What’s That Smell? Crapiola.

According to Jane Ciabattan and the reviewers she moderated on a panel, those of us who do reviews on our blogs or on book sites are not real reviewers. According to the post, we only review books that are uplifting and have likeable characters. Cynthia Ozick, who won a National Book Critics Circle award in criticism, calls us “Amazon customer reviewers.” (I have a vision of her holding his nose as she said that.)

Danish novelist and former critic Jensen said:

I was once asked about the most devastating review I ever received," Jensen said. “My answer was that it had never been written because the only person who could write it was me. I know myself, my writing, and my weaknesses better than anyone.

Cynthia Ozick wrote:

In my own getting-the-ketchup-to-come-out-of-the-bottle case, I won't go on to the next sentence until the last sentence is as watertight as I can make it. And this means how it is joined to the sentence before and the sentence to come. The term 'laborious' applies!

Her conclusion is that she is her own harshest critic because she’s the slowest writer.

Morris Dickstein, distinguished professor of English and theater at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and author, said:

“The professional reviewer, who has a literary identity, who had to meet some editor's exacting standard, has effectively been replaced by the Amazon reviewer, the paying customer, at times ingenious, assiduous, and highly motivated, more often banal, obtuse, and blankly opinionated."

Frankly, I’ll believe the opinion of the latter rather than those who have a literary pedigree and smell.