Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America [Paperback]

Gail Pool (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0826217281 | ISBN-13: 978-0826217288 | Publication Date: June 29, 2007 | Edition: 1

For more than two hundred years, book reviewers have influenced American readers, setting our literary agenda by helping us determine not only what we read but also what we think about what we read. And for nearly as long, critics of these critics have lambasted book reviews for their overpraise, hostility, banality, and bias. Faint Praise takes a hard and long-overdue look at the institution of book reviewing. Gail Pool, herself an accomplished reviewer and review editor, analyzes the inner workings of this troubled trade to show how it works and why it so often fails to work well. By demystifying this hidden process, Pool helps everyone understand how to read reviews-and better decide what to read.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Woe betide the poor reviewer who must review a book on book reviewing, especially one that lashes out mercilessly at practitioners in the field. Pool, a longtime freelance reviewer and former Boston Review editor, asserts that editors too often select the wrong books and assign them to the wrong people. Reviewers in turn heap too much praise on these unworthy volumes; the reviewers are biased, unqualified, inaccurate and incompetent. (She illustrates this point with several examples of sadly laughable prose.) The pileup of criticisms is wearing, and Pool's suggested reforms, such as a reviewing code of ethics and having columnists in a variety of fields to make more knowledgeable selections of books to cover, are useful only to a point (e.g., even with a code of ethics, editors must rely on reviewers to reveal conflicts of interest). Pool is often spot-on, however, as when she opposes the reckless use of comparisons between books or authors rather than stressing what is unique about a work. Everyone in the field will applaud Pool's passionate insistence on the importance to literary culture of the serious, informed critique, which is increasingly endangered and in need of such vigorous support. (July 6)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Everyone in the field will applaud Pool's passionate insistence on the importance to literary culture of the serious, informed critique, which is increasingly endangered and in need of such vigorous support. -- Publishers Weekly, June 2007

Faint Praise is a thorough look at the current state of book reviewing in America...The examples are entertaining--and revealing...Our assessment: A-: solid overview and discussion. -- The Complete Review, July 2007

If you care about the fate of book reviews...Faint Praise is a book you should care about. -- Michael Merschel, book review editor, Dallas Morning News, August 2007

In the future, freshly appointed book editors at our daily newspapers should be handed a copy of Gail Pool's Faint Praise. -- Jerome Weeks, Critical Mass, National Book Critics Circle, July 2007

[Readers]...will quite likely never read reviews the same way in the future as they have in the past. -- Steve Weinberg, Hartford Courant, July 22, 2007 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: University of Missouri; 1 edition (June 29, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826217281
• ISBN-13: 978-0826217288
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #966,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I've been involved in literary journalism for more than two decades. My background in reviewing has been varied, as a review editor, critic, and columnist. For four years, I was editor of New Boston Review, an arts magazine (now called Boston Review and still going strong, though much changed), and for fourteen years, I was books editor of the Radcliffe Quarterly, an alumnae publication (nowadays also an alumni publication). I've been a book columnist for the Christian Science Monitor, where I reviewed travel literature; for Wilson Library Bulletin, a trade magazine, where I created and edited a book review section and later reviewed mysteries; and for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where I wrote a column on first fiction that also appeared regularly in the Houston Post and the San Diego Union-Tribune, and, sometimes, in the St. Petersburg Times and the Kansas City Star. My articles and essays have appeared in such publications as Columbia Journalism Review and the New York Times, and I have written about reviewing for the Women's Review of Books, Boston Review, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. My previous book, Other People's Mail, an anthology of modern letter stories, was published in 2000 by the University of Missouri Press.



I was born in New York City, attended Hunter College High School, and concentrated in Classics at Harvard. I have an MA in Creative Writing and an MLS. My husband and I lived in London, New Guinea, and San Francisco before settling, with our son, in Brookline, Massachusetts. We now live in Cambridge, where for many years I taught Writing for Publication at the Radcliffe Seminars.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very highly recommended for both academic and community library Literary Studies collections, September 3, 2007

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America (Paperback)

Informed and informative, "Faint Praise: The Plight Of Book Reviewing In America" by Gail Pool (a freelance journalist, reviewer, and review editor based in Cambridge, Massachusetts) is an impressively insightful, deftly written, accessibly articulate, expertly knowledgeable, and decidedly analytical survey of the multifaceted and complex world of book reviewing today. Getting a book reviewed can result in prestige for authors and their publishers, improved sales, and a raised public awareness of a particular title struggling for attention against thousands of competing books. They can also bury worthy and literate titles in a sea of inane and flawed books that are published by the tens of thousands every month. "Faint Press" provides a descriptive and comprehensive introduction to the institution of book reviewing, including such issues as why bad reviewing happens despite good intentions, why so many intelligent bibliophiles, knowledgeable readers, and gifted authors can fail at the art, craft, science, and business of writing book reviews. "Faint Praise" takes the reader behind the scenes and shows how books are chosen for review, the context in which book reviewing takes place, including a book review culture that is shows little interest in literature, a surprising antipathy toward criticism, and a vulnerability to the 'seduction of praise'. It's a sad fact of contemporary publishing that reviews so often degenerate into unmerited hype. Very highly recommended for both academic and community library Literary Studies collections, "Faint Praise" should be considered mandatory reading for anyone aspiring to become a book reviewer, and is especially valuable reading for authors, publishers, academicians, and the general reading public.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Realities of Modern Reviewing, April 25, 2010

By 

Rebecca Johnson "The Rebecca Review" (Washington State) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America (Paperback)

"As any reviewer knows, whatever one critic says is likely to set another's teeth on edge, the war between writers and reviewers is never ending, and critics are likely to be reviled for what they do, however well or badly they do it." ~ pg. 3

"Faint Praise" is an intellectual look at the realities of book reviewing. Since there are so few books on the subject of reviewing this is a welcome read. Gail Pool truly presents an insider's view because she is a reviewer and an editor. Therefore she sees the big picture and accurately presents an assessment of current reviewing predicaments.

While I was very interested in reading what she had to say about professional reviewers, I was even more intrigued by what she thought about Amazon reviewers. Since this book was published in 2007 Amazon has changed quite a few site features. We no longer have to worry about anonymous reviews (authors now frequently just review their books publicly without shame even though it makes them look bad) and both positive and negative reviews are often featured in the most helpful reviews section.

One of the most interesting topics of discussion was the differentiation between various types of reviewers. By reading this book you can find out if you are a literary critic, book critic, classic book reviewer or reader-reviewer.

One of the questions I've had about publishers was answered in this book. Apparently it is quite common for some publishers to send you a catalog of books to review and then to not send you the books you select. Apparently this is one of the "long-standing mysteries in reviewing."

If you are curious as to what goes on in an editor's mind when selecting books for review the answers will be very revealing. Their job is far more complex than I could have ever imagined. This book gave me a new respect for all reviewers and editors who get paid so little for so much intellectual effort.

I can recommend this book to Amazon reviewers and professional reviewer who are concerned about the state of reviewing in our society today. I think online reviews will continue to be highly popular as they are free and easy to locate within minutes.

"The reviewer who praises will never be out of work. American reviewers who are persistently critical will find that they're writing against the cultural grain. Ours is a culture that generally doesn't welcome criticism..." ~ pg. 106

~The Rebecca Review

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Keep reviewing, December 17, 2007

By 

Dragana Djordjevic-Laky - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America (Paperback)

Too bad the joke about reviewing a book about reviewing books is already taken, so those professional reviewers (at Publisher's Weekly, see above) really do have an edge over us amateurs. Gail Pool can thus rest assured that the market for her services, which she sees as endangered, will not be diluted to the point of total dilettantism, as I sensed from her slight animosity towards online reviewers who can afford to do it for free (I, in particular, take exception and offense to her statement that reviews spare in numbers are "probably" placed by the author's friends).

Aside from occasional pokes, however, it would be unfair to call Pool's plight a rant, since she does give good reasons for her concerns. It was about time someone who knows what they're doing spoke up about the caprices of the media machine that make and break careers, in this case inflationary, over-the-top, often misinformed book reviews, and, at the heart of it, the schemes that get an author reviewing space in the first place.

Fortunately, she does not leave it at that, but also offers viable guidelines and approaches that might very well serve the overall quality of literature, if not the book industry, which appears to be the underlying problem. Since, presumably, Pool is too experienced to bear any illusions that she is stronger than the system, the most valuable message of "Faint Praise" has universal appeal: be independent-minded if you can, do not take the path of least resistance by becoming just another particle of mass culture, and read, read, read--carefully.