Picture by Terry Freedman.
It’s a sad fact of life that the most entertaining reviews are the ones that are highly critical of the thing being reviewed. I don’t mean that every critical review is highly entertaining. It’s more a case of observing that if a review makes you laugh out loud, it’s far more likely to be one that tears the thing to shreds.
I could give several detailed examples, but frankly I don’t wish to be sued for libel. But you can verify this for yourself. The reviews in The Critic tend to be especially acerbic, and therefore funny.
I quite like this, for example:
“Magritte’s work is no more socially potent than dog-mess on a doorstep”
I suspect the reason is that there are only so many ways of saying that a book is brilliant. One way actually, unless you try “Splendid”. (If you read that a book is “compelling”, you can’t take that as praise. It may be compelling in the same way that some TV soap operas are rivetting: because they are so bad they are good. Or it could mean that the reviewer is bone idle. See the quote below.)
“in many cases, those books that do luck out and land a coveted review in a mainstream newspaper or magazine often fall victim to lazy or hurried readings that more closely resemble book reports or plot summaries and usually come chock full of reviewers’ clichés: the number of “compelling” or “riveting” books with “fully developed characters” and stories that “will remain in a reader’s mind long after the last page has been turned” are positively legion.”
Perhaps it’s because it’s hard to be original if you’re giving fulsome praise. Whatever the reason, I am attempting to avoid dullness when I think something is good. I hope I even manage to make such reviews worthy of at least a smile if not a guffaw.
For example, in my review of a a science fiction course I wrote:
“I’ve done other courses by the same tutor, and I would highly recommend his courses. The only thing I would warn you about though is that the tutor seems to work on the assumption that everyone has a cast-iron bladder and is not a tea addict. There was no break in the first session, and just a five minute one in the second. Excellent value for money, but go to the loo beforehand and furnish yourself with a tea urn before the session begins!”
In a recent review of Teaching Machines by Audrey Watters I wrote:
“[The book] provides invaluable insight into the mindsets of the sort of people ... who believe that education needs rescuing, and have the messianic zeal to believe they are the ones to rescue it.”
That review was highly positive, which could have been pretty tedious to read, which is why I voiced my views about an area covered by the author.
I ardently hope that from now on even my positive reviews will be compelling and rivetting humorous and interesting.
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