Kinder, Gentler Reviewing
An extract from Wyatt Mason’s review of John Updike’s Due Considerations in Harper’s:
In Picked-up Pieces (1975), Updike’s second collection of essays, he lists his rules for reviewing:
1. Try to understand what the author wishes to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.
2. Give enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.
3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy précis.
4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending….
5. 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?
P.S. And here, via my friend Mark Sarvas, is a piece by Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky on the dismissive one-sentence review on Amazon.com
