Genere analaysis

Sara Cauvin

English 399

M/W 2:00

Book Reviews: The Authoritative Structure of Literary Criticisms

Many professionals outside the field of ‘publishing’ might not see book reviewing as a

complicated and imposing set of rules and regulations that govern what ultimately will be

considered as ‘good’ or bad writing’. Those professionals would also be mistaken. Inside the

world of writing, publishing, and book reviewing, lies a highly opinionated and subjective world

of opinions, rules, critiques and consequences. Writing about ‘the way that books should be

written about’ is an even more complicated and opinionated genre, that not many professionals

even in the profession seem to be able to grapple with. When writing about the best ways

to ‘review’ and ‘critique’ literature, I have found that the best approach is to take a humble yet

somewhat aesthetic approach, where the writer must make his opinions clear without seeming

biased. This balancing act is difficult to achieve, but I believe helps to ultimately structure the

final outcome of literary popularity and prestige that is relevant even out side of the ‘publishing’

and ‘book reviewing’ genre.

The first element to writing about writing, is for the author to assert a somewhat ‘humble’

stance about their own writing as well as their profession. They need to make it clear that while

their word is not final on what constitutes ‘good’ and ‘bad’, they need to show they clearly have

some reason to believe they are correct. As Phillip Chong puts it in his article “Reading

Difference: How Race and Ethnicity Function as Tools for Critical”…

“The evaluation measure I use in the analysis compares favorable, mixed and

unfavorable reviews. I arrived at the overall assessment of the novels based on a balance

of positive and negative statements made by the reviewers.”

Here, Chong is showing that his preferred way of critiquing book reviewers is to look at

their overall use of positive and negative reviews. This is used to prove the idea that a writer

about reviewers must be able to remove their own bias from the reading, and look at what

the ‘other’ claims to be worthy. Another example of how my genre writers can maintain some

level of humility in writing, is through the conscience quoting and reference to other literary

critiques. An example of this can be seen when Nicholas Birns states:

“He also provides a wide historical and intellectual background and contextualizes the world of

literary theory through the incorporation of numerous anecdotes that humanize the image

of these theorists.”

This in itself is a way of humbling the genre of book reviewing, as it takes the burden

of ‘rightness’ off of the actual writers. If there is already an established idea of historical and

intellectual ‘good writing’ the literary critique is able to

Another element that is curtail when writing literary reviews, is being accessible through

language to the reader, as well as the critiques of your reviews. Nicholas Birns makes this point

clear in his “Theory after Theory. An Intellectual History of Literary Theory from 1950 to the

Early 21st Century.” He states:

“The study of the rise of literary journalism focuses on the writings of the literary critic

James Wood, who consciously avoids using theoretical jargon and rejects recent writers known

for their experimentation and self-reflexivity. Birns also mentions Dave Kickey and Jacque

Khalip’s claims that literary studies should make a return to aestheticism.”

The first key point to notice is that Birns believes that taking ‘theoretical jargon’ out of literary

reviewing is key for recent writers. This can be seen when a reviewer of Birns states:

Birns livens up this study with a reader-friendly language that is not exempt from humor

in some passages. This is a way for the writing to become accessible to the average reader.

Birns is relaying his opinions about reviewing from a seemingly ‘omnipotent’ stance,

however he never speaks in the first person. This is key element that genre writers in ‘literary

critiquing’ use to help establish a sense of authority and credibility. With this combination

of ‘humility’ but ‘authority’ they begin to establish the basic structure for what makes literary

reviewing ‘good’.

Through these articles, I have found that all reviewers seem to believe it is imperative

that when critiquing literary works, you remain as unbiased as possible. This is done by

removing personal bias from your writing, and stating that your opinions are structured around

the opinions of the author. By placing the burden on the author to construct maening, a book

reviewer is able to remove their own personal bias from the situation. A great example of this is

stated by Chong:

“I identified what critics deemed strengths or weaknesses of a novel by attending

to the explicit evaluative statements critics made about the book. For example, if a critic

stated that a novel’s protagonist was a middle-aged woman, I did not identify

characterization as a strength or weakness because this is largely a descriptive comment.

If a critic went on to say that this middle-aged character was deeply moving, lively and

complex, or conversely, unsympathetic and lacking depth, then I interpreted such

comments to mean that the critic considered characterization as a strength or weakness

within the novel.”

This type of passive yet authoritative role is very effective in the way that literary

critiques structure their reviews. By making technical statements such as ‘I interpreted’, but

reviewer is leaving their opinions unbiased yet unqualified.

It is by combining all of these technical elements, as well as ides of humility and

authority that book reviews, and the genre writers who critique them help to structure what will

eventually become the overall opinions of the average reader.