Paul, you have five minutes for rebuttal...
C'mon, some critics are good, some are bad. Damning all
critics is like
boasting that you don't watch television. It sounds good on
the surface,
but that's about as deep as it gets. It's not that simple.
And my guess is
that American critics are no better or worse than any others.
To me, a good
critic or reviewer or whatever you call 'em is one who can
make you concede
his point, even if you don't necessarily agree with it. There
are folks on
this very list, some of them who write reviews, whose
opinions I may argue
with, but that I deeply respect.
Yes, some books that critics don't like sell really well. And
some they do
like don't sell at all. But many bestsellers really do suck.
Popularity and
critical respect are too different things, although,
fortunately, not
always mutually exclusive.
And I don't think the vast majority of their fans have ever
actually
bothered to read a review of perennial bestsellers like
Danielle Steele or
Tom Clancy or Chicken Soup is Good for Dummies, favorable or
not, anyway.
Kevin Smith
The Thrilling Detective Web Site
http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
Now out: The Spring Break issue, with fiction from Robert
Iles and Leigh
Brackett,
and FACE THE FACE, our new contest for fans of paperback
eyes. Win a copy
of THE BIG BOOK OF NOIR!
#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.