Why I don't write negative reviews

Recently I wrote that I do not request review books I believe are not to my taste. At the same time I like to believe my taste is fairly broad. I am more interested in quality writing than in genre. I read science fiction (recently Isaac Asimov), mysteries (Tara French), thrillers (Thomas Perry), historical fiction (Hilary Mandel), even an occasional fantasy (Kate Atkinson). I don't do well with romance, horror, or westerns.  I respond best to and am most interested in literary fiction. 

Occasionally of course I pick up a book that looks as if it should appeal and discover it doesn't. In the past, I've read on in the usually mistaken hope it will improve. (I also believe you have to clean your plate or else no dessert.) Only recently have I decided there are too many books I want to read to invest any more time with one I don't want to live with.

I've read reviews in which the writer seemed more interested in demonstrating his superiority than in discussing the book. The book exists only as an excuse for vituperation. Why spend time on an inferior work? After reading such a review with guilty pleasure, I feel mildly degraded. I'd rather promote a good book than dump on a bad one.

Especially when posterity may show you up as a fool. The New York Times Sunday Book Review recently printed excerpts from its 1961 review of Catch-22: The book, pronounced the reviewer, "has much passion, comic and fervent, but it gasps for want of craft and sensibility. A portrait gallery, a collection of anecdotes, some of them wonderful, a parade of scenes, some of them finely assembled, a series of descriptions, yes, but the book is no novel . . ."

No novel? Are you sure? I'm glad my name is not permanently attached to such condescension.

Why Malcolm X and Martin Luther King are relevant today

The subtitle of Professor Joseph’s dual biography is “The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr,” and the book’s goal is to demonstrate that King was more revolutionary and Malcolm more pragmatic than the general view of the two leaders. Given the current state of race relations in America, the book could not be more timely.

Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas at Austin. His five earlier books include The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era; Waiting ‘til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America; and Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama.

He acknowledges from the beginning that there were substantive differences between Malcolm and Kain, in the role of violence in organizing a political revolution and on the source of racial oppression. But a binary understanding of the men is incomplete.

“Two-dimensional characterization of their activism, relationship, and influence,” he writes, “obscure how the substantive differences between them were often complimentary. It underestimates the way they influenced each other. And it shortchanges the political radicalism always inherent in each, even when they seemed to be reformist or reactionary.”

After two short chapters sketching their backgrounds (“The Radical Dignity of Malcolm X” and “The Radical Citizenship of Martin Luther King”) Joseph spends the rest of the book on the ways in which the two reacted to, were affected by, and influenced the Civil Rights movement covering roughly the period 1954 (Brown vs. Board of Education) through February 1965 (Malcolm’s assassination) to April 1968 (King’s assassination).

The Sword and the Shield could be read as a primer on how to effect social change. King in Birmingham, AL, advocating nonviolent resistance with rallies, meetings, and boycotts of downtown stores. Malcolm arguing that it was necessary to fight against police brutality. “President Kennedy,” said Malcolm, “did not send troops to Alabama when dogs were biting black babies. He then sent troops after the Negroes demonstrated their ability to defend themselves.”

When an off-duty police lieutenant shot a 15-year-old black teenager in New York City in July 1964, protests erupted into a full-scale riot in Harlem. Martin went to the city in the temporary vacuum among black militants because Malcolm was in Africa. It was a fruitless. “Harlem exposed King to a deeper reality of institutional racism that made him better able to understand Malcolm X’s political rage, as well as the intractable forces that remained obstacles to the revolutionary changes that true justice required.”

Readers who want a more complete portrait of Malcolm X should read Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. For the life of King, there is the three-volume biography and history of the Civil Rights movement:  Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and At Canaan’s Edge.

I lived through the period The Sword and the Shield covers. I met King (my college newspaper held a fund-raiser for the SCLC) and lived in Harlem and I clearly recall the 1964 riot. Reading Joseph’s book, however, made me wonder if I were sleepwalking the entire time. So much I didn’t know. So much is new. So much is made clear.

In his Epilogue, Joseph writes there is no way “to understand the history, struggle, and debate over race and democracy in contemporary America without understanding Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.’s relationship to each other, to their own era, and, most crucially, to our time.”

While the Civil Rights movement outlawed the worst of Jim Crow, America has managed to innovate “new forms of racial oppression in criminal justice, public schools, residential segregation, and poverty that scar much of the black community.”

The Sword and the Shield puts an important period in American history and two key figures into context.

And now, for another point of view

I never read reviews of a book I'm reviewing until I finish my review (if then). I do of course look at the promotional material and the blurbs the publisher has managed to obtain. For one thing, I want to know whether I am an appropriate critic for the book at all.

For example: "CIA Operative, Roger O'Neil goes deep undercover in Russia and teams up with a group of SAS Soldiers amidst a growing nuclear threat against America and a ruthless killer stalking them from the shadows" is not a book I should be reviewing. 

Nor is this: "Boy meets girl … boy dies … boy's brain is uploaded into a computer … together they explore the real meaning of love . . . a second chance through a secret government agency . . . the lovers embark on a journey of discovery as they explore the meaning of life, hope, courage . . ." I am afraid my willingness to suspend disbelief is not willing—perhaps unfairly—to accept this premise. 

When I thoroughly enjoy a book, however, I do occasionally look up the one- and two-star reviews on Amazon. If I think the book was so terrific, why doesn't everyone? Have I missed something? 

I've just given an enthusiastic review of Anne Enright's Actress, but not everyone agrees with my endorsement:

—"The prose was very disjointed, and the characters were like caricatures. I found myself not really caring what happened to any of them."

—"This is my first novel by this writer. I find I’m not really invested in most of the characters and it’s kind around so much between different generations I’m getting lost. I think also the skipping around breaks the emotional connection tonight [sic] story. Not really interested in finishing. But will try."

—"Having read Enright's previous work, I was looking forward to reading an insightful, wry, beautifully written novel. It is, instead, an insipid People magazine inspired look at a daughter with a famous actress for a mother. Oh the suffering. Men in the apartment. Drinking. Self-involved mother. Mother who seems to win the competition for cutest in the family. It was unreadable. There were hints everywhere that maybe the mother wasn't an actress but the writer Edna O'Brien and the author is imagining being the daughter Ms. O'Brien never had. In any case, don't bother. It's juvenile, repetitive (endless telling of parties and disappointments) and dull."

I didn't catch the O'Brien hints, but even if they are valid, I don't see how it diminishes Enright's novel. Indeed, if Actress is an evocation of Edna O'Brien's life by her imaginary daughter, it raises my opinion of the book another notch or so.

—"This is such a disappointment. Feels like Enright, usually such a gorgeous, fearless writer, could have penned this in her sleep. This subject doesn't remotely capture her talent, her usual ferocity or wicked humor. It's a long-winded, conventional account of an actress's silly, uninvolving life, told by her daughter. I barely recognize Enright in it. Surprisingly, disappointingly dull."

Clearly these last two people and I have different ideas of what is dull. They imply Enright's earlier work is more insightful, wry, beautifully written, gorgeous, and fearless when I thought Actress's prose was splendid. As I said in my review, I'd never heard of Enright, but with these endorsements I'll be checking out her other books. Watch this space. 

Life upon the wicked stage can be a trial

I picked up Anne Enright's new novel Actress although I'd never heard of the author or the book. I did not read the flap copy although I did look at the back cover praise, which told me Enright is a Man Booker Prize winner so how much of a risk was I taking? 

Coming to a book or a movie without having read the reviews means you come to it almost naked although not entirely because if Enright is a prize winner and has published ten books she has to have something. But this new novel, was entirely fresh to me and I read it perhaps the best way, without expectations, without assumptions. 

By writing this, I am, to some extent, taking the edge off your opportunity to experience the same pleasure. But I'm going ahead in the hope you'll read Actress anyway.

It is a novel in the form of a memoir. The narrator is an Irish woman, Norah FitzMaurice, who is a novelist writing about her actress mother, Katherine O'Dell. One of the many reasons I like the novel is because Enright ignores the advice for how to write a novel: inciting incident followed by rising action reaching a climax and denouement. I'm not sure Actress has a plot any more than any life has a plot.

Enright, writing from Norah's point of view throughout explores, Kate's history, her grandparents' history, her own sexual and romantic history, Ireland's recent history with Bloody Sunday and The Troubles in Northern Ireland. There is no father and that's one of the threads the author uses to pull readers through the book. Will Norah discover her father?

Another thread—and this is hardly a spoiler because it appears on page 16 at the end of the first chapter—is Katherine's shooting film producer Boyd O'Neill in the foot. By that time she does it, Katherine has been a star in American movies, on Broadway, on Dublin stages, and on Irish television (most famous for appearing in a classic Irish butter commercial.)

Because Norah seems to share characteristics with Enright ("I have written five novels . . ." p249; "Anne Enright is the author of five novels . . . " flap copy), and because the writing is so particular, so vivid, and so apt would be easy to believe that Norah is Enright thinly disguised despite the author's disclaimer. But, as Enright said in a 2008 interview, "My father is a retired civil servant—my mother is also a retired civil servant but she retired very early after she got married." So Katherine O'Dell—beautiful, sparkling, careless—is not Enright's mother.

But who cares? It is some kind of fallacy to confuse an author with her character. You read Actress for passages like this: "He was the kind of man who always knew better than the person he was speaking to. Boyd love an inaccuracy, because an inaccuracy could render everything else you said void. It was just a trick. And the copyright trick was another trick. As his authority began to fall apart for me, I see him as a series of half-lies and, perhaps frightened, manipulations, he was always ahead of you, Boyd . . . "

Another pleasure of the book is Enright's description of marriage: "In the morning, I can tell without opening my eyes where the window is, and if it faces the dawn. I sweep my hand in an arc across the sheet to find you recently gone, a thermal ghost in the cotton. Or the bed is cold. Or I bump agains you, a slight shock of skin roughened by hair and you do not stir. I leave my hand there until you wake. There is a moment of silence. Of silent wakefulness. And then you turn. It always amazes me. Even though I have dragged you from your dream, you are pleased to see me there. It feels like forgiveness, every time."

How wonderful to read about a woman who has been married for thirty years and is still in love with her husband. I'm glad Katherine O'Dell was not my mother, but I'm glad Enright created her.

How to make things better

 The Opportunity Agenda has to be one of a library of books proposing ideas that if pursued will, the authors believe, make America if not great much better than it was before the pandemic.

Subtitled A Bold Democratic Plan to Grow the Middle Class, the book discusses with statistics and illustrative anecdotes five areas in which Sly James and Winston Fisher think should and can be improved: childcare for pre-school children; high school and college education; infrastructure; the social contract, and entrepreneurship.  

Unlike any conservative proposal I've seen for a Trump second term, these are all positive. The only Republican message I've seen supporting a second Trump seems promote a solidly conservative Supreme Court and more right-wing Federal Judges and that if the Democrats win the presidency, the country will turn socialist and become as dysfunctional as Venezuela. 

Sly James was the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, from 2011 to 2019; Winston Fisher is a partner in Fisher Brothers, a real estate firm based in New York City and is CEO of Area15. They argue that the Democratic party is behind held back by tired, stale proposals and is past due for an overhaul.

Unfortunately for the authors who probably began writing before this year, we're in the middle of a pandemic, so proposals that would have been obvious, sensible, and relatively (relatively) easy to implement six months ago now have to take potential Covid-19 infection, social-distancing, a crashing economy, and all the other disruptions into account. This does not vitiate their ideas, but it does make things harder.

For example, James and Fisher make a strong case for affordable pre-school childcare. A woman who takes three years off of work to care for a child loses not only that income, she's three years behind in wage growth, lost retirement assets and benefits. Also a case can be made that for many low-income families, their children will flourish more in a professionally-run facility than at home. Of course low-income families—and many middle-class families—cannot afford childcare. And who wants to send their child into a group while infections rage?

They argue that high schools and colleges are not graduating students with the skills they need to find jobs in our evolving economy. They could spend more time in school, less time on summer vacation, and need courses that will train them for 21st century jobs. The situation is serious enough that corporations have stepped in. "At the University of Memphis, the FedEx Institute of Technology worked with software giant SAS to develop student expertise in data analytics and business intelligence. The courses are designed to prepare existing and potential employees to pass exams developed and curated by SAS itself, making the university a gateway into an established company."

In their chapter on improving the country's roads, bridges, dams, airports, water treatment facilities, James and Fisher ask, "Why are so many Democrats remiss in shining a spotlight on infrastructure? . . . We believe Democratic candidates fear that mentioning the nation's rotting infrastructure will simply remind voters of their frustration with incompetent public bureaucracies." One answer may be public-private initiatives.

Thirty years of conservative Republicans have poisoned the well by convincing many citizens that government is not solution, it's the problem. Cut taxes and get government under control. Gut the Environmental Protection Agency, the Center for Disease Control, the State Department, and more and more and more so the agencies cannot perform their functions effectively, and the conservatives have proven their point: public bureaucracies don't serve the public.

The chapter on the social contract points out that fewer and fewer Americans join an organization after graduation and retire from it forty years later with a healthy pension and a gold watch. With the economy evolving the way it is and with the gig economy growing we need to find a way workers can keep their health insurance and pension as they move from job to job, industry to industry. The alternative will be a population badly-housed, badly-fed, unhealthy elderly. We'll return to the days when grandad or gramma finished her life in a grown child's home.

James and Fisher argue that access to capital is what depresses entrepreneurship in this country. I believe it's more complicated (and their anecdotes are undercut by the information that businesspeople were able to find capital eventually). As a volunteer business advisor for a national non-profit I routinely see clients who have a skill and want to turn it into a business. Unfortunately, many of them have no idea of how to create a business plan, how to read a financial statement, how to manage a business. I wouldn't lend them money, and I don't have to consider my depositors. This, however, goes back to the need for junior colleges and universities to teach skills people can use.

To win elections, Democrats must convince you that what they propose will do something for you (the authors' italics). James says, "If we're going to be a winning party for more than one election cycle at a time, we need to embrace bold, disruptive ideas that offer equal opportunity through access to capital, education, and support for entrepreneurs." 

Fisher adds, "Democrats need to think bigger than the current election and shed old habits and get-even mentalities to grow our base and win over voters across the political spectrum. We can do this by offering all Americans the skills, tools, and opportunities they need to participate in the 21st century economy."

While I would liked to read the concrete proposals (who is going to pay for—subsidize—childcare? how does portable health care work?) I would hope that there are people in the Biden campaign studying The Opportunity Agenda and crafting legislation right now. The country could do worse.