There are ethics in reviewing, are there? ~ guest post by Jo Case [19.02.2010]
Late last year, I gave an informal seminar on book reviewing to a group of fledgling young writers, all members of the editorial committee of Express Media’s Voiceworks. The seminar was held after business hours at Melbourne’s spiffy new Wheeler Centre, then yet to be officially opened. Arriving early, realising my mobile phone was out of credit, there was nothing to do but wait on the front steps until someone came out to find me. I sat cross-legged on the rain-damp cement and read over my too-copious notes, until I was joined by a polite young man in a baseball cap and parka, also holding a useless mobile phone and early to meet someone on the other side of the locked doors.
‘So, what are you doing here?’ he asked as we huddled in the doorway, leaning away from the particularly grating cold that only a fractious Melbourne summer can inflict. ‘I’m giving a talk on book reviewing. To some young writers.’ ‘Oh yeah? What will you say?’ ‘All kinds of things. Talk about how to write reviews, the ethics of reviewing, that kind of thing.’ ‘So there are ethics in reviewing, are there?’ By now I’d realised, to my embarrassment, that I was talking to Nam Le (who I’d met a year earlier when The Boat was published). ‘Of course,’ I said, and then broke the awkwardness of having a conversation about book reviewing while pretending I didn’t realise I was talking to a major author by reintroducing myself. After we exchanged pleasantries about the holiday season, he laughed and asked again what I would be teaching these young writers about the ethics of reviewing. ‘Can I see your notes?’ he joked.
To me, that encounter said a lot about Australia’s reviewing culture and the problems and pleasures inherent in it. The book industry is a small place and you don’t have to be around it for long to be on at least chatting-on-the-steps-of-The-Wheeler-Centre acquaintance with various authors, publishers, reviewers and literary editors.
The number one job of a book critic is to critique the book they’ve been assigned – to give an honest opinion of its worth, without prejudice. When considering that ‘worth’, which is necessarily objective, they need to try to understand the book as the author (and to a lesser extent, the publisher) intended it – and assess its success or otherwise on that basis. Of course, this means considering the book within its chosen genre and with its intended audience in mind.
This all sounds simple enough, but giving that honest, unprejudiced opinion can be insanely difficult in practice, partly because of that insular nature of the book industry and the fact that there’s a high likelihood that the reviewer will know one or more of the following involved with the book: the publisher, the agent, the author, or even the author’s friends. And while every reviewer worth their salt knows that none of these things should matter, it requires constant self-vigilance to ensure that they don’t.
Many working reviewers are simultaneously nursing along a book project of their own, or hope to one day. Or they work in academia, alongside many Australian writers. Or they’re supplementing their income from writing their own books – as most published writers must somehow do, unless they’re Peter Carey or Tim Winton. And author-reviewers tend to remember that they too will be reviewed in future, or were in the past. (When I was commissioning fiction reviews at Australian Book Review, I went through a stage of trying to commission novelists, and was surprised by how often I met with a variation of ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t review. I know how awful it feels to have your work criticised and I don’t want to have to do it to someone else.’)
In addition to all of the above potentially awkward situations, there’s the biggest hurdle posed by Australia’s small literary scene. Even if you don’t know the author you’re reviewing in any way, you know there’s a strong likelihood you’ll run into them someday, at a book launch or writers festival ... or on the steps of The Wheeler Centre.
So, what do you do? Well, here’s what I shared with the young writers from Express Media but was too embarrassed to talk about with Nam Le: my own personal code of ethics, developed over several years of reviewing for different publications. It’s a constant work in progress, informed by experience.
Here’s a fairly random selection of my rules for myself: I won’t review a book that I feel obliged to like or dislike, for any reason. If I’ve been offered a book for review that I’ve already read and disliked more than liked, I’ll always tell the editor commissioning the review so they have the option of starting with at least a chance of the reviewer liking it. If I criticise a book, I’ll back up that criticism with a considered reason, or an example from the text. I’m careful not to give away the ending or any key plot points of a book – using the publisher’s blurb as a guide for how far to go (which can sometimes leave a lot of leeway). I won’t review a book written by a friend, a direct colleague or family (not that the latter has ever come up).
Of course, grey areas often appear without warning. What is the definition of a ‘friend’? Is it someone you’d go out to dinner with? Someone whose house you’ve been to? Or does someone you chat to at parties count, too?
I think the most important ingredient in a healthy literary culture is honesty. Trying to honestly understand an author’s work; honestly telling an audience whether you’d recommend they spend their money on it; honestly assessing a book’s place among those of its kind. Being honest with your editor if you’re unsure about a potential conflict of interest and letting them make the call. If you’re really committed to honesty, those bothersome grey areas matter less. It matters less whether I’m a barely classified ‘friend’ of X than whether I’m willing to say exactly what I think of X’s work and why – regardless of whether or not we are friendly, regardless of whether X might endorse my book one day, regardless of my feelings about X’s publisher or editor. And if any of those factors interferes with my ability to be honest – which of course they sometimes might – I need to consider and recognise that before I take on the review, and say no.
I’ll leave the last word on reviewing ethics to a couple of far wiser reviewers than me, in the form of links. Adelaide-based critic Kerryn Goldsworthy’s list of entities to which a reviewer has a responsibility is just spot-on. And ditto to John Updike’s six rules of book reviewing. Both excellent bases for developing your own code of ethics.
Do you think Australia’s literary culture is honest? Do you have any rules for yourself about reviewing – or rules you think reviewers should follow? Whose responsibility is a healthy reviewing culture: media proprietors, literary editors, reviewers, all of the above? I’d love to hear others’ thoughts.
Jo Case is books editor of The Big Issue and a former deputy editor of Australian Book Review. She reviews regularly for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
She is also associate editor of Kill Your Darlings, which features a provocative lead essay by Gideon Haigh on Australia’s reviewing culture.
Subscribe to our RSS feed
Follow us on Twitter
Comments
Rachel @ Musings of An Inappropriate Woman — 19 February at 04:53PM
Fascinating post - as a book reviewer, this is an issue I've thought a lot about (and written about) myself, for all the reasons you've listed.
As you say, the Australian lit scene (and, I would argue, the lit scene as a whole) is small enough that you're likely to run into most people eventually - especially if they write the kind of work you like to read (and in many cases, write yourself). As such, I have several times reviewed the work of people I'm friendly with - and in even more cases, become friendly with when they've contacted me once the review is published. Those I haven't met, I suspect I will some day in the not-too-distant future.
My basic code of ethics is that I'll review the work of people I know (as in have some sort of acquaintanceship with), but only if on balance I like the work more than I dislike it. And I'll still raise the criticisms I do have in the review, because arguing with a book is part of engaging with it (particularly in non-fiction, which is my area of focus). I probably wouldn't review the book of someone I considered a friend - although I can't say for sure where I draw that line.
The most important thing to me, however, is to stick to the parameters of what I think a book review is about: showing how to book fits with the author's previous work and broader debates in this area, outlining its key arguments, and then its strengths and weaknesses. If the book is interesting enough (and I only review books that are), and if you're a good writer, you should be able to produce a review that's interesting to read without resorting to a cheap hatchet job.
Tim Coronel — 20 February at 02:45PM
At Bookseller+Publisher magazine (http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au) we have a slightly different perspective, because we are reviewing books pre-publication in order to help inform bookshops' buying decisions. Our reviews aren't meant to be 'literary' judgements about the quality of a book, but more pragmatic ones about its saleability.
Nonetheless, there are similar ethical considerations. We try to avoid conflicts of interest: most of our reviewers are booksellers, teachers or librarians, but some are aspiring or emerging authors, or they might be ex-booksellers now working in publishing. So we don't allow reviewers who work for a publisher to review books from another publisher unless they can demonstrate that there is no competition or conflict (i.e: a reviewer who works for a solely educational publisher might be allowed to review a general trade book).
There can be some interesting grey areas, though. A good recent example is that one of our long-term children's book reviewers has been involved in the industry in many aspects for over 30 years and is now semi-retired. We recently gave her the task of reviewing the revivial/continuation titles in a kids series that she had a key role in creating many years ago. Her knowledge of the series history really informed the review -- and she was upfront in saying that she was the originator of the series.
Jo — 20 February at 07:55PM
Hi Rachel - thanks for your thoughtful reponse. I'm a semi-regular lurker on your blog (and just then read and enjoyed the post you link to), so nice to chat with you over here. Yours sounds like a pretty sensible code. When it gets tricky is, as you say, drawing that line between people you know and friends. I do try not to review anyone I think I'd feel too uncomfortable to criticise for any reason (generally social reasons) but the funny thing is, in my experience I sometimes don't realise I've crossed that line until I have accepted the commission and I'm writing my review and feeling uncomfortable. Which is a good thing I think, because in that situation my responsibility is to ignore that discomfort and pretend to myself any personal knowledge of the author or their associates doesn't exist until I've filed the review. Which (I tell myself) hopefully makes me a better reviewer. Your description of what a book review is about is pretty good too. It is (again) trickier with fiction, which I tend to review a lot of, than non-fiction though - that criteria is more subjective, and pointing out flaws is often necessarily more personal.
Tim, that's a good point about perspectives being influenced by the publication you're writing for too. I utterly agree with this. Part of your approach to reviewing has to be, as Kerryn Goldsworthy points out, your responsibility to the editor who commissioned you - which means writing the review in the spirit that publication runs their review pages. Which involves similar ethical considerations, but often with a twist.
For instance, the reviews I write for Readings Monthly, a commercial publication, are different from those I write for, say, The Age or SMH. The purpose of the publication is very clearly to sell books, so I emphasise the positive. I think that's okay in that very specific instance. Then again, I don't say anything I don't believe in those reviews - I just go by the 'if you can't say anything nice ...' Similarly, there are bloggers who only review books they enjoyed as a policy, which I also think is fine. (And why not, if you're doing something for the love of it?)
I like your recent example too Tim - that's an excellent instance of a reviewer's conflict of interest actually serving the review and making it a different KIND of review. No one expects impartiality from that review, but then again, their very partiality makes it especially interesting and declaring that interest means the reader can judge for themselves.
Kayaguera — 02 August at 10:16PM
I like very much your ideas because I share them. I look forward to your next posts.