On the Obligation to Write Negative Reviews

Ruth Franklin, with words every critic should follow:

Even if we agree with West that the life of the mind does matter, it can be tempting to fall prey to what she called the “vice of amiability”—to reserve our energy for supporting writers we admire rather than criticizing those we dislike. I can’t tell you the number of times I have heard some famous writer or other declare that he or she only writes positive reviews, because negative reviews are so, well, negative. Some of us do this for reasons of self-preservation: we might run into our subjects at cocktail parties. But more often, I think it’s because of a misguided philosophy of criticism based on the idea that reviewing books is somehow secondary, even shameful—something no one grows up dreaming of doing. You see this assumption everywhere, even in the New York Times Book Review, where not long ago a legendary critic, reviewing a book of essays by another critic, cautioned his colleagues to “always understand that in this symbiosis”—meaning between writer and critic—“you are the parasite.”

It’s a pithy formulation. But it obscures the fact that some parasites are essential. We’re not fleas feeding off the blood of our hosts. Book critics and novelists are separate species who nonetheless need each other for their own mutual benefit. It’s obvious why the reviewer needs the novelist—not just any novelist, but a good novelist, even a great one, to challenge us to rise to his or her level. But the novelist also needs the reviewer: not just as a vehicle for advertisement, but as an enforcer of standards. If we speak only to praise—and my children can vouch that I’ve never been guilty of that—then praise itself becomes cheapened, and ultimately meaningless. Not all books are worth reading; some are dull, some are poorly written, and others can actually have a pernicious effect on our culture. It’s the task of the critic to champion books that deserve to be championed, and to take a stand against those that have the power to harm. And anyone who doesn’t believe that books have the power to harm is not taking them seriously enough.

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