[Publib] Reviewing Decline

[Backwage at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/7/2007 10:51:50 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
Bookbitch at yahoo.com writes:

There is  a vast difference between the types of reviews offered by  library
publications, newspapers, and even my own website, and the in-depth  critical
analyses that you are referring to as "book reviews."  Does a  librarian
trying to decide which books to purchase with a smaller and  smaller book
budget really need to read a long analytical treatise about  each and every
book available for purchase?  

For most popular  fiction and nonfiction, a brief synopsis of the book along
with a short  critique of the writing style and readability, and perhaps some
similar  authors and/or books offers all the information that a purchaser
would  need, be it a library or recreational reader. Do you need to read  an
in-depth analysis of "The Wasteland" by Eliot to know that you ought to  have
it in a public library?  Of course not.  But perhaps you  would want to read
that analysis to gain further understanding of a very  difficult poem.


Well, first off, the short summaries of books are not really reviews.   They 
get their name from the fact that they appeared in literary  
reviews--magazines and sections devoted to reviewing books.  They are  simply brief summaries, 
perfectly good for their purposes, but not much  beyond.  Obviously they are 
essential to choosing books, particularly from  the vast number of new releases.
 
What they are not, certainly, is a review of a written work.  You also  
mention that there is a large difference between book reviews and literary  
criticism.  I would say that there is a huge difference between those brief  blurbs, 
literary criticism and book reviewing.  As to the latter two,  literary 
criticism is the analysis of a work against the background of two  things:  the 
established art and the critic's personal taste, itself a  thing of experience.  
Book reviewing is more on the side of explication  than criticism; the goal is 
to show an audience of people who could  conceivably be consumers of the book 
what it contains, what it shows, what it  might mean in a particular context.  
A critic would rate a modern  novel against others of its genre; a reviewer, 
particularly a librarian, should  explain how the book works within a context 
of similar examples.  This is  more in the line of what the legal system 
refers to as the "reasonable person  standard."  In our case we'd have to say the 
reasonably literate person,  because librarians are, or should be, that.  A 
reasonable reader of  eighteenth-century literature might find Tom Jones as 
appealing as she  did Tristram Shandy, for example.  
 
The point is that reviewing can be done by any interested person who can  
read at the depth required to consume the work in hand.  Criticism says,  "This 
book is good," and also decides on meaning; the reviewer says, "This book  
contains," and places the book within context.  The difference is that the  
reviewer offers the book to the reader to judge, where the critic offers the  book, 
as judged.  
 
We don't judge books.  Unfortunately, too few of us present them,  either.  
The main consequence of this is that the public and the literary  world (in the 
broad sense) do not and have not considered librarians a  significant part of 
the literary machinery for a long time.  
 
As I've said before, A librarian should review books because the  product of 
that effort is a useful tool; because the exercise is an expression  of the 
special relationship between the librarian and the book, and because the  
practice provides proof, practice and reinforcement of the librarian’s essential  
role.
 
Want to know a really sad thing?  Library schools don't have classes  on 
reviewing books.  They think that's something for the English department  to 
teach.  Perhaps we should import some professors from other departments  to teach 
the curriculum we can't offer ourselves.
 
M. McGrorty



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