An apparently middling novel lands with barely a ripple, and yet it merits a full-throated thrashing in Metropolitan Review. If the critic is correct about the book--and who knows if he is--the question surrounding the novel is the same as the one surrounding the review, who cares?
Note to reviewers: Never ever ever cite Goodreads as evidence of a book’s quality. Nor should you mention other reviewers bad reviews in your review—total amateur hour. Worse it reveals you were biased against the book to start with.
I wasn't gonna leave a comment, but considering the others, I will. This is a good review! Sure, it's a little harsh, but so what? Negative reviews are necessary.
I particularly liked this line, but maybe others didn't...
"John and Sophie have given up on publishing, but hold to a despondent, half-articulated belief that their lack of success is proof that the publishing industry is set against real, impassioned writing."
You see this idea--that negative reviews should be binned rather than published--a fair amount nowadays, and I truly don't get it. What's the point of engaging in cultural criticism if you're going to stifle every negative or critical review? "If you can't say anything nice, say nothing" is a fine rule for interpersonal interactions but a terrible one for media criticism, in my opinion.
And FWIW, I'm not even entirely on board with this review; I haven't read the book, but some of the specific lines that the reviewer excoriates seem better to me than they did to him (the idea of a future "abstract with possibility" seems to me to have more nuance and heft than the reviewer credits, for example). But that's fine; it was an interesting review! And I'd never even heard of this book or author before, so I'd wager there's at least a small "all publicity is good publicity" effect here too.
Hello Vlad, I agree with you. Like it or loathe it, the review is thought-provoking at more than one level. In addition, I, for one, found it highly enjoyable. Blake Smith has a fine caustic turn of phrase. Regarding the 'all publicity is good publicity' effect, Norman Mailer's play The Deer Park received excoriating reviews. He used them to publicise the play! I might add that if someone took the trouble to pen a Blake-Smith style hatchet job of one of my novels, I'd be pleased they took the trouble. I might even post links to it far and wide.
Since I teach criticism, and I've just written a piece defending negative criticism, let me suggest why this negative review is not as effective as it could be.
The opening is a commonplace of negative criticism: "Set for Life would be more interesting if it were awful. Free of truly embarrassing passages, even in tone, never purple, caricatural, or unhinged." This is the same strategy that I heard applied to a student in my MFA program, which got me started writing about art criticism. It's poisonous but inconclusive.
The first judgment is that "awful" artworks can be "interesting"—but that word has been a notoriously elusive one ever since minimalists used it to displace judgment from modernist quality to postmodern intellectual curiosity. "Interesting" leaves it open whether the work is good or not.
The second sentence implies that "truly embarrassing passages," an unven tone, "purple" prose, caricature, and "unhinged" writing might also be interesting—but it does not specify what would make such writing sufficiently embarassing or purple or unhinged to be "interesting," or whether that would mean the work would be good. There's also no explanation of the six quite different potentially good qualities ("awful," "truly embarrassing," uneven, "purple," "caricatural," and "unhinged"), which seem partly unrelated to one another. Are they a representative list? If not, what other concepts, and what relation between them, would adequately define the "interesting"?
The person I remember from my own MFA program was crushed by his instructors' insinuations. The recipient of a critique like this understands only that their work is insufficient, and doesn't know whether it's worth trying to make the work conform to any one or more of the criteria.
I am not arguing against Smith's review, or defending Ewell's book. I think negative reviews can be very helpful. I'm advocating for more fully articulated criticism. Judments need to be articulated to the point where the critic's assumptions, and the victim's options, are clear.
Smith's principal criticism is that Ewell's book doesn't "refresh genres and tropes" of the campus novel, that it's "stale" and "unoriginal" and its author "hardly used any imagination." Ewell's writing, Smith says, has a "vague, wordy appearance of thoughtfulness" and "plods along" using "pointless" phrases. He gives examples of lines and ideas that conform to several of these, and he has general ideas about what could be improved about the plot and voicing—but behind those criticisms are unstated assumptions about modernist fiction and its relation to social realities. Can an "awful" or "truly embarrassing" book really be a good thing, aside from its entertainment value as postmodern kitsch? Do we really want "unhinged" books? What does that word mean, exactly? Why aren't the calls to "refresh genres and tropes" and write "original" work with "imagination" modernist desires, to be found in Clive Bell, Ezra Pound, and Virginia Woolf? Negative criticism creates a cloud of implied positive values around its subject. What is the definitin and historical position of the positive work that's implied here?
Let's work harder on criticism, which means being harder on ourselves, more thorough in our interrogations of what it is that impels us to make negative judgments in the first place.
I happen to be reading your very fun "Whatever Happened to Art Criticism?" just now, and enjoying it a lot. My pleasure in it makes me surprised to find you here rather schoolmarmishly subjecting my review to what strikes me as an arbitrary model of how a negative review ought to be written!
I have no idea what positions on modernism and social realities (?) you're trying to attribute to me, although I take it that you're using the opportunity of critiquing my review to draw attention to some of your own hobbyhorses about criticism (even as you seem to decry reviewers who smuggle in "positive" assumptions)--and to your own work.
Hopefully if we ever run into each other around Chicago I'll meet the engaging author of "What Happened..." and not the less charming individual who wrote the above comment!
Hi, actually that comment of mine was aimed at some reasonable goals for criticism. (The same person wrote it who wrote that pamphlet.) The model isn't arbitrary: it comes from people like Wayne Booth—it's about always trying to provide reasons behind judgments, so the artists who are criticized can act on what they're hearing. Glad to get a coffee sometime and talk about all that.
With respect, I am doubtful about the notion that a review should be conceived as if it were a professor's feedback to a student, describing how the work could be improved and providing a sketch of an ideal model... I am not Ewell's teacher, editor, or friend! Nor do I think that someone in the business of criticism and essays is obliged, in the manner of an Anglo/analytic philosopher of X, to be always providing reasons for his judgments, rather than using the occasion of writing about his judgments and their objects to think and provoke thought. This ofc would make for a bad style of giving critical feedback to one's students, but as I've said, that's not what I take my role vis-a-vis Ewell to be... you are yourself in your book more alert to and tolerant of the multiplicity of critical modes! which might well (and indeed do) exist alongside each other.
Why such a long review for what is, in the writer's opinion, a dull trope? I couldn't finish it. This sort of listicle is what keeps me from subscribing, let alone paying to privilege, Metropolitan Review.
Long ago an art form was in vogue which I very much admired. Tragically, it has become extinct. It was killed off by our time zone, a time zone in which the free expression of opinion is frowned upon, and often prohibited altogether.
The extinct art form in question was once the mainstay of the Arts sections of reputable newspapers, in the days when newspapers were still referred to as ‘The Fourth Estate.’
I refer, of course, to The Hatchet Job.
Feared and detested by authors and playwrights alike, The Hatchet Job could bring the curtain down on a promising literary career, and it strangled many a literary career at birth. It even laid low revered Men of Letters, reducing them to the status of laughing stocks. I heard of one who was so crushed by a Hatchet Job that he became a suicidal recluse.
There used to be few pleasures in life quite so enjoyable as seeing the pretensions of an author skewered by an expert Hatchet Job. Said pretentious author would be swiftly propelled into obscurity, with hoots of derision loudly ringing in his ears.
I have long lamented the demise of The Hatchet Job.
Hence, I must express my delight at reading this review, or rather, this merciless butchering, of Andrew Ewell’s ‘Set for Life.’ I have little doubt that Blake Smith, (or ‘The Butcher’ as he might from now on be better known) has done us all a favor; and that the author Andrew Ewell and his wretched book deserve all they got at Blake’s bloodied hands. But if they did not, if the book is a masterpiece and the author a saint, we can still enjoy The Butcher’s masterful takedown for its own sake, and need feel no guilt in doing so.
I can only hope that your columnist Blake Smith does not regard this piece as a one-off, and that he intends it to be the start of a revival of The Hatchet Job.
cinematography shot almost entirely in clear, simple, straightforward story-beats set one after another in a sequence going nowhere, like in a marvel movie or american election
Why are Sophie and John losers? Because they write in unfashionable styles? I’m not sure if this is something that’s actually in the text or if the reviewer is just being arch.
Quick and sharp is the executioner's blade.
Gratuitously mean and inexplicably angry. Quite a combo.
An apparently middling novel lands with barely a ripple, and yet it merits a full-throated thrashing in Metropolitan Review. If the critic is correct about the book--and who knows if he is--the question surrounding the novel is the same as the one surrounding the review, who cares?
Note to reviewers: Never ever ever cite Goodreads as evidence of a book’s quality. Nor should you mention other reviewers bad reviews in your review—total amateur hour. Worse it reveals you were biased against the book to start with.
I wasn't gonna leave a comment, but considering the others, I will. This is a good review! Sure, it's a little harsh, but so what? Negative reviews are necessary.
I particularly liked this line, but maybe others didn't...
"John and Sophie have given up on publishing, but hold to a despondent, half-articulated belief that their lack of success is proof that the publishing industry is set against real, impassioned writing."
What's the point of completely trashing someone else's novel? Sounds more like a personal vendetta than a thoughtful review.
You see this idea--that negative reviews should be binned rather than published--a fair amount nowadays, and I truly don't get it. What's the point of engaging in cultural criticism if you're going to stifle every negative or critical review? "If you can't say anything nice, say nothing" is a fine rule for interpersonal interactions but a terrible one for media criticism, in my opinion.
And FWIW, I'm not even entirely on board with this review; I haven't read the book, but some of the specific lines that the reviewer excoriates seem better to me than they did to him (the idea of a future "abstract with possibility" seems to me to have more nuance and heft than the reviewer credits, for example). But that's fine; it was an interesting review! And I'd never even heard of this book or author before, so I'd wager there's at least a small "all publicity is good publicity" effect here too.
Hello Vlad, I agree with you. Like it or loathe it, the review is thought-provoking at more than one level. In addition, I, for one, found it highly enjoyable. Blake Smith has a fine caustic turn of phrase. Regarding the 'all publicity is good publicity' effect, Norman Mailer's play The Deer Park received excoriating reviews. He used them to publicise the play! I might add that if someone took the trouble to pen a Blake-Smith style hatchet job of one of my novels, I'd be pleased they took the trouble. I might even post links to it far and wide.
Agreed; why bother?
Since I teach criticism, and I've just written a piece defending negative criticism, let me suggest why this negative review is not as effective as it could be.
The opening is a commonplace of negative criticism: "Set for Life would be more interesting if it were awful. Free of truly embarrassing passages, even in tone, never purple, caricatural, or unhinged." This is the same strategy that I heard applied to a student in my MFA program, which got me started writing about art criticism. It's poisonous but inconclusive.
The first judgment is that "awful" artworks can be "interesting"—but that word has been a notoriously elusive one ever since minimalists used it to displace judgment from modernist quality to postmodern intellectual curiosity. "Interesting" leaves it open whether the work is good or not.
The second sentence implies that "truly embarrassing passages," an unven tone, "purple" prose, caricature, and "unhinged" writing might also be interesting—but it does not specify what would make such writing sufficiently embarassing or purple or unhinged to be "interesting," or whether that would mean the work would be good. There's also no explanation of the six quite different potentially good qualities ("awful," "truly embarrassing," uneven, "purple," "caricatural," and "unhinged"), which seem partly unrelated to one another. Are they a representative list? If not, what other concepts, and what relation between them, would adequately define the "interesting"?
The person I remember from my own MFA program was crushed by his instructors' insinuations. The recipient of a critique like this understands only that their work is insufficient, and doesn't know whether it's worth trying to make the work conform to any one or more of the criteria.
I am not arguing against Smith's review, or defending Ewell's book. I think negative reviews can be very helpful. I'm advocating for more fully articulated criticism. Judments need to be articulated to the point where the critic's assumptions, and the victim's options, are clear.
Smith's principal criticism is that Ewell's book doesn't "refresh genres and tropes" of the campus novel, that it's "stale" and "unoriginal" and its author "hardly used any imagination." Ewell's writing, Smith says, has a "vague, wordy appearance of thoughtfulness" and "plods along" using "pointless" phrases. He gives examples of lines and ideas that conform to several of these, and he has general ideas about what could be improved about the plot and voicing—but behind those criticisms are unstated assumptions about modernist fiction and its relation to social realities. Can an "awful" or "truly embarrassing" book really be a good thing, aside from its entertainment value as postmodern kitsch? Do we really want "unhinged" books? What does that word mean, exactly? Why aren't the calls to "refresh genres and tropes" and write "original" work with "imagination" modernist desires, to be found in Clive Bell, Ezra Pound, and Virginia Woolf? Negative criticism creates a cloud of implied positive values around its subject. What is the definitin and historical position of the positive work that's implied here?
Let's work harder on criticism, which means being harder on ourselves, more thorough in our interrogations of what it is that impels us to make negative judgments in the first place.
In defense of negative criticism: https://jameselkins.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-negative-criticism
The book that begins with an anecdote just like Smith's opening critique: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Critiques-Definitive-Revised-Expanded/dp/0990693929
I happen to be reading your very fun "Whatever Happened to Art Criticism?" just now, and enjoying it a lot. My pleasure in it makes me surprised to find you here rather schoolmarmishly subjecting my review to what strikes me as an arbitrary model of how a negative review ought to be written!
I have no idea what positions on modernism and social realities (?) you're trying to attribute to me, although I take it that you're using the opportunity of critiquing my review to draw attention to some of your own hobbyhorses about criticism (even as you seem to decry reviewers who smuggle in "positive" assumptions)--and to your own work.
Hopefully if we ever run into each other around Chicago I'll meet the engaging author of "What Happened..." and not the less charming individual who wrote the above comment!
Hi, actually that comment of mine was aimed at some reasonable goals for criticism. (The same person wrote it who wrote that pamphlet.) The model isn't arbitrary: it comes from people like Wayne Booth—it's about always trying to provide reasons behind judgments, so the artists who are criticized can act on what they're hearing. Glad to get a coffee sometime and talk about all that.
With respect, I am doubtful about the notion that a review should be conceived as if it were a professor's feedback to a student, describing how the work could be improved and providing a sketch of an ideal model... I am not Ewell's teacher, editor, or friend! Nor do I think that someone in the business of criticism and essays is obliged, in the manner of an Anglo/analytic philosopher of X, to be always providing reasons for his judgments, rather than using the occasion of writing about his judgments and their objects to think and provoke thought. This ofc would make for a bad style of giving critical feedback to one's students, but as I've said, that's not what I take my role vis-a-vis Ewell to be... you are yourself in your book more alert to and tolerant of the multiplicity of critical modes! which might well (and indeed do) exist alongside each other.
Sorry, social media is proving a bit intractable here. I'm actually quite flexible and friendly. jelkins@saic.edu
Why such a long review for what is, in the writer's opinion, a dull trope? I couldn't finish it. This sort of listicle is what keeps me from subscribing, let alone paying to privilege, Metropolitan Review.
Hope this guy never reads anything by me!
Sirs;
Long ago an art form was in vogue which I very much admired. Tragically, it has become extinct. It was killed off by our time zone, a time zone in which the free expression of opinion is frowned upon, and often prohibited altogether.
The extinct art form in question was once the mainstay of the Arts sections of reputable newspapers, in the days when newspapers were still referred to as ‘The Fourth Estate.’
I refer, of course, to The Hatchet Job.
Feared and detested by authors and playwrights alike, The Hatchet Job could bring the curtain down on a promising literary career, and it strangled many a literary career at birth. It even laid low revered Men of Letters, reducing them to the status of laughing stocks. I heard of one who was so crushed by a Hatchet Job that he became a suicidal recluse.
There used to be few pleasures in life quite so enjoyable as seeing the pretensions of an author skewered by an expert Hatchet Job. Said pretentious author would be swiftly propelled into obscurity, with hoots of derision loudly ringing in his ears.
I have long lamented the demise of The Hatchet Job.
Hence, I must express my delight at reading this review, or rather, this merciless butchering, of Andrew Ewell’s ‘Set for Life.’ I have little doubt that Blake Smith, (or ‘The Butcher’ as he might from now on be better known) has done us all a favor; and that the author Andrew Ewell and his wretched book deserve all they got at Blake’s bloodied hands. But if they did not, if the book is a masterpiece and the author a saint, we can still enjoy The Butcher’s masterful takedown for its own sake, and need feel no guilt in doing so.
I can only hope that your columnist Blake Smith does not regard this piece as a one-off, and that he intends it to be the start of a revival of The Hatchet Job.
Never was there a more worthy cause!
Pip, pip!
Andrew Komarnyckyj
This seems to be Ewell’s mediocre response to his ex-wife's mediocre autofiction novel from 2023.
The former spouses did a hatchet job on each other.
No reason for reviews to be gentle with this prosaic couple, especially when both succeeded in getting publishers to roll with their public spat.
The fewer reviews of dross, the more dross will flood the market. The death spiral. That's where we are with publishing.
cinematography shot almost entirely in clear, simple, straightforward story-beats set one after another in a sequence going nowhere, like in a marvel movie or american election
The comments about this review make me not at all hopeful about the future of traditionally published fiction.
If a valid negative review should never see the light, where does that leave fiction?
Countless times I've fallen for high praise of what turn out to be disappointing, mediocre books.
The lack of critical thinking and honesty in reviews does a great deal more harm than any negative review could ever do.
What really is the value of such a condemning review? If it’s so bad, perhaps ignoring it is best.
Why are Sophie and John losers? Because they write in unfashionable styles? I’m not sure if this is something that’s actually in the text or if the reviewer is just being arch.
Idiocracy = Mediocracy in the arts/entertainment/media, Kakistocracy in government. Accept it and move on if possible....
Out of all your essays, this one I don’t particularly get. :(
Well, this was... an interesting read?