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OverviewFaint Praise takes a hard and long-overdue look at the institution of book reviewing. Gail Pool, herself an accomplished reviewer and review editor, analyzes the inner workings of this troubled trade to show how it works - and why it so often fails to work well. She reveals why bad reviewing happens despite good intentions and how it is that so many intelligent people who love books can say so many unintelligent things on their behalf. Pool takes readers behind the scenes to describe how editors choose books for review and assign them to reviewers, and she examines the additional roles played by publishers, authors, and readers. In describing the context of reviewing, she reveals a culture with little interest in literature, much antipathy to criticism, and a decided weakness for praise. In dissecting the language of reviews, Pool demonstrates how it often boils down to unbelievable hype. Pool explores the multifaceted world of book reviewing today, contrasting traditional methods of reviewing with alternative book coverage, from Amazon.com to Oprah, and suggesting how the more established practices could be revised. She also explores the divide between service journalism practiced by reviewers versus the alleged high art served up by literary critics - and what this fuzzy boundary between reviewing and criticism really means. Faint Praise is a book not just for those who create and review books but also for everyone who loves books. By demystifying this hidden process, pool helps everyone understand how to read reviews - and better decide what to read. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Gail PoolPublisher: University of Missouri Press Imprint: University of Missouri Press Edition: Annotated edition Dimensions: Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.40cm , Length: 22.90cm Weight: 0.277kg ISBN: 9780826217288ISBN 10: 0826217281 Pages: 192 Publication Date: 30 July 2007 Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate , Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Out of stock  The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available. Table of ContentsReviewsFreelance journalist and former Boston Review editor Pool (Other People's Mail, 2000) takes the pulse of the American book-reviewing profession and finds it weakening.Considerable research enriches her jeremiad with pertinent examples from American literary history. How can it happen, Pool asks, that such a serious enterprise works so badly that it often fails to work at all? She is unhappy about several things: long essays that deal less with the book that with its context (see: New York Review of Books), routinely positive reviews by noted writers, editors who seem unwilling to cover titles by little-known authors, reviews-for-pay, the unprofessional reviews that now proliferate on such sites as Amazon.com (a frequent target here). After laying out her case in broad strokes, the author examines more closely a number of issues, including the difficult process of selecting which books to cover and which writer to assign. She finds chaos and bias throughout as she discusses such celebrated mismatches and controversies as the contretemps between Norman Mailer and John Simon over the latter's review of Harlot's Ghost. She devotes a chapter to the issue of accuracy and urges critics to judge books on their own terms, not to condemn Ed McBain for failing to be Leo Tolstoy. At the end, Pool raises and answers two questions. The first - Are reviews necessary? - earns a quick, positive reply. Addressing the more complex issue of what can be done to improve reviewing, she suggests we find more sensible book-selection policies, improved means of rewarding reviewers and better ways to train editors, whose quality, she believes, is cardinal. A code of ethics would be nice, too.Some well-deserved pats on the back and slaps upside the head. (Kirkus Reviews) Author InformationGail Pool is a freelance journalist and reviewer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A former editor of the Boston Review and a member of the National Book Critics Circle, Pool is the editor of Other People's Mail: An Anthology of Letter Stories (University of Missouri Press). Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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