Joys of the internet, take 27.

[mrissa]

Ahh, the internet. I should have known that within 24 hours of my last post, someone would forward the link to Jonathan Carroll. (If, on the other hand, I had said that Glass Soup was a work of brilliance unsurpassed in human memory, no one would think to send him the URL. This is how these things work. No one dug up my posts saying that I'd liked previous books.) I got a very nice note from him, just saying that he was sorry I felt that way, and sad to hear it.

And my stomach went kind of twisty, because I don't know that Mr. Carroll is a nice man, but I strongly suspect it: most of the writers I've met have turned out to be decent examples of the species, and I don't go around saying mean things to or about writers in hopes that they will feel bad, or even in hopes that they will Mend Their Ways. (Why do it, then? I'll get there, I promise.)

Then some anonymous person posted in the comments: "For someone who has yet to find a literary agent, and whose books to date available at Amazon.com have titles like CHINESE IMMIGRATION, it might be prudent for you to temper your public (literary) opinions somewhat, or at least until you have established a presence in the field. Jonathan Carroll has won every major award in this genre, not to mention his books sell in the millions worldwide.
And you?
GLASS SOUP is hands down brilliant"

Yah. Uh-huh. I shall stop making money from nonfiction this very minute, lest someone scorn my literary opinions because of it. Sure. I am so ashamed of knowing stuff and writing books to teach it to kids. I will slink off with my tail between my legs any minute now. Just wait for it. It's coming.

You know what? Winning awards does not make a book good. Selling in the millions does not make a book good. Some anonymous person asserting on the internet that a book is good still does not make a book good. If you have written a string of books that are as brilliant jewels, books that make me and every other reader laugh, cry, and change their lives -- and then you write a total stinker* -- the string of brilliant books will not mean that no one should criticize the stinker.

And Jonathan Carroll himself seems to know that. He did not suggest that I should have thought differently, just that he wished I had. Fans who refer to their favorite authors as deities of any kind, and bristle, and attempt, badly, to get personal in their favorites authors' defense are not actually doing the said authors any favors. Wise authors know better than to do it for themselves; let them know better, for heaven's sake.

I don't believe that non-writers, young writers, old writers, bestsellers, perennial midlisters, has-beens, wannabes, or anyone else at all should just sit down and shut up about which books they like or don't like. I don't think that's good for writers, and I don't think it's good for books. Further, I don't think it's good for readers, and that's the important thing. Most of us who read lj in this little circle have gotten book recommendations, positive and negative, from our friendslists. "More of the same" or even "ew, what a bad book" is useful data, especially when it comes from a known quantity, as it can on lj. It's not as pleasant as "go read this right now SQUEEEEEE!" But it's still good to know.

I don't expect Mr. Carroll to leap from his chair, shouting, "A reader in Minnesota is dissatisfied? Quick! To the bat cave!" Even if you modify "reader" to be "reader who has read every single book by the said gentleman," I don't expect it to happen that way. I will go further and say it shouldn't happen that way. A single reader's unsolicited opinion should not have the power to derail whole projects with a single internet post. But on the other hand, if he hears the same thing from people who aren't me, if it starts to add up, then it might be something to consider. Or it might not. We can only write the books we can write.

As important as book reviews feel to authors, they aren't for authors. They're for readers. And I think that the day a writer stops behaving like a reader, at whatever stage in her career, is a bad day and probably a foolish day as well. I'm not going to do anything to hurry that day along for myself. I'm not going to sit down and shut up and only think happy thoughts about books, or at least only about books whose authors have won awards. I don't suggest that any of you do so, either. If you disagree with me about a book, say so, here or elsewhere. If you can articulate it, say why. But even, "I liked that one, actually; the mosaic stuff really resonated with me," is better than no opinions. More talking about books is a good thing.

*Please note that I did not say Glass Soup was a total stinker, nor am I saying so now.

Comments

[shawn-scarber.livejournal.com]

I'm very sorry someone did that to you. I need my giant rolled up newspaper to swat the bad human.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Your point about readers is well taken--and that covers the irrelevant status of your agent acquisition, publications, or anything else having to do with your writing. Or should non-writers shut up about their reading because they don't have agents and a bibliography of printed works? What does your writing have to do with your opinions as a reader?

*scratching head*

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but I tend to take care of my own swatting if I get there first.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, I see two possibilities here. Either non-writers can have no opinions, and that clearly doesn't work. Or else newer writers are permitted fewer opinions than anyone else because no one will want to publish us if we have negative opinions. Because what editors and publishers really want is not so much a good book as a yes-man, apparently? How insulting.

I think that one should behave reasonably as a professional in the field -- that if I'd made personal remarks about Jonathan Carroll because I was disappointed in his latest book, or claimed that I could find evidence of personal defects in the said book, that would be out of line. Similar comments about the book's editors or publishers would be out of line as well. But I find it extremely hard to believe that an editor or publisher in this field would refuse to work with someone on the grounds that they had opinions. In this field? Riiiiight.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I think that was needed.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

You wrote a book called Chinese Immigration?

B

[jimhines.livejournal.com]

We should apply this to other fields, too. I'm watching a cop show right now, and how dare those detectives arrest that perp until they've committed a few murders. Otherwise they have no right to judge.

Sounds like Mr. Carroll was very cool about the whole thing, from what you say. And hey, now you've got correspondence going with a big award-winning author :-)

I dunno. Personally, the whole tattletale nature of the Internet can be really annoying. At the same time, if someone trashed GoblinQuest, or better yet, offered an intelligent criticism of my work (which is what I think you did), I'd want to see it. Not to defend myself, but to understand what readers thought, and decide if the criticism was justified.

Either way, I understand the knotted-gut feeling you must have gotten from all this.

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

Wow. I had no idea that having an agent was a prerequisite for expressing an opinion.

Sorry someone did that to you. At least the author took it just fine.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you should ask that anonymous poster for his bibliography; with emphasis on his works on criticism.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I've written three textbooks, two for grades 4-6 and one for 7-9. Two of them (one per age group) were about Chinese immigration. They were in longer series about immigration.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

And it's *good*. I bought it for my library, when I was a public library person, and was professionally as well as personally happy.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't think you ever told me that.

I did what I could within the bounds I had. Contract work. Y'know.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Heh. Never fear. If you only knew how much hate mail we get at GMR suggesting that we should not critique a book until we've written one. rachelmanija had one heck of a conversation with a writer who shall remain nameless here, but he himself insisted she wasn't qualified to review his book until she herself was published. Which she now is, LOL, but that's beside the point.

Wanna know my credentials? Sure, I'm working on my first book. But I've been reading for 34 years. Thousands and thousands of books. I've damn well earned my stripes, and so has every other reader.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Ack... Personally, I don't respond to random negative reviews I find, lest it freak the writers out. (Which is not to say that Jonathan Carroll shouldn't have, just that I wouldn't.)

Also, I agree with this entire post.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Steve Perry, in case anyone's wondering. In the greatest stroke of serendipity ever, given that my memoir had not yet been published at that point and he had no idea what my background was, he backed up that opinion by quoting my parents' guru Meher Baba at me.

I also liked the email I got regarding a different negative review which was helpfully headlined HATE MAIL.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I've also heard the argument, I think during the venom cock fiasco, that published writers should not criticize books because they know how hard it is to write them.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Not sksperry, though?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I do not give the proverbial tinker's damn how hard it is to write a book, unless I know and care about the author personally, and that's a separate thing. Otherwise I care about how good the book is, and that's it. Toss off books as easily as sneezing or slave years in the pixel mines, it's all the same to me.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

No, the guy who wrote the quite fun "Matador" series about martial artists in spaaaaace, and also a dire urban fantasy that I reviewed for Green Man Review, thereby kicking off a lengthy brou-ha-ha conducted via the letters page.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It didn't sound like "our" Steve Perry.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

What a rotten thing for someone to do. But your response to right on the money (and, to his credit, it sounds to Mr. Carroll understands that too).

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

Some people have the idea that all reviewers are competitors of the writer reviewed*, and have no right to be unfavorable unless they have equal "credentials" to the writer. The rest of us are mere passive spectators, and should shut up.

Michael J. Lowrey
Sunrise Book Reviews
1847 N. 2nd Str.
Milwaukee, WI 53212-3760

never published a word of fiction in his life; so what

*That's only true at the upper levels of "serious" criticism, from what I see.

[katallen.livejournal.com]

Sad as it is, I think authors probably do need to hear from people who've liked previous books when they stop liking them.

And maybe the best way for that to happen *is* that readers post their personal opinions in lj etc, so that if authors choose to they can eavesdrop on what readers are saying.

The link sending and defensiveness doesn't make much sense to me... and I say that as someone who gets moderately pouty at seeing a friend's book totally misread ::grins:: but has yet to organise a lynch mob. (But then I'm not sure why 'someone you don't know didn't like your book' is going to be news worth delivering anyway.)

[zellandyne.livejournal.com]

That is awesome. Which is a totally separate topic, but still worth noting. Of course, I tend to think good educational texts are harder to come by than they should be. And any text that succesfullly teaches someone, regardless of its place on the shelf, is worthwhile.

And back on topic: anonymous comments of that nature are really rather shameful. It's like masturbating in public with a bag over your face.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

Oh, no. I think that commenter was right on the money. You should stop having opinions about books instantly. Until you have published a novel, you can't understand the *pain*. Argh! The pain! In fact, in order to prevent your having opinions, you'd best stop reading books, too. Yes, that's much better. And don't look at the covers, either, because that might lead to opinions.

I promise that when I have a book published, I will resist any and all temptation to rebutt or otherwise contact reviewers, or regular folks who happen to mention my book in their blogs or livejournals. It's just not dignified. :-)

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Yargh. Squirm.

As important as book reviews feel to authors, they aren't for authors. They're for readers.

Thank you. I think some people could have written all day and not expressed this baseline premise so well.

And, in fact, the skills involved in becoming a really good reader (and thus being able to formulate a good critique) only partially overlap - much less than most people would believe, I think - with the skills of being an original writer. I respect both, and know many people who are skilled in both, though they tend to work harder on one skill set than the other, but they're not equivalent.

This makes me think I want to start hunting up authors' e-mail addresses and forwarding them links to positive reviews. I mean, I don't, actually, because the review isn't for the author whether it's positive or negative, and including the author in the conversation would only make things awkward, sort of like having a cup of tea, a cookie, and an apple all at the same time and no table. But how tiresome to think that it's only the negative ones that people have the motivating venom to pass on.

Once I wrote e-mail to a poet's agent about a possible incident of published plagiarism I thought they might want to look into, and it was the poet himself who wrote me back. That made me eep. But it was a positive interaction, even if slightly intimidating. Not like this. Feh.

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed Jonathan Carroll had time to respond to anything. But then, the fact that some authors somehow manage to answer fan mail is still amazing to me.

Books on Chinese immigration? I had no idea -- extremely cool.

I also understand that people can have opinions on a work and disagree on them. For instance, I still think Gaiman's _American Gods_ is a good work and perhaps his best to date, because it is the kind of book I enjoy reading and I think succeeds on what it set out to do. How does it compare to the general canon? I'm not prepared to really debate that these days, even if people can agree on what the canon for fantasy is. (I have an MA in English and grew oh so tired of that.)

But I love exchanging opinions, debating, and discussing when I feel I can contribute something. Sometimes I think there is an objective standard of good writing, sometimes I don't. Is my personal definition of a good book the same as yours? Probably not. But that's a different post!

Mack

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

It's har dto win when you debate reviewers. I can't say I could always refuse the temptation, and I'm sure there are times when it's necessary. But I personally think authors should be leery of engaging pundits in public: what is there to gain?

Mack

[sculpin.livejournal.com]

I do hope that the post inspires Jonathan Carroll to write about deathless cat-owning Puerto Rican insomniacs, if only because that's a book I'd like to read. (I'm reminded a little of "Funes the Memorious".)

It surprised me that this even came up, because I thought your opinion, while passionately expressed, was quite reasonable. And, truth be told, it probably won't keep me from getting around to reading the book -- I like that sort of predictability sometimes. And I'm happy to know that that's what I can reasonably expect.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

"For someone who has yet to find a literary agent, and whose books to date available at Amazon.com have titles like CHINESE IMMIGRATION, it might be prudent for you to temper your public (literary) opinions somewhat, or at least until you have established a presence in the field. Jonathan Carroll has won every major award in this genre, not to mention his books sell in the millions worldwide."

Well in that case, Carroll must be great, but not nearly as awesome as the author of THE SOUTH BEACH DIET.

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

I thought your comments on Glass Soup were articulate and thoughtful. I don't think you have anything to be ashamed of--and your comments on his earlier works make me want to seek them out.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

He could have done the proper thing, which was to tell the forward-er to stuff it up his nose and refrained from contacting the reviewer.

This is a BLOG, dammit. A journal. A place to record views, opinions, daily farp, and anything else that happens to strike the blogger as worth noting.

As for "you need to have the same exact credentials or better as the person you review," oh please. There is a particular personality type that is prone to this, and I have never yet failed to find it (sometimes in the very next post if it's on a newsgroup) either stating an opinion or giving advice for which it has no qualification whatsoever. In short, not only does it not practice what it preaches, it commits the same alleged sin. Only worse.

I'm not a JC fan either and I've had a whole lot of novels published--but then I suppose I'm jealous because he makes more money and/or wins more awards than I do (another favorite Stupid Troll Trick), so I'm probably going to get flak for saying so, too.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Duh: Dr Johnson skewered this one 200+ years ago when he observed that a man did not have to be a carpenter to tell if a table was ill- or well-made.

[scalzi.livejournal.com]

As a writer, I'm pretty generally aware of what anyone writes about any of my books online, either through ego-surfs or my Web Of Spies (tm), but by and large I don't comment about any of them because people have the right to their opinion and to have that opinion unmolested. I make occasional exceptions for people who I know, either in the real world, or through long online association, but even then it's a pretty rare thing. I think if people think an author is hovering somewhere, it makes them twitchy.

(I am not so precious responding to comments about Whatever entries; that's rather more of a peer-to-peer interaction.)

As a sf writer who also reads, I tend to be very careful about what I write about other people's sf books. I go out of my way to praise books I genuinely like, but if I read something new I don't like I tend not to say anything about it publicly. Writers have enough problems as it is, and everything one writes online about someone (or their literary output) will get back to them sooner than later, and also sooner or later I'm going to meet them and I want to minimize the awkward moments at the bar. However, I neither want or expect other sf writers to follow my lead on this; writers shouldn't feel constrained in their opinions on books merely because they're writers themselves.

As a professional critic, I think the idea that only "peers" are qualified to comment on an artist's work is pretty damn stupid. A peer can speak to process and (to some extent) intent and technique, i.e., mechanical issue of the art form in question, and that can be useful. However, anyone is qualified to speak to *output* -- the final work, and how it affects the individual reader/viewer/listener/etc -- and moreoever, they *should,* because people generally value the opinions of friends and people they know more than those of pro critics, peer or no.

The only appropriate answer to someone who tells you that it would be prudent to temper your opinions in *anything* is to tell them to go get stuffed. But you know that already.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And hey, now you've got correspondence going with a big award-winning author :-)

Heh. I doubt that this is the stuff of lifelong friendship, although I also don't feel that it's the stuff of lifelong animosity.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there are times when it's necessary.

I'm not entirely sure of that, myself.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

How much does the Ruritanian government have on your head, anyway?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, most authors really don't want to play the "good books are the ones that sell the most copies" game.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

I don't think it was necessary for him to contact the reviewer--polite or not. The buck should have stopped at the troll. If he was trying to let the reviewer know she had a troll under her bridge, he should have said so.

At the end of the day, really, what does it matter if one blogger dislikes your book? Responding to the review without opening substantive discussion, if the reviewer herself has not sent the review, strikes me as a waste of time. Now if she had sent it him herself, that would have been different--there would have been a true dialogue there, and scope for discussion that might actually help the author with his next book. (Been there, done that, ended up with a very fruitful friendship.)

For me it comes down to how much time anyone wants to waste on trolls. They're the bottom feeders of the online world, and their main diet is attention. Do Not Feed The Energy Creature is my motto and in this case I believe it applies.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Now that I totally agree with.

(Your icon is wonderful btw.)

[jsgbits.livejournal.com]

I always find it amusing when the people with the most vitriolic comments (either aimed at the writer or adding a stick to stir) are almost always anonymous.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

World-class, those photos. Definitely.

My icon is all about the trolls.

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

He could have done the proper thing, which was to tell the forward-er to stuff it up his nose and refrained from contacting the reviewer.

Good point. I should have thought of that.

[pameladean]

No, no -- change it to "'Will Shetterly'". They'll never make it past the punctuation.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You could become Leet and be something like Wi11 Sh3++3r1y. Wouldn't that be cool.

Wait, no. It wouldn't. So confusing sometimes, the difference between "cool" and "unspeakably lame."

timprov pronounces exclamation points on people's signs, on the theory that they wouldn't have put them there if they hadn't meant them, so there are many churches here he pronounces ways like "Hosannabang Lutheran Church" and "Rejoicebang Lutheran Church."

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

It's like masturbating in public with a bag over your face.

And I think that, so far, is the quote of the thread. Thank you for that.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

Why is it that you only have to have published more than x to criticize something, but any lame-brain with a keyboard can praise something? Where are the police of "You can't say you liked that book until you've published one of your own"?

[jenfullmoon.livejournal.com]

I just had pretty much the same experience today, only I was caught out by Google rather than someone forwarding. Oh, teh pain.

Though at this point, the author and I are pretty much chatting on the offending blog post at this point... kinda funny, that.

[jenfullmoon.livejournal.com]

Heh. If I ever get published, I actually plan on NOT reading anything that has to do with my book, because it would drive me crazy to know and I'm happier in ignorance.

Then again, I'm also the weirdo who refuses to check her web page stats and stuff like that too.