open communication

Poor Rosina. It’s The Topic That Wouldn’t Die. Kinda like the cat came back.

Hmmm….your response would have been more dignified IF there wasn’t one. By responding to “RK” you are lowering yourself to her level. Not saying anything at all would have been the best course of action.

Laurie — Great question. I’ll answer it in a post later today.

Interesting points. I’m glad you raised them, because something just clarified itself for me. Let me say something about that before I answer your question.

You’re right, there has been fairly regular theatrics over the last six months or so around the topic of reviews and the author/reader/ reviewer relationship. I take responsibility for that, as it’s my weblog and obviously, I raised questions at various points which resulted in Kerfuffle. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing. I do believe that women need to get more comfortable providing constructive criticism that moves beyond cheerleading. Progress involves change, change involves conflict. Most people involved in these discussions are adults, and we’re certainly capable of working out our differences, or agreeing to disagree.

But it occurs to me that maybe I haven’t been clear enough about what I see my role in these interrelated discussions. And here is my role: nothing. At least, my role is no bigger than anybody else’s. I have opinions which are based on my personal experience and observation, but that is true of everybody who is involved. I also have a pulpit, so to speak, in the form of this weblog. But I can claim no inherent authority on that basis, and I don’t want any authority on that basis, either.

Many, many times in my life I have been told that I am intimidating and that people are uncomfortable discussing things with me for that reason. I have talked about this with therapists and friends and family, and while their explanations make sense to me on one level (yes, I see that I have a forceful style; yes, I know my background makes some people uncomfortable), on another level I have never understood this.

I’m mentioning this because after I read Robin’s comment I had a flash memory of a fairly heated discussion at one of the Girlchild’s schools. Just parents and teachers were present. There were two factions, and each side felt very strongly about their position. I did a lot of the arguing for the side I was on. Impassioned arguing, sure. But I was completely shocked when somebody from the other side stood up and shouted at me: Stop picking on people who aren’t as smart as you are! Stop trying to make me feel stupid!

this was a couple of years ago and I have some distance now. I look back and this and remember dear old Eleanor Roosevelt’s “nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent”. I couldn’t have quoted that during the meeting in question, as it would have just added fuel to the fire, but to some degree it is true that I wasn’t at fault — the person who shouted at me was insecure and she allowed herself to be intimidated. Was my style also part of the problem? Almost certainly. But it was never my intention to make anybody, anywhere, look or feel stupid.

The same is true of the discussions here. Some of what’s going on in these debates may be getting hung up on personalities and styles, and I failed to anticipate that. I will try harder in the future.

Whew. Now Robin’s question about Beth’s review. I believe I made a pretty strong distinction between the content of a review, the subject of the criticism (the book and not the author) and matters of tone. Tone has to do with personal style (see above), with the established relationship between the reviewer and the reviewer’s known audience, and with the format. Beth’s review was written for her own weblog, not for a website that advertises itself first and foremost as a book review ‘publication’ (and I use that word loosely). And her tone fit into her overall approach when she does talk about books: she’s outrageous. She’s emotive. She puts it all out there. Her review of ABOSAA is not professional or meant to be taken that way. If a newspaper called her up and asked her to write her review up to be printed on their Books page, I am certain the approach and tone would change.

Would I write an online review in the same way? No. Do I think less of her for writing in her own style? No. In that review she went to extremes to make clear how much she has loved and admired the Outlander books, how devoted she was. It was a comparative review, and it was heartfelt. I can’t imagine it was easy to write. I do imagine that it was cathartic, to say what was bothering her, to make her (very careful, very detailed and structured) arguments. I have to admire the effort and time and thought she put into that review. You have to really love a series and the characters in the series to get so emotionally involved.

So that’s it. I’ve gone a gusher, and now I’ll step back.

Robin, okay, I see where you’re going with this. A couple things come to mind right away, some of them this urge I have to make myself really clear, so here that is:

I can see that some people would find the tone of Beth’s review objectionable. I listed reasons why I found it to be acceptable within its context. You disagree; okay. I’ll go over your points in this regard and reconsider my position.

My primary point remains the same, how ever that part of the conversation goes: I can find a review distasteful or objectionable for a whole variety of reasons, but that same review that strikes me as distasteful might still manage to be responsible. In fact I’d guess that pretty much every review will be disliked by somebody, no matter how well written or reasoned. I defended Beth’s right to voice her opinion in her own way on her own weblog; I did the same thing for RK’s opinion of my work on the Gabaldon board. Jane at Dear Author may not see it this way, but I believe that the Ja(y)nes have every right to write their reviews in whatever voice and tone they please. I don’t like their approach, but I wouldn’t deny their right to it.

But let me think this through some more.

Robin — I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and I have a moaning dog on my lap, but I didn’t want you to think I evading your questions, because they gave me stuff to think about.

I see that my reasoning might be taken as circular. I have said that reviews should focus on the book and not the author. I have also said that the reviewer has an obligation to the readers. I made the point that tone is a matter of personal style. And then I defended Reno Kathy’s negative comments about my work, in much the same way I defended Beth’s review of ABOSAA, while I was critical of Jane’s general approach to reviewing.

The first issue to straighten out (it seems to me) is the matter of intended audience. You made some good points about Beth’s relationship to the romance writing community, and asked how she was different from Dear Author. I think there is a very big difference between the two, for these reasons: Beth’s weblog is not advertised as a review blog. It’s mostly about her personal life and experiences, with an occasional review thrown in. DA is exclusively about reviews. Beth doesn’t try to bring traffic into her weblog in any overt way. DA runs contests and gives awards. Which of course is generous, but also brings people in, which is most likely the goal of such undertakings. I give away things here, as well, and of course I hope that more people will stop by and decide to have a look at one of my novels.

If you take this weblog, DA and Sum of Me (Beth), I would say that the differences are pretty clear. I write fiction for a living, full time, and I started that career after twelve years as a professor during which time I published a lot of nonfiction, including a lot of critical reviews. All of my income comes from publishing, and like all authors these days, I have an ever larger share of the responsibility for marketing my own stuff, which means (at least in part) marketing myself. Hence the weblog. Dear Author is a review site set up by two women. I don’t know if they are otherwise employed in publishing, but my sense is that DA is a project that they care about quite a lot and would like to see flourish. Otherwise, why the giveaways? If they are not at this moment professional reviewers, they are leaning that way, building up a reader base and a following.

Any new venture identifies a market and tries to find a unique approach to draw people in. DA chose the format of writing a letter to an author directly. Smart Bitches (which I’m bringing up here for the sake of comparison) have an approach that focuses on the book rather than the author. Because of this basic structural difference, SB can be snarky and profane and funny about a book; DA is about the atuhor. Beth’s Sum of Me is a very different approach, again. She loves reading and she feels strongly about what she reads. If she takes the time to write about a book, it’s because it moves her in a very good or very bad way. Beth isn’t actively pursuing a career in publishing, either as an author or as a reviewer.

My sense is that of the three websites, the biggest burden of responsibility is on me, as I make my living writing and engaging readers. I would also argue that DA has more responsibility than Beth, because of the way they’ve set themselves up.

I am very tired, but the point I’m trying to make is this: if it seems as if I’m holding Beth and DA to different standards, that’s because I am. If you don’t see the difference between them in the way I do, then yes, my reasoning would appear to be circular.

And finally, here’s the difference between Beth’s ABOSAA review and the example reviews I made up.

Beth cares about the Outlander series. Her review contained a very long love letter to the characters and the early novels. Her admiration was (as I read it) sincere and deep felt. She went to lengths to make all that clear before she launched into a very detailed list of reasons why she didn’t like ABOSAA, and what she saw as the flaws. Her tone was subjective and outraged, as somebody might be when a relationship breaks up. I find all of that appropriate to the context in which she writes.

She wrote an emotional, strongly worded, anger fueled review. In the process she expressed her unhappiness with the author directly (the infamous elbow comment). I think the review suffers somewhat because it goes that far, but her outburst doesn’t negate the entire review.

DA, on the other hand, goes after the author in a much more subtle way. Careful choice of words that attribute intent to the author (‘you were pretending’ is the example that comes to mind). Beth asks ‘what the hell were you thinking’ and DA presumes to know what the author was thinking (at least in some cases). I find the DA approach intellectually suspect and misleading. It violates some basic rules (my own rules, not necessarily anybody else’s) in the reviewing process and the unstated contract between reviewer and reader.

Now, you may not agree with my characterization of one or all of these various review sites, but this is the reasoning behind the statements I’ve made. I should also point out that as a published author, I approach reviewing a little more gingerly than those who are not published and are not pursuing a career in publishing.

I consider this an interesting topic, and I’m happy to discuss it more. Though it would probably be a good idea to wait until I’m more awake.

Melinda — very possible that I hadn’t read enough of Jayne’s reviews to distinguish, but as you’ve noted, I don’t visit DA anymore. I gather they are having a grand old time taking me to bits. Some people are very easily amused.

Oops, I was typing so fast I hit post without meaning to.

Anyway, I was saying that when I read Beth’s two reviews for Gabaldon and Foley, her anger feels far more personally directed at each author than, say, Jane’s review of Karin Tabke’s new book did (and BTW, I bought Tabke’s book and have been trying to read it, and there are some extraordinarily frustrating things about the book and the characters that I think are actually indicative of certain sub-genres of Romance to begin with). So while Beth may not be reviewing books at a dedicated review site (well, most of her reviews, at least), I think the two I referred to here are actually much more personally directed at the author as much as at the book itself. That’s one of the reasons I think people resonated to them — either positively or negatively — the way they did.

I was also thinking about the following D- review on AAR for Jenna Peterson’s From London With Love, which included the following passage:

“Every event, every emotion is writ large and writ often. We are left in no doubt as to what plot points or feelings Petersen thinks are important for they are repeated repeatedly. Meredith must muse on the importance of getting her hands on a certain letter at least twenty times. She feels guilt over every instance of kindness from Tristan’s mother. Meredith even gets physically nauseous – more than once – when she finds Tristan doing something suspicious. It is all a bit much. There is nothing at all subtle about Petersen’s writing and I really came to resent how stupid she must think her readers are.”

Is this over the line? I ask this seriously, because I really do think there is a difference between invoking the author as a craftsperson and invoking her as a person. I have no idea, for example, what kind of a person Brenda Joyce is, but as a craftsperson, I thought what she did in The Conqueror was all sorts of shades of irresponsible and abusive, not only of the history she claimed to employ, but also of her characters and her readers. Can I not say that? If, for example, you took away the “Dear Author” moniker at DA’s site and stripped the reviews of that salutation, would the whole debate be different, as well?

It may just be that you and I have different lines when it comes to what’s permissible and what isn’t, or rather what’s professional and what isn’t. Or it may just be that this is where you and I part over the author – reader divide. As an author, you may just necessarily have a different take on this than I do. If someone in my own field said something like, “she writes with all the elegance of a 4th grader,” I’d likely be pissed, too.

I think my biggest problem here is that I see blogland shaking out such that there’s a pretty recognizable middle ground in terms of reader review blogs, where the readers really are readers and are appealing to other readers. And I think that middle ground is going to have a somewhat varied population, but the range of voices will eventually be sort of self-defining (bloggers will themslves sort of naturally gravitate toward this middle ground) and easily recognizable. I still very much see Dear Jane as part of this middle “class” so to speak, somewhere between the strident commentators (I use the term loosely) and the dry as a bone tenor of, say, Publisher’s Weekly or RT. There are other blogs out there — even those in what seems to be shaping up to be that middle class — that I see as measurably more strident than DA, even though I’m probably in the minority in that opinion. So while I think I understand where you’re coming from vis a vis the big picture of reviewer responsibility, I don’t see Dear Author as having crossed the same lines as you do, I guess.

I have to do some shaking out (to borrow your very apt turn of phrase) of your post as there are a number of distinct points I’d like to respond to. And that will have to wait until later today. But right off the top: I never saw Beth’s review on SB (the one you quote from), and if I had, I would have flagged it as over the line.

Really, that’s the challenge, as you’ve noted. The LINE. My line and your line do seem to intersect for long stretches, which is maybe part of the reason we’ve got a place to start this discussion.

More later.

Rosina, I hope that Bunny is feeling better today and you were able to get some rest.

My response to the beginning of this discussion and at the risk of over simplifying, is… I believe Freedom of Speech is what it all boils down to, and that includes the style in which you choose to express yourself. Some people are more comfortable with controversy and leap at the chance to state their opinions. I hardly think that responding to someone, who is rude and vulgar is lowering yourself to their level. In my case it’s the need to be understood, to present and listen to ideas that could eventually make our world, or at least my corner, a better more harmonious place.

The more recent discussion delves into areas that I have little experience because I’m not familiar with the mentioned sites, but I find it interesting. My thoughts are, and I hope that I’m not veering off topic: writing is an art form and artists in other areas can be criticized personally and held accountable for the art they produce. Actors and filmmakers are two that come to mind. However aren’t they usually making a controversial statement before they’re personally scrutinized or burned at the stake? Otherwise they are simply tagged with having produced a flop or played a bad part.

Wilma aka WB