Put Downs

Ahhhh, it happened again. I put down a book by a bestselling writer and have been trying to wash the taste of it out of my mind with Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke and Alan Furst's Night Soldiers. So far, so good.

I don't agree with the notion that people like to read negative reviews more than they like to read positive ones. They probably are easier to actually write because the reviewer (or anyone) can always find things they don't like about anything and write them down. Is that fun to read? Is that fun to write? Does it serve a purpose? On the other hand, a review that merely picks out positive things and portrays an otherwise bad book in that light is likewise worthless or wrong or some other kind of misleading.

I think when you review a book, you ought in some way try to interpret what you think the author was trying to do. After that, you can gauge the book on a number of levels, chiefly, "Did it work?" and "Was it enjoyable to read?"

As long as this is being done, and the reviewer is clear as to what is actually opinion, I have no problem with so-called negative reviews. If I write one, I hope that I can support my opinion in such a way that the reader understands that it is just that, and that there is some justification to support that. I also think that if I read book X and think it's the worst piece of ham-fisted monkey typing this side of a vanity press shopping list, that I should be able to name title and author without feeling bad about it in the same way that I'd tell my friends about it if we were discussing it over the phone.

And if a "negative review" is well reasoned and makes sense to me, it could very well be doing me a positive by nudging me in the direction of not wasting my time and my money. I wish that would have happened in this case.

Somewhere a while back, I read a review of this particular book. It is by a well-known and bestselling author with numerous books, a few of which have been made into movies (one of which spawned a very successful and iconic franchise), and a recognizable name. I'd avoided him in the past, however, because he couldn't pass my first page test. That's where I pick up the book and simply read the first page. If a writer is clumsy and inelegant and prone to cliches, very often it begins on page one and is easily discerned. I put these books down and very rarely ever try the author again. I can't think of a single instance where I tried and been surprised.

But the review of this particular books was overwhelmingly positive, spoke well of the author's portrayal of the technology and tradecraft used in the world of intelligence, and suckered me in to giving the book a chance, despite my impression of the author as one whose style clunks loudly in my inner ear.

By sheer will-power, I made it a couple of hundred pages in, then had to throw it hard and run away screaming. Books like this may not only actually rot my brain, but may cause me to actually question the value of reading and other writing, especially my own. My nightmare fear is that I could not produce something even up to this level...

The book beats you over the head with his knowledge of the intelligence community. It has the ignorant sidekick who, as a participant, consistently and unexpectedly behaves like an old pro, while all the while needing every teensy tiny little thing explained to her by the hero. Very annoying, but not as annoying as the hero, who has to explain every teensy tiny little thing he's doing, feeling, and thinking to the reader who clearly is not expected by the author to be able to follow the thriller along without having every obvious step painted in giant red letters across the eyeballs. This is talking down to the reader with the best of them.

There's a scene where the hero is being chased in a car through a mall parking lot in the rain. Suddenly a woman walks out from between two cars. Time inexplicably slows while the hero processes how little time he has to react and how small his margin for error is. He knows he can miss her by not looking at her; this will cause him to hit her. This is explained by nearly three pages of flashback to his time in driving school with the instructor telling him this is the reason why people skidding out in the middle of nowhere hit telephone poles, lone rocks, etc. So he misses her. Not before noticing the whites of her eyes, though.

But I thought I just read three pages of how he wasn't going to look at her or else he'd hit her. Hell, the guy chasing him probably didn't take the same course and would mow her down anyway.

I'll stop there because this isn't all that informative nor well justified; I'm going to do that because I'm not going to name the author or the book. I'm using it as an example of good reviews doing a disservice to the reader. A review that would have enumerated the positives, say the technical basis for the plot, while pointing out the weaknesses in the characterization and the writing, would have done me a lot more good. Yes, writing may be hard enough without people saying bad things about your books. But passing bad books off as not-so-bad ones is a much greater sin.

Unless the reviewer actually liked the bad book, which after all comes down to a matter of opinion. But wouldn't it be fun to sit down with the reviewer of this book and challenge him with all the reasons I think it's a fine waste of paper? Debate Club with book reviewers, an in your face contentious book club meeting. Now that's TV I would watch. Really.

Usually I'm not shy about naming names in the course of what could be called a "negative review."