Notes

Thanks for logging in.

Searching Member Sites
I’ve recently added a search function so that you can limit your Google search to just the blogs that are members of MetaxuCafe. I think that will be a good resource for everyone looking for literary topics online and you’ll find it right on the front page as well as other places on the site. Now if you want to read about, say Orhan Pamuk, but only want to search the litblogs you trust, you can narrow your search right here.

• Home
• About
• Blog Headlines
• Find Blogs
• Forums
• Roundtable

(How to) Review Realist Fiction for Dummys

by Jacob Russell on December 20, 2007

I was making dinner tonight, listening to NPR, when Maureen Corrigan came on with her list of best reads for the year. These on-air reviews usually wash over me, my mind too busy on other matters, but tonight--after so many blog posts on reviews, reviewers, and establishment fiction, I put my knife down, washed my hands, sat down--and actually paid attention.

It occurred to me as she repeated her formula reviews, book after book, why it is that reviewers (make that, commercial--print or electronic… even “non-profit” versions of commercial reviewers) have such a preference for realist narratives. It makes it so much easier to review the books. In effect, all you have to do is name the subject, reduce the book to a summarized report on a fictional event, list the cast of characters, offer a movie level sketch of their problem/conflict/search-for-meaningful-resolution-of-past-trauma, etc, sprinkle the review with enough adjectives to make it sound like they’re statements on the merit and quality of the book--but so general and empty of specifics that they function rather like movie background music.

You don’t have to say anything about the book itself, the novel as artifact, the way the prose or narrative voice and strategy shape the story… the story is enough, nothing that might explain why the novel in question might be more or less than any miniature paraphrase, though I suppose, that’s what those adjectives are supposed to tell you.

Read the rest HERE