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Posted by eleanor

Shallow book reviewers

One would think that reviewers for Quill and Quire, Canada's book trade industry magazine, would have a grand vision of literature. That they'd understand that the language and the insight found in good books transcend the situations the authors describe.

This is from a review by Toronto freelancer Dory Cerny in the March issue: "Readers might presume that a story told from the point of view of a lesbian about a dead lesbian lover, her crazy lesbian friend, and the beautiful lesbian painter she is falling for will primarily be interesting to, well, lesbians."

Of course. Just as you might presume that lesbians would never bother reading all those dumb hetero stories by Alice Munro.

Comments

# re: Shallow book reviewers
March 16, 2005 7:27 PM
I don't suppose it occurred to the reviewer that s/he wasn't the target audience?

I detect this attitude over and over again in the straight world. The overwhelming majority of world literature has been written by, for, and about straights (more "about" and "for" than "by", admittedly). They can perhaps be forgiven for walking into a bookstore and thinking, along with Nicole Hollander's cats, "Everything here is mine." It also works with TV, movies, popular music, theater, dance, and...

Oh, great, now I'm all bummed.

It's comforting to reflect on an exchange James Baldwin had with a BBC interviewer in 1967. "You were born poor, Black, Southern, male, and gay," the interviewer said. "Did you ever curse your luck?"

"Oh, no!" Baldwin exclaimed. "I thought I'd hit the jackpot!"
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