Goldberg: Reviewing the evidence

By Tod Goldberg

One of my students walked into class last week and informed me that she'd gone out on a date with my archnemesis.

"You went out with Lex Luthor?"

"No," she said, "I went out with The Person Who Gave You the Second Worst Book Review of Your Young Life."

"I wouldn't call him my archnemesis. I mean, he did call my book a steaming heap of crap and insinuated that I hadn't even written it, that it had in fact been a product of the publishing company itself and not my hard work, which was pretty cheap if you ask me." Well damn, I thought, maybe I do hate the fucker. "Why would you go out with that guy? He seems like a total dick."

My student said what you might expect--hopes of long-term love, promise of a party where lobster was being served, it's a lonely, lonely world, etc.--and I felt a little bad for putting her on the spot about it, but not so bad that I didn't press on. "Did you tell him that you knew me?"

"Yeah, yeah," she said. "He remembered writing the review and said that he meets lots of people who he's reviewed poorly and he's pretty sure that they all hate him."

"I don't hate him," I said. "I don't even know him. And he's allowed to have an opinion." Which is true. What is also true was that I heard he was writing a novel himself and I've been eagerly awaiting its arrival so I could read it, hate it and then say things about it right here like, "Another useless murder of a tree."

Reviewers and their subjects have long had an adversarial relationship--a brief gaze over the letters section of this newspaper on any given week will prove that--and I believe that all art is up for criticism. We write or paint or sing or draw with urine in the snow for the appreciation of others and ourselves, and, invariably, the quest for approval is part of that. So the process itself doesn't bother me. For others, like writer Stanley Crouch who recently smacked up reviewer Dale Peck, or my personal literary idol Richard Ford who--ill-advisedly I might say, hero-worship notwithstanding--spit on Colson Whitehead after Mr. Whitehead, a fellow novelist, wrote a rather scathing review of Ford's last collection of short fiction, it seems to.

No, it's knowing that the young woman in my class, whom I consider a perfectly nice and interesting person, who is a fine writer and an accomplished journalist in her own right, has the chance to do two things: She can either stab him with a fork on their next date and scream "That was for Tod, bitch!" or she can just go on ahead with her own life and not worry about the fact that I've now begun to have fantasy exchanges with said reviewer where he ends up saying that he really loved the book but just couldn't admit it, and would I please blurb his book and would it be okay if he called me his brother...

Like I said, fantasy exchanges.

I'd never deign to smack or spit on someone who didn't appreciate my work. And in some ways, I actually have appreciated negative reviews of my work when they honestly point out issues that I've neglected. And after the bad review from my student's future husband, I began working on my last novel, the genesis of which was partly a response to how I felt about getting such shit reviews, and that turned out to be a good thing.

When I got home from school that night, there was a letter waiting for me from a man named Kevin. A month earlier, my cousin Leigh asked if I'd read Kevin's epic poem as a favor to her--he cuts her hair--and see if I could help him on his quest to get it published. I said sure. I read the epic poem, offered some advice to Kevin on it, including an honest critique, and spent a good two hours of my life on his work. He sent me a two-page, single-spaced letter in return essentially calling me an idiot who obviously didn't appreciate quality writing and that I should re-evaluate why I've chosen the career I've chosen and that he hopes I choke.

It occurred to me that there was nothing I could have said to Mr. Epic Poem short of undying praise; he obviously didn't want to hear one person's perception unless it was positive. Thus, I decided to allow my student to marry my archnemesis to prove that I was a better person. Shoot, I'd even give her away.

"So," I said when I saw her last night, "how's it going with dickface?"

"Oh, yeah, I don't think we're going to go out on another date."

"Why?"

"Oh, you know, just wasn't there."

"That's too bad," I paused. "Have you read any of his book? Does it suck? Tell me it sucks. It sucks, right?"