I love nothing more than people arguing about what a good kind of book might be, what a review ought to do, how we should write, how we should read. When you get caught up in these conflicts you realize how much you care about them. And there’s nothing more fun than caring about books, about reading and writing, and how it ought to be done.
Ron Charles, Washington Post Book World Fiction Editor posted to twitter the following twitter posts.
Editing too many reviews by writers who don’t realize: People don’t want to read you. You must grab & keep convincing them graf by graf.
Then:
Reviewers: No throat-clearing. No “I” unless you’re truly famous. No obscure references 2 show how smart you are. Keep grammar clear, direct
The golden-voiced Ed Champion takes exception, and throws down the literary reviewing gauntlet.
Mr. Charles’s editorial sensibilities call for clear and direct writing. But his other entreaties are problematic. He asks that a first-person perspective or a sense of playfulness through reference — vital variables that might permit readers to get excited, interested, or enthused about a book — be omitted from the equation… [more...]
And, wonderfully, he goes on to take a lede from a random review in the Post and put through some editorial skewering.
What will Ron Charles answer? How will the Twittervese react? Will bloggers pile-on? Is this yet another sign of the conflict between old & new media?
If there is anything better than a literary spat, I don’t know what it is. So I am hereby fanning the flames of this one.
(Speaking of which, God Bless the National Post Afterword crew for posting short reviews titled: Buy it or Skip it? Canadian letters need more hardened, uncompromising reviews, and seeing “Skip it” listed as often as “Buy it” triggers in me a quietude generally unknown when contemplating CanLit.)
