July 02, 2009
Another reason not to play the Alain de Botton card when faced with a negative review
The Telegraph will publish a whole article about what a jerk you are, in effect hyping the offending item in your own country as well.
Comforting
Every now and again life intrudes on my normal blog-reading habits and I take an inadvertent, extended break from it all. After such periods, it is always reassuring to learn that things haven't changed at all since the last time I looked. To wit, Andrew Sullivan is still obsessing over Sarah Palin. He's going to be doing it twenty years from now, too, I'm sure, like Biafra with Reagan.
June 30, 2009
The best response is silence but...
... if Alice Hoffman's twitter outburst exemplifies how not to respond to unfavorable reviews, this song by an actor in response to a critic who slagged his singing pretty much works. (NSFW, I'd guess.)
And the critic responds here.
I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make.
A very famous novelist named Alice Hoffman flipped out over a lukewarm review in the Boston Globe on twitter over the weekend, publishing the reviewer's email and phone number and inviting readers to harass her. (Hoffman's twitter account has now been deleted and she has issued an apology, but the spate of ill-considered tweets will, of course, live forever on the internet.)
The title of this post is from a comment left by the British essayist Alain de Botton on the blog of Caleb Crain, who reviewed his latest unfavorably in the New York Times Book Review.
And in this interview (via EW's PopWatch), Richard Ford confirms that his response to one negative review was to take one of the reviewer's own books out and shoot it with a gun. (The reviewer was, incidentally, one Alice Hoffman.)
Clearly, two of these responses are unwise, embarrassing, over-the-top and kind of psycho. (The third, shooting a book with a gun, is so evidently reasonable that I find myself shaking my head in astonishment that it never occurred to me to do it.)
Yet even though it is clearly wise to contrive to appear to be a good sport in the face of a mean review, I would guess that the secret thoughts of approximately 100% of writers in that situation track Alain de Botton's sentiments more or less precisely. And the authors who claim they never read the damn reviews: well of course they're lying. They're the ones to watch most of all.
Nicholas von Hoffmann famously said he stopped writing book reviews because "it's not worth $250 to make an enemy for life." For good or ill, a writer never ever ever forgets an unfavorable review and maintains a meticulously-updated enemies list in his or her head.
Several of those commenting on the Hoffman-Silman affair have mentioned that the review in question wasn't even all that bad. But the reviewer, Roberta Silman, is a seasoned book reviewer and a novelist herself, so presumably she was aware that none of her incidental, conciliatory comments about what a big fan she was would prevent the inevitable result, which is the author in tears in the basement humming a jarring tune, sticking pins in a Roberta Silman-shaped doll and quietly plotting revenge against a background montage of black-and-white images of a troubled childhood. I mean, we've all been there.
Crazy system, I know, but that's the way it works.
Added: Roberta Silman's courtly response is here.
June 29, 2009
June 28, 2009
June 26, 2009
Ayn contacted me with a personal letter (and a copy of Atlas Shrugged) through my agents.
The Farrah Fawcett - Ayn Rand connection.
June 25, 2009
"The physical act of writing a novel takes a long time..."
John Scalzi on "why new novelists are kinda old."
June 23, 2009
Quote of the Day
From Ray Bradbury:
"Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’”
(via bookslut.)
June 21, 2009
June 18, 2009
June 17, 2009
Everyone, at All Times, Must Have the Right Hair
They're making a movie about the Runaways, which could wind up being great, or not, like most things.
Casting call here, but note the hair specifications:
This is not Austin Powers, over-the-top 1970s. This is real, a reproduction of true events, very authentic rock’n’roll in the 1970s.Girls' hair should be long, straight, or wavy—no modern cuts or colors—only natural colors. Hair can be shorter, but not super short. Hair was not stick-straight; no appliances to straighten the hair were used. Guys' hair should be shaggy, longish, or completely long—no crew cuts.
Hair for both sexes was generally parted in the middle and worn long or waved back Farrah Fawcett style. 18-to-look-younger guys should have no facial hair.
I Wish it Could be 2006 Again
Michael Schaub, one of my favorite book-bloggers of old, is back posting on bookslut.
