of the way through a long, consistently interesting interview with Julie Orringer, who recently published her debut short story collection, How to Breathe Underwater, to early acclaim. There’s something off about Orringer and Robert Birnbaum’s discussion of negative reviewing. Their blind spot is most pronounced in remarks like these:
The dismissive review is the one that really disrespects the time and the effort of the writing itself and that’s a horrible thing to see done to someone.
…a bad review can be a plea on the part of the reviewer to make the writer see some truth about his work or the world. That’s extremely important.
What–or who–goes missing when you start thinking of reviews as “pleas” to authors, or as something “done to” them? Only the reader! In the author-centric universe promoted by the snarkophobes, readers’ needs are elbowed out of the way to make room for authors’ sensitivities. This is exactly backwards.