Literary editors can only read about the Telegraph books pages' recent legal drubbing at the hands of disgruntled author Sarah Thornton with a shiver of horror
Thornton's book Seven Days in the Art World
received a merciless review from literary grande dame Lynn Barber, and
Thornton promptly sued. The judgement compensated Thornton for the
perceived damage to her professional standing as an academic to the tune
of £65,000.
Is this episode going to lead to blander reviews
in future? On inspection, the case is so specific that it's hard to
imagine its conditions being replicated. Barber had been a Turner Prize
judge (a somewhat unhappy one) and was originally approached by the
author as an interviewee for the book. Whether or not Barber in fact
granted that interview was one of the points in question. The other was a
somewhat technical point about whether Thornton had offered her
subjects "copy approval" – which the court found she hadn't.
As a commissioner of reviews, you're aware that
often a person with specialist, insider knowledge will also precisely be
a person with an axe to grind. Barber's stint as a Turner Prize judge
seemingly made her a good choice to review an "ethnographic" study of
the art world, but it also implicated her in the topic. Thornton claimed
in a communication to her publicist that the fact that Barber was
criticised in the book by two of Thornton's interviewees constituted a
reason why she "might want to kill the book".
Now
I'd be very surprised if Barber had a hide a millimetre less thick than
a rhino's, and was worried for one moment about any negative comments.
"Kill the book" not only seems an exaggerated response to an admittedly
tough review, but a misunderstanding as to what book reviewing is all
about.
I don't think I've ever met a reviewer who really
wanted to kill a book – they just wanted to get their opinion out there.
In this forensic washing of grubby linen, no one comes out of things
particularly well. Barber's off-hand diary entries were aired, as were
Thornton's obsequious email exchanges with Barber, and those between
reviewer and commissioning editor, with their familiar, slightly bitchy
tone. How well I recall the sort of thing: "He's a bit tricky, better
leave that out. It is true, though."
There has
always been a robust tradition of book reviewing in this country;
reviewers used to be anonymous or pseudonymous partly to avoid being
challenged to a duel. Every so often a particularly savage review will
be met with the claim, "Is this the worst book review ever?" Tibor
Fischer's evisceration of Martin Amis' Yellow Dog is still remembered
fondly in this context, though not by Mr Amis. Though hardly anything
published today ranks in sheer spite with the review that Regency critic
John Gibson Lockhart, writing as "Z", aimed at John Keats in 1818. So
comprehensive was the attack that it was widely thought to have hastened
Keats' demise.
Having discovered that Keats was of lowly
background and had studied medicine, Lockhart opined: "It is a better
and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so
back to the shop, Mr John, back to the "plasters, pills and ointment
boxes" etc. But, for Heaven's sake, young Sangrado, be a little more
sparing of extenuatives and soporifics in your practice than you have
been in your poetry." Ouch! Next to that, Barber's gibe that "Sarah
Thornton is a decorative Canadian" seems positively benign.
The
imputation of malice is what strikes against our reviewing culture.
Critical malice is by and large a cheerful thing, incorporating a desire
that the irritant will go on annoying us, because it's so enjoyable
railing against it. We must hope that this ruling doesn't chip away at
the critic's right to express strong disapprobation.
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