Negative Book Reviews
Rafia Zakaria called for the revival of the negative book review , lamenting: “The general tone and tenor of the contemporary book review is an advertisement-style frippery… Absent in either is any critical engagement, let alone any excavation of the book’s umbilical connection to the world in which it is born.” Contrast that, she says, with the reviews from 5 decades back: “World reviewers and critics were feared as “persons of dangerous acerbity” who were “cruel to youth” and (often out of jealousy) blind to the freshness and importance of new work.” A part of this modern-day trend has to do with overdone political correctness, writes Zakaria, “the idea that all Native American or Muslim American women must be praised for the very fact of publishing a book”. All of which is why she calls “against forced and foppish praise, where everything is good and so nothing at all is good”. I think her call for the revival of negative book reviews is too little, too late. In his t...