So, news.
Jan Zwicky wrote an essay for The Malahat Review titled “The Ethics of the Negative Review,” which CWILA republished on their site. Michael Lista responded to it, quite negatively, in the National Post’s Afterword. Then Zwicky responded to his response. And Lista responded to her response of his response. You following?
Other people have weighed in: Ross Leckie, Heather Jessup, E Martin Nolan, Panic, Kevin McNeilly and the Véhicule Press Blog tracked a number of responses on Twitter and elsewhere. Whoa.
I’ve written a number of negative reviews over the years, and I can see that they have their place, but I can also appreciate Jan Zwicky’s perspective as a former editor of a literary journal. With so many titles being published each year, and with review space shrinking in print publications throughout the country, it does make a certain kind of sense to work on promoting books that are worth reading, worth sharing, rather than focusing on crap you read because you were paid to. I think we can agree on that much? Maybe?
Linkage:
- Upworthy shares an epic flow chart of 101 Books to Read This Summer as an alternative to the Twilight fan fiction that shall not be named.
- Richard Handler has a retrospective on Northrup Frye in the CBC. 100 years. Totally beats me.
- Peta Pixel shares men photographed in stereotypical pin-up poses. No, men don’t look any more silly than the women you typically see in these poses. You’re just more used to it. Shame on you.
- Ok, so science happened, and the existence of the Higgs Boson particle has been confirmed, but Twitter, darling of the Internet, was aflutter with indignation over the use of Comic Sans in the descriptive charts. Twitter, I heart you.
- Speaking of Twitter, thanks to a tweet from Jian Ghomeshi this atheist has finally found a religion she might be able to believe in: Bowieism. In the beginning, Ziggy played guitar…
- Geek Sundry has written a song for George R. R. Martin titled “Write Like the Wind.” Ok, I know he isn’t anyone’s bitch, but this is pretty cute.
Happy birthday to me.
