Posts Tagged ‘reviews’
“There’s no accounting for taste”*…
As Matthew Baldwin demonstrates, the praise of professional critics hardly matters to the book-reviewing readers at Amazon.com…
The following are excerpts from actual one-star Amazon.com reviews of books from Time’s list of the 100 best novels from 1923 to the present. Some entries have been edited.
Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
“Morrison’s obviously a good writer, but truly, her subject matter leaves a LOT to be desired in this book. It’s raunchy beyond belief. People do things with farm animals that they shouldn’t. I couldn’t get through the first two chapters without vomiting. Some things you just shouldn’t put in your head.”…
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951)
“So many other good books…don’t waste your time on this one. J.D. Salinger went into hiding because he was embarrassed.”…
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
“While the story did have a great moral to go along with it, it was about dirt! Dirt and migrating. Dirt and migrating and more dirt.”…
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)
“This book is like an ungrateful girlfriend. You do your best to understand her and get nothing back in return.”…
More at “Lone Star Statements,” a compilation of the best of the worst… about the best. From @TheMorningNews.
Apposite: “The Strangely Beautiful Experience of Google Reviews“
* An English adaptation of the medieval (Scholastic) Latin saying “De gustibus non est disputandum” (regarding taste, there is no dispute)
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As we contemplate connoisseurship, we might recall that it was on this date in 1927 that Louis B. Mayer presided over the founding of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Anxious to create to create an organization that would mediate labor disputes without unions and improve the film industry’s image, he envisaged an elite club open only to people involved in one of the five branches of the industry: actors, directors, writers, technicians, and producers. He gathered a group of thirty-six industry leaders at a formal banquet at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, and presented them what he called the International Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Everyone in the room that evening became a founder of the Academy. Between that evening (this date in 1927) and the filing of the official Articles of Incorporation for the organization (on May 4, 1927), the “International” was dropped from the name. Labor negotiations were also briskly dropped, leaving the organization to focus on promoting the industry.
In 1929, Academy members, in a joint venture with the University of Southern California, created America’s first film school to further the art and science of moving pictures. The school’s founding faculty included Douglas Fairbanks (President of the Academy), D. W. Griffith, William C. deMille, Ernst Lubitsch, Irving Thalberg, and Darryl F. Zanuck.
But their most recognizable venture into image enhancement was also born in 1929: the Academy held it’s first annual awards ceremony, bestowing the first “award of merit for distinctive achievement,”-what has become the Academy Awards– the Oscars.
“There is nothing so American as our national parks”*…
Oh so many more– Yellowstone, Joshua Tree, Yosemite, Death Valley, to name a few– at “I Can’t Stop Reading One-Star Yelp Reviews of National Parks.”
[image above: Greg Heartsfield/Flickr
* Franklin D. Roosevelt
As we as we rethink the first “R” in “R and R,” we might spare a thought for Martha; she died on this date in 1914. As she was the last known passenger pigeon, her death meant the extinction of the species.
(De-extinction efforts are underway.)
Martha
“From my close observation of writers… they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review”*…
“This was the absolute second worst book I’ve ever read (the worst being Hotel For Dogs).”
Further to our old friends at You Can’t Please Everyone, a Tumblr devoted to “reviews of classic books, culled from the internet’s think tank”: One-Star Book Reviews.
“HOW MANY BOOKS HAS SHE WRITTEN ANYWAY HUNDREDS RIGHT ? WAY TOO MANY I TELL YOU — STOP THIS WOMAN”
“First of all, the whole thing is almost all dialogue.”
More critical cruelty at One-Star Book Reviews.
* Isaac Asimov
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As we get in touch with our inner John Simon, we might recall that it was on his date in 1911 that Thomas Mann visited the Lido in Venice and hatched the idea for Death in Venice. Mann’s diaries, unsealed in 1975, tell of his struggles with his bisexuality– struggles reflected in his work most prominently through the obsession of the elderly writer Aschenbach, for the 14-year-old Polish boy Tadzio in the novella. It was for this work, along with Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, that Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929.
Catching ’em in the act…
Ever had that sense of deja vu when reading a news posting online? Well, the Sunlight Foundation has your back: they’ve created Churnalism— a simple search tool that let’s one quickly determine whether what one’s reading is “a product of real journalism or just a spin off of another story posted elsewhere.”
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As we root out the sources, we might recall that it was on this date in 1928 that Evelyn Waugh wrote a letter of protest to the Times Literary Supplement. His complaint wasn’t that they’d misjudged his novel (Decline and Fall); their reaction was, like the book’s wider reception, quite warm. Rather, he objected to the fact that throughout the review he was referred to as “Miss Waugh.”
“It’s the stories, man; it’s the stories!”*…
Readers who are readers will be delighted to discover (if they haven’t already) Narrative Magazine, a wonderful web-based literary review (though there is also a thrice-yearly hard copy edition). Featuring fiction from the likes of Ann Beattie, Richard Bausch, James Salter, Elizabeth Benedict, and Amy Bloom, essays from folks like Gail Godwin, Larry McMurtry, and Rick Bass, it also showcases poetry and your correspondent’s special weakness: cartoons like the one above (use the pull-down on the page at the other end of that link to see other galleries).
The love-child of two Bay Area literati, Narrative is a 501-c3 devoted to Letters. It’s worthy of readers’ attention– and, dare your correspondent suggest, of their support.
* Jazz giant Charlie Parker would hang around a jukebox at one of the clubs he frequented, putting his coins in to play country-western songs. When friends finally asked him, “Why do you listen to that stuff?,” he reportedly replied, “It’s the stories, man, it’s the stories!” (source)… not altogether apropos, your correspondent confesses; but it is an awesome anecdote…
As we luxuriate in good literature, we might recall that it was on this date in 1812, just before he published the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, that George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron– aka Lord Byron– made his first speech in the House of Lords… as it happens, a defense of Luddite violence against Industrialism in his home county of Nottinghamshire.
Byron in 1813, in Albanian dress, as painted by Thomas Phillips
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