Customer Reviews

The Culture of Knitting

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Well, I wrote a review of this book a couple of weeks ago, just after I started it. For whatever reason, Amazon did not publish the review. Does Amazon only publish positive reviews? In that review, I promised to finish reading the book, and I intend to keep that promise, even though I'm temporarily sidetracked by Pat Conroy's SOUTH OF BROAD, which is a local book club book that I have to pass on soon.

CULTURE OF KNITTING had such promise. I do believe that once I slog through to the end, I will be able to reflect and see that there are worthwhile observations and possibly even some original insights, but it really is terribly written and worse edited. I hope it didn't even have an editor, so that all the blame can be laid at just the author's feet. Words are invented, such as "imbrued" (p. 33--obviously should have been "imbued"--even a spellcheck would have caught that one!), subjects and verbs don't agree sometimes...no, often.

But beyond the sloppy editing, I can't escape the feeling that this is a doctoral dissertation gone terribly wrong. It is as if the author feared that, having selected a field of inquiry, knitting, almost guaranteed to be denigrated by her committee, although it is perfectly within the purview of her stated area of "textiles and fashion as material culture," she had to bury all her points in almost impenetrable prose, as if such would elevate the level of intellectual discourse. While I happen to disagree with a number of her assumptions and expectations about the place of knitting in society, it's not that disagreement that makes me unhappy with the book. She's entitled to her point of view and I, mine. In a future review, when I've finished the book, I will try to be more specific about this.

The author is a "Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Design at Bath School of Art and Design," states the back cover. She apparently wrote the book for a solely British audience, as there are many cultural and societal references that are lost on the non-Brit reader. It would have been very easy to add a few words of explanation/exposition here and there when making these references--the way good journalists do when reminding or even teaching their readers about some bit of background to the story.

The book's cover states, "...the book offers new ways of seeing and new methods of critiquing knitting...", ways I hope that I will be able to tease out of it with patience and perseverance which should not be required in reading a book about knitting, even a scholarly one.

This book reads like a badly-written doctoral thesis hurriedly turned into a book. There may well be some fascinating information about knitting and prescient cultural analysis buried in there somewhere, but the hideous prose makes it impossible to find. Just trying to read it gives me a headache. If you are an academic yourself and used to reading students' writing, tuning out the contorted attempts to sound intellectual and recognising their insights, you might be able to get on with this book, otherwise, I really can't recommend it. It got a great review in the TLS, which was why I bought it, but I am greatly disappointed. I'd give it to a friend but don't really want to inflict it on them either.

I really enjoyed this book! It does read like a thesis, but exploring all the societal issues surrounding knitting is very interesting and thought provoking.