2. The elitist argument:

The purest philistine form of this is the ad hominem attack that Martin is jealous of the author. There *is* the possibiity that this just means “critics only criticise because they can’t write fiction themselves” but within the field this commonly means “those elitist intellectual types only criticise (commercially) successful authors because they lack that (commercial) success”. Read the forum discussions on writer responses to BSG and you get this pure fanthink; I know I’ve seen it levelled at myself for my criticisms. This is the basest articulation of a projection of motivation, of an automatic (and irrational) disdain for any author or work that’s popular. This is why you get the accusation that “Martin read a lot of positive reviews of the book and decided to produce a negative one as a result”. This is the nature of the “vendetta” being projected onto Martin. And of course this neatly connects with a distaste for the immensely popular and commercially successful genre of traditional Fantasy.

So what type of review do I think people were pissed at? High-brow reviews that come across as the product of reviewers actively prejudiced against anything that smacks of popularity, including but not limited to traditional Fantasy. In other words, stuff that reads like muso bullshit.

In and of itself this is a patently spurious accusation, right? You’d think only the purest fanthink would come up with such a notion, no? Except that the whole anti-populism suspicion keeps getting *fueled* by high-brow reviewers blathering about hype, about how positive reviews make them suspicious. The Chance Morrison / Locke Lamora stramash a few years back was pretty much the highest profile instance I can think of; that blew up partly because Morrison’s anti-hype response came across as knee-jerk hostility: “As soon as I hear the words Next Big Thing, I reach for my gun”. Much of the discussion that followed circled around notions that fan-site reviewers and high-profile bloggers might be swayed by pretty ARCs and publisher promos. Hell, I’m sure I’ve read at least one comment from a high-brow reviewer, as part of the SFFE discourse, specifically justifying “compensatory” negative reviews — though I can’t remember where. It was, to be clear, in reference to sacred cows like Tolkien, but in context it came across as validating the general strategy.

Seems to me SH has that suspicion hanging over it, to the extent that I know *I* groan every time I read a review there that opens with some reference to the way the book is being heavily promoted or positively received, and establishes from the get-go that It Ain’t All That. The Hallie O’Donovan review of The Forest of Hands and Teeth has a quite harmless “I feel completely out of step with all the positive reviews this book is getting”, but even that gave me a sinking feeling. And Martin’s? Nights of Villjamur is high-profile enough that the negative review would have been taken as “compensatory” anyway, I reckon, but Martin doesn’t do himself any favours with his opening. It’s nice to be in “the vanguard of British fantasy” and all, but the subtext is clearly that Newton is being touted by Macmillan as the next member. And He Ain’t All That.

What that suspicion of hype ultimately reads as to many, I reckon, is the flipside of fanthink — the muso attitude with its auto-sneer at anything the plebs might like. Cause, you know, only the most obscure bands are really any good, cause everyone knows those major labels just manufacture the Next Big Thing, produce the fuck out of the talentless hacks, pay the NME to put them on the cover, and punt them out to all the sheep.

Again, I’m not trying to justify the accusations as accusations, just to explain how I think they fit together, what I think the thrust of it all adds up to. The timing of this with the SFFE debacle adds weight to this idea, I think. All the “arrogant” and “holier-than-thou attitude to reviewing” comments tie in with the idea of a perception, I think, that some of the high-brow reviewers are taking on that “Last Man” role. Martin’s review was just in the perfect place at the perfect time to act as lightning rod. It took a fantasy work that’s getting the Next Big Thing treatment; opened by referencing that fanfare; ripped into the book scathingly, unremittingly, and extensively; and closed by dismissing it for its traditionality. Because of all that it has a “muso” vibe to it that, given when it came out, was bound to make it the focus of hostilities.

I didn’t say *I* was fed up. I said that’s what I read into some of the reactions. I haven’t commented on that review other than to use it as an example of *not* falling into one “assuming authority” trap (asserting spurious speculation as fact).

As for what type of review I mean specifically. OK, I think we can piece it together from those complaints. The majority were, I agree, pretty wild, but I think there are two underlying themes. I’ll deal with the most obvious first:

1. The anti-Fantasy argument:

So people are complaining that Strange Horizons has a bias against fantasy books. For this read *traditional* Fantasy books. Which *means* books that do not challenge the boundaries of genre. Same accusation, different angle. A biased review policy means either forcing reviewers to write lies (which is implausible conspiracy tosh) or, consciously or unconsciously, finding reviewers who share your distaste — hence the *utterly unsuited*. This, of course, parses to a suspicion that Martin has that distaste, that he “does not read much fantasy” and “chose the book knowing he would not like it.” So all those accusations are basically the same arguement.

Pare away the force of articulation that turns these into conspiracy theories of malice aforethought, and how crazy is the basic idea that the focus of interests of SH reviewers is skewed away from the traditional Fantasy? I mean, the magazine itself is definitely on the “challenging the boundaries of genre” side of things in terms of fiction content. You cop freely to your own disdain of generic Fantasy, and Abigail’s expressed *her* general dislike of epic fantasy. It’s hardly surprising that literary-minded (is it fair to say Rationalist?) reviewers (or for that matter, poncy Modernists like myself) would not really get on with unreconstructed Romanticism. Add the natural assumption that “challenging the boundaries of genre” means anti-traditional to your confirmation that that’s how you see it, and anything any SH writer/reviewer has ever said carrying similar sentiments, and it’s not hard to see where the hypothesis comes from.

Now, is this criticism founded? Well, the *expression* of it indicates a *perception* that *could* indicate a simple disjunct: a relative difference in where tastes are focused/limited between the SH reviewers and the SH readers. Could be just a vocal minority being unreasonable, but I reckon it’s less likely to be zealotic fanthink, since those true believers are less likely to be reading SH. More likely? It is possible to enjoy generic Fantasy *as well as* literary strange fiction. Seems to me there *are* reviewers at SH who do. But maybe there’s a sufficient weighting in one direction that a portion of the readership is dissatisfied. The “mismatch” they’re really complaining about is between reviewership tastes and readership tastes. X percent of both readers and reviewers like the challenging stuff. But Y percent of readers *also* like the more trad stuff, while only Z percent of reviewers do. The bigger the difference between Y and Z, the more likely *that* mismatch will become perceptible.

Does that make this complaint just a strop? If you get what I’m saying in that Ethics and Enthusiasm post, you should get that I would *not* consider it a valid complaint. I mean, consumers are entitled to *try* and demand a better match if they want, but there’s no onus on SH to supply that demand. No more than I’d bow to readers who wanted me to supply them with vampire fiction. But, we’re talking SH here, so one would assume those complaining *do also like* edgier fiction, that they’re *not* kneejerk devotees at the Temple of the Terrys. So I think this is much less likely to be fanthink than it is to be readers with eclectic tastes latching on to this review as a focus of dissatisfaction.

But why the extremity of the reaction? That brings me to the next group of complaints…

Speaking personally, I don’t understand the fan’s mindset.

For me, genre conventions are these patterns and habits of thought that appear on literary scenes devoted to certain topics. So if someone writes fantasy stories then they get in the habit of using elves and having a really needlessly detailed world.

From my point of view, these habits of thought are bad things. They’re things that should be fought against. I cannot understand why one would seek out works that are more-or-less like everything else in a particular field. To me, a writer who comes up against a genre convention and embraces it rather than confronting it is being either lazy or is pandering to his audience.

For me, the ‘core-genre’ fans are like Gilbert and Sullivan Savoyards complaining vociferously because someone dared to set Princess Ida in the 20s or because someone ad libbed a bit of dialogue during HMS Pinafore.

I don’t understand that mindset.

Another example, I was dragged to the opera a while ago to see some Wagner and it was a production from the 70s that was being revived. During the interval I complained vociferously not only about how lazy the director was (why bother to direct if you’re not bringing anything new to the table?) but also about how absurdly out of date the libretto was and how it invoked all of these words and concepts that simply had no relevance to modern audiences.

I am a proto-fan and part of what I am a fan of is innovation. which is a level of abstraction/analysis further up than liking books with good strong characters and a world you can immerse in.

but allowing that I’m a fan and I’m criticising things that other fans like. Surely this is all debate and disagreement even is? If I disagree with you about whether or not it’s going to rain tomorrow, I’m a fan of the “it’s going to be sunny” hypothesis and by disagreeing with you I’m (by implication) attacking the “it’s going to rain” hypothesis. In such a situation an angry response is absurd. Why is it not absurd in the case of Martin’s review?

Part of what motivated me to write this post was a desire to work out what the objections actually were to Martin’s review and, in trying to address them, maybe get the people who hurl insults and bitch about SH to engage meaningfully with what people write about books.

First off, I’m still not clear what the problem was with Martin’s review. You say you were fed up with that type of review… which type? the reactions on the review itself seemed rather difficult to pin down. Initially there was the accusation of spoilers (which weren’t present), then there was the accusation that he didn’t like fantasy or read much (which is patently untrue on both counts) but beyond that? not sure beyond the sense that people were upset and trying to latch onto some passing piece of conceptual drift-wood in order to use it to beat Martin.

I mean, you ask the right questions, but they’re separate questions:

When we argue about the failings of a book’s prose style or the lack of narrative coherence or the weak characterisation or the poor structure, are we invoking an imaginary set of universal principles?

Yes, even if they are general conventions.

are we effectively attacking works from nowhere and with nothing?

No, because they *are* general conventions that mostly make sense. It’s just that in pulp fiction these are often secondary to the dynamic qualities peculiar to that pulp idiom. And if you fail to consider those it’s like treating a musical as a play.

are we being simply trolls?

No, but you’re going to piss people the fuck off if you can’t rein in a) the tick-list critique that takes academic method as formula b) the assumption that you know better. The former can look superficial even when it has substantive points because it reads as critique-by-numbers. Of course it does; it’s *formulaic*. Worse, where that analytic mentality reads as utterly procedural thought, it serves as marker of stereotypical fanthink, invalidating any air of superior nous.

So then you get a critic who “is, in effect, attacking from the position of a fan even though he himself does not necessarily recognise that he is merely a fan or that his devotion to a particular position is all that he is defending. Instead he is attacking from the point of view that certain values are either actually universal or they should be.”

Somebody telling you your tastes aren’t legitimate, that you should be enjoying something written on entirely different principles? When they’re apparently blind to their own fanthink? To most readers of pulp fiction that’s going to automatically read as just another example of the — how I hate this word — “elitism” of those devoted to the contemporary realist genre, to the exclusion of all else. And given the social qualities of that sort of interaction, it’s going to read as a mechanism of abjection. Sadly, the general autoresponse seems to be to come out, guns blazing, with the exact same strategies of dismissal and delegitimisation.

So it goes.

When it comes to “special pleading”, as I responded to Abigail, “I don’t doubt that defensiveness is often the motivation when this charge is leveled. It should probably be the first question asked: are you just throwing a strop because I’ve insulted your precious whatever?” I would’ve thought that the dismissive “precious whatever” would make my attitude to such strops clear. And saying that’s the first question to ask kinda implies “prime suspect”, no?

When it comes to the SH review of Nights of Villjamur, with some of the complaints I thought the answer was “Yes,” and with others I thought the answer was “No, I’m just fed up with this sort of style of review, and this one came along at just the right time”. I thought it was fairly clear that there was a wider discontent surfacing here.

I think you might be on to something re style coming late. I’ve always been aware of it to a certain extent but I would think of it in terms of different types of review. In some cases I’d respond by ranting or making jokes, other times I’d take it seriously. I think now I’m settling into a style of my own. I think a lot of reviewers aren’t only blind to their own styles, they’re also blind to literary style as a whole.

The idea that there’s no correct way to read or review is also correct. This is why Jeff VanderMeer as well as Hal Duncan’s attempts at fixing the terms of engagement in terms of compatibility rub me the wrong way (Hal in particular tries to frame said special pleading in terms of good reviewing/professionalism but this strikes me as utterly wrong-headed).

http://notesfromthegeekshow.blogspot.com/2009/06/assumption-of-authority-2.html

The idea of responding to books in terms of love of a book or an author is an interesting one but I also susect that a lot of the people attacking Martin were in love with the fantasy genre and saw Martin’s attempt as an attack on it. Hence the comments about his not having read much fantasy… it’s the equivalent of saying “you’re not from round these parts”.

1) re Clute: I pay a great deal of attention to the style of my reviews. Reviews are not just examples of functional writing, it is important that they work in literary terms. Though my natural style is not so baroque as John’s, which can, I think, get in the way of what he is trying to say. And therefore (picking up on your point) if I am still writing reviews now the way I wrote at university, then I am doing something seriously wrong.

But maybe consciousness of style is something that comes late? Certainly the great majority of reviews I read pay more attention to what they say than to how they say it.

2) There is no way to read, and certainly no way to review, that is not based upon some theory (though not, note, Theory); it is just that most of the time most people are unaware of this, and would not be interested in articulating it.

3) As a reviewer I come from a fan background. That can provide some insights, but it brings as many problems. One obvious problem is experience. The more books I read the more they feed in to what I write and how I approach the next review. But that same experience is not shared by the reader of the review. If I say of a book that it is essentially trying to do the same but less successfully as another book that was published and went out of print before you were born, it may be a perfectly valid point of reference for examining the book under review. But it is going to infuriate you the reader of the review, the fan of the author I am ‘attacking’, because I am deploying weapons that mean nothing to you.

4) Adoration of a book, worship of an author, are not valid positions from which to embark on criticism, because they allow, indeed they enforce, only one way of reading the book. A critic has to be open to multiple readings of a work, has to allow it to present its strengths and weaknesses in its own way, and then has to find a way of putting that curious relationship into words. But because the review must therefore start from a flexible relationship with the text, it will inevitably conflict with the perspective of the worshipper. Even if the reviewer loves the book, she is not starting as a worshipper and is therefore at odds with the worshipper.

The attacks you quote on Martin are not attacks upon his review. They are the blind lashing out of a wounded creature, the response of someone whose amour propre has been hurt. Such responses have always been with us, it is just that the internet can make it that much easier to express them.

As for environmentalism, yes… that is a reductive political movement. I think part of its success as a grass roots movement comes from its willingness to paint to world in quite simple moral colors ; Environment good, pollution bad.