George Orwell - Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - 6

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g0ldenboy
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George Orwell - Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - 6

Post by g0ldenboy »

Animal Farm: A Fairy Story

Animal Farm is now a classic required in middle schools around the world. Weighing in at less than 140 pages, it's a quick read. Thus, I put Orwell's magnum opus 1984 down, and began this allegoric tale. I was expecting an exciting, more complex version of Charlotte's Web, with subtle themes meant to ridicule Socialism. But there is nothing subtle about it.

Animal Farm begins strongly. As a wise old pig edges toward death, he stands on a stool in the black of night to profess to the rest of the farm his dream of a world where animals are free from men. This scene was portrayed deftly; I couldn't wait for Orwell to relate the personalities of the animals to the roles they would play in the newly formed society. Surprisingly, the rest of the book is bland.

Each character is modeled after a historical figure. Napoleon is Stalin, Snowball is Trotsky, Squealer is Molotov, Boxer is the proletariat man, the dogs are the secret police, and so on. Instead of a rich character study concerning the types of people who become the Stalins or Boxers, Orwell merely slaps his satire onto a cardboard cast. Because the premise was so creative, I predicted that the rest of the book would contain the same spice and excitement. I was wrong.

I'm not saying Orwell doesn't describe animals like Squealer vividly; we see his persuasive mannerisms and speeches, just nothing deeper. In fact, Orwell grinds the reader against the pitfalls of Communist societies. I'm willing to accept the tale as a method of displaying this inevitability, I just can't tolerate repetitiveness. As others have pointed out, Animal Farm might have been better as a short story or lecture series. His idea doesn't sustain impact for long, as short as the book is.

A page on Socialism could sum it all up. If you've already read such a page, you'll trudge through Animal Farm mouthing, "yeah, I get it already." However, if you're still in middle school, this book might just be the material that you need to imprint the idea into your brain.

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Post by The Egoist »

Okay.

I'm gonna try very, very hard to be gentle here.

I'm currently disagreeing with a Moderator/Librarian and an Administrator on standards for reviews of classics. And an Administrator and Part -Owner is telling me to be nice when I play this game.

This, for anyone who hasn't been paying attention, is exactly why I've been arguing for standards and practices for reviews of classics.

This is, without a doubt, a partisan review. We have a young reader giving a subjective review of an established classic. The review gives no sense of history or context. It actively preaches against the quality of a work that is well regarded, is thoughfully reviewed in innumerable places and is considered an important work by a well-regarded writer of Marxist-critical fiction.

Perhaps the reviewer thinks any 12 year old with an understanding of early Soviet history could skip this work. Unfortunately, this work is fundamental to the change of Western attitudes, particularly Western Communist and Socialist attitudes, to the mid-centurry USSR.

You see my point. He has just enough knowledge to have an extremely damaging opinion that could ruin the book for any reader who reads the book after his review. But he doesn't understand enough about the context to understand that it was vitally important to reshaping Western attitudes towards Soviet Communism.

We need unbiased reviews.
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Post by Darb »

Aside: Say hello to my friend, The Egoist, who's offered legal counsel for IBDoF. He's here at my house as we type this. The one thing I'd like to add is that as a professional litigator, his style of writing is specifically honed with the debate process in mind. Try not to take it too personally. :)

That said, I whole heartedly agree, and have said so earlier in the context of other works that it's important to keep literary classics firmly fixed within their socio-cultural and historical context when reviewing them. For example, when reviewing a classic like animal farm, one doesnt approach it as a children's classic in the same way one doesnt talk about Michelangelo's david in the contect of garden sculpture. In fact, it's not a children's classic at all ... it's written for adults.

The only thing I have to disagree on is the idea of mandating standards of content ... we're not a professional review-for hire site. This is a free public forum where it's wonderful and encouraged to have people from all age groups and social/literary backgrounds come together to chew the cud (pardon the barnyard motif) and post their thoughts. Serious literary debate is strictly optional, and only for those who wish to indulge ... in whatever intellectual MMA weight class they wish to chalk their name into.

Cheers.
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Post by The Egoist »

I guess my point is, people take what they read seriously, even if the site they're reading it on isn't a professional service. I think we can all agree on that. I'm simply suggesting that if people are going to take us seriously anyway, that we should at least agree to be serious when discussing serious subjects.

That means, opinion is to be avoided, and investing time and attention are important. Please look at my review for The Sun Also Rises to see what I mean.

Also, hi all.

{Mod: referenced hyperlink added. -- Brad 3-Apr-2009}
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Post by Omphalos »

Criticism without opinion is a useless exercise in regurgitation, especially for a work that has been treated as thoroughly as Animal Farm has been. As a litigator and a critic I can say that with authority. Personally I applaud g0ldenboy's efforts, even if I also agree that he got it wrong. I could not have written anything like that when I was in high school, not only because I really was not motivated to do so, but also because the concepts you fault him for missing were things that I covered in my junior year of college in the various Russian history and Russian literature classes I took.

As far as people taking what they read seriously, how is that the critic's problem? A critic is not an educator. A critic merely participates in the discussion. As far as I am concerned a person cannot properly say that the know what they are talking about without actually reading the work for themselves. I certainly would not fault a critic for coming to the same conclusions as g0ldenboy did (even if I would debate it with them); I'd only fault them for assuming g0ldenboy's opinion without reading the book first.

Oh, and incidentally this book is an attack on Stalinism, and was probably informed by Orwell's poor opinion of the Indian Caste system that he grew up with. Saying that it is about "Soviet Communism" is much too broad a statement. Wouldn't want to mislead anybody now, would we? :wink:
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Post by Darb »

You know what ? I say to heck with the animorph parable about an antiquated form of government that history has already repeatedly proven to be a failure in anything other than small clusters of extended families. That horse has already been repeatedly whipped to death by more talented people than us. No, I'm more interesting at rubbernecking at the roadside spectacle of two professional litigators arguing about the nature, context, and academic benefit of instructive critical free thought against the backdrop of an increasingly illiterate and attention-span challenged culture.

Free popcorn for everyone, on me. :thumb:
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Post by Omphalos »

Brad wrote:You know what ? I say to heck with the animorph parable about an antiquated form of government that history has already repeatedly proven to be a failure in anything other than small clusters of extended families. That horse has already been repeatedly whipped to death by more talented people than us. No, I'm more interesting at rubbernecking at the roadside spectacle of two professional litigators arguing about the nature, context, and academic benefit of instructive critical free thought against the backdrop of an increasingly illiterate and attention-span challenged culture.

Free popcorn for everyone, on me. :thumb:
If I didn't know better I'd say that was straight out of Monty Python. :wink:
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Post by Darb »

I have a second hand electric donkey bottom biter for sale, if you're interested. No need to pay cash either - we can barter with a good argument.
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Post by PolarisDiB »

Critical discourse involves very different approaches and ideas. Criticism can be considered a literary or art form and not all forms work for all people. The Structuralists argue that everything needed to understand a work is contained within the text itself, and history, biography, and social context should be removed from the process of understanding a work. Such a concept is, in and of itself, controversial, but then again history and society itself is merely a text, one that can be read and deconstructed as a series of arguments and social exchanges. The importance of a work can change over time, as well as its context.

The above paragraph is dealing specifically with the idea of criticism. I consider reviews to be separate from criticism, though of course those lines are as arbitrary as the language I'm using to describe them (1). Criticism is the act of taking a text and dialoguing with it, pointing out aspects and re-interpreting its themes as a process of contextualization (not just of the past, but of the present). Reviewing is explaining a relationship with the text, and in the case of many reviews on this site, are more personal and less interested in the broader schematics. A review speaks more of the reviewer than it does of the text (2), and that is what we are here on a message board for: to discuss and discourse as personal beings. Critics may be on this board (3), but the structure of this forum is that of the reviewer, not the critic.

I do not expect the above arguments to fully resolve the problem, because of course we're on a discussion board with multiple viewpoints. However, I for one find The Egoist's criticisms of these reviews to be more exercises in poor manners than in standards of criticism, and that's me being "very, very gentle" here (4).

Semantic me away, ahoy!

--PolarisDiB

(1) Language is arbitrary and, like commerce, built entirely on long-standing series of social agreement. If you forget that, you begin to take writing literally, when its very nature is built on interpretation and representation. No, interpretation and representation are not the same as "subjectivity". Communication is exchange, not object creation.

(2) For instance, The Egoist's "objective standards" speaks more to his needs and requirements as a reader than they do to the failings or shortcomings of the reviewers he's responding to.

(3) Omphalos' postings have so far been what I consider to be well-written critical texts.

(4) Nice preterition. I think I'll take it.
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Post by Omphalos »

I think most of the internet-forum commentary that you get though, reviews that is, is a form of criticism; a rudimentary one, somewhere between something as basic as influence spotting and a temporal deconstruction where one tears a older book down to its studs and analyzes whether or not its specific message bears relevance at a later time, but it is a form of criticism. In the Venn diagram of life, there is a bit of overlap there.
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Post by PolarisDiB »

In English, overlap is common. We have hundreds of words with similar and related meanings. By and large I'm reacting to an over-essentializing of ALL forms of textual responses into a burdened (and narrow-minded) standard of analysis, one that I feel is both too claustrophobic to even bother pursuing (I mean, I could be academically rigorous on this message board that I go to on my free time; or I can actually enjoy life) and also ignorant (yes, as in, ignores the multiple forms of criticism that have existed throughout human history to engage and interact with mediated texts, all in their own way powerful tools of dialog and exchange).

You make a good point, but my point is that The Egoist's standards are just that: HIS standards. They are good standards, and they serve a purpose, but they are quite the opposite of "objective" because they place value judgments on certain modes of thinking before even taking the time to understand what is being said on the original reviewer's own terms*.

--PolarisDiB

*And if you suddenly have a knee-jerk reaction thinking that I'm meaning you should dumb yourself down when debating a review you don't agree with, that's not what I'm saying. Rather, I'm saying that criticizing a review is more helpful if you ask the reviewer to better flesh out his or her perspective than by complaining that it doesn't acknowledge some trivium placement of context in the overall work.
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Post by Omphalos »

PolarisDiB wrote:In English, overlap is common. We have hundreds of words with similar and related meanings. By and large I'm reacting to an over-essentializing of ALL forms of textual responses into a burdened (and narrow-minded) standard of analysis, one that I feel is both too claustrophobic to even bother pursuing (I mean, I could be academically rigorous on this message board that I go to on my free time; or I can actually enjoy life) and also ignorant (yes, as in, ignores the multiple forms of criticism that have existed throughout human history to engage and interact with mediated texts, all in their own way powerful tools of dialog and exchange).

You make a good point, but my point is that The Egoist's standards are just that: HIS standards. They are good standards, and they serve a purpose, but they are quite the opposite of "objective" because they place value judgments on certain modes of thinking before even taking the time to understand what is being said on the original reviewer's own terms*.

--PolarisDiB

*And if you suddenly have a knee-jerk reaction thinking that I'm meaning you should dumb yourself down when debating a review you don't agree with, that's not what I'm saying. Rather, I'm saying that criticizing a review is more helpful if you ask the reviewer to better flesh out his or her perspective than by complaining that it doesn't acknowledge some trivium placement of context in the overall work.
Ah. Thanks for the response. I can agree for the most part, especially with what I bolded above.
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Post by Darb »

Polaris & Om: cogent comments on the distinction between reviewing and critiquing, and in various places I agree to varying degrees.

To recap, I think my personal issue is the oft times disappointingly wide crevasse that separates (using the definitions above) reviews from critiques. I (personally) think it'd be wonderful if more people would aspire, if only to some minimal degree, to essay (pun intended) the latter ... and learning how to do such things is one of the things we go to public school for. Too often, on places like Amazon, we have examples of the former that widen this crevasse, and lower the critical bar, even further, by devolving to overly simple squees like "this book rox !" or squicks like "this book sux !".

The Egoist merely carried the same point even further along, by shaking his head at me for my assaulting the proverbial pillbox of common convention with gently flung pebbles ... instead, he lobbed a grenade of righteous indignation. Changing the metaphorical image to skiing, he implied we need security guards (read: reviewing standards) at the tops of the black diamond expert trails, so that less proficient skiers don’t hurt or embarrass themselves, and perhaps discourage others from trying the same trail (i.e., reading the same classic). I have to disagree with him there, because (a) this is forum of free opinion, and all we can do is encourage people to try ... while enforcing a 125 word minimal word count to prevent the sort of hyper minimalist squees and squicks that abound on places like Amazon; and (b) failure is the greatest teacher. The only way to master something is to keep trying, again and again, in order to continually improve one's knowledge and skill. Heck, I skied a few black diamonds in my day (and I'm talking real skiing now, not metaphorical reviewing), and at the time I'd have been hard pressed to even call myself an intermediate skier. Everyone has to start somewhere, and it's not reasonable to expect a fully footnoted multi-page academic dissertation from high school students who are just commenting on whether or not they liked a classic they'd never encountered before. This is a free public forum, not a peer-reviewed professional journal.

As for Egoist’s writing style: I can see how some people might bridle at his use of grenades in polite company, and if he weren’t my very good friend and posting from my own computer, I'd probably bridle too ... but I have the added advantage of knowing him personally, knowing his disdain of smiley emoticons**, knowing his love of classic literature, and knowing something of his background as a litigator - I've learned not to take personal offense at his courtroom mode of delivery. My point to him in that regard is this is a forum - not every conversation needs to be fired like a crucible to get at some irreducible pellet of truth that can be loaded into a gun and fired at the opposition. Yes, some people revel in the adversarial debating process, and take pleasure in the deft use of cutting arguments. However, there are also others who misunderstand and easily take offense at it. I urge my friends here to give Egoist the benefit of the doubt, with regards to linguistic function over form. ;)

I also think we can be big enough not to overly fret on behalf of a literary classic, just because a young reviewer squicks at it, and happens to be the first to do so ... and yes, I commited the same sin myself when grouching at the same reviewer earlier for squicking at The Hobbit. Classic didn't earn their literary pips in the first place by being overly vulnerable to such. With additional time and ratings data, the law of averages will cause such books to bubble back up to where they belong. We need to practice self restraint in our tendency to want to mother hen our favorite classics in the early statistical stages.

-----------------
** Emoticons: when I suggested he use a few, he gave me a look that reminded me of that scene with "The Comedian" in the movie "The Watchmen", where the former sort of snapped and jumped into a crowd of demonstrators, and opened fire. :lol:
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Post by The Egoist »

Hey there.

My comments as to "reader response criticism" can be assumed. And yes, we can understand that I am probably not espousing any "new critical model" either (if that was what was meant by bringing structuralism and four conrners reading into the debate).

So in the end, I'm being rude. Is that it? That's what's upsetting?

What's upsetting to me is the idea that because I'm viewed as rude, my argument is being ignored.

Someone here said they didn't know about the cultural impact of Animal Farm until their junior year of college because it took that long to learn about the Soviet (and yes Soviet- not merely Stalinist, as it deals with Lenin and Trotsky as well) history and Animal Farm's impact to Western Communism.

So, were you qualified to review it before Junior year of college?

My answer is no.

At least, you weren't qualified to write the lead review on it.

A review is not criticism. Clearly. Criticism involves interpretation and is an intellectual process best left entirely to competent experts (people who actually have PhD's in the field under discussion).

What a review is is a summary. What the book is. What it's about. Whether it's any good. Should you read it. Will you enjoy it.

But those really aren't subjective questions. Particularly when we start talking about books that have been meaningful to millions of people for decades.

A professional reviewer better know what he's talking about. And even if he has the well established biases, like Roger Ebert in film, he best have the film degree to go along with his analysis. The two thumbs up is meaningless unless he can talk competently about cinematography, film history, etc. Because then, even when he makes a mistake (like his total misreading of Fight Club) we understand that much of the review is still valuable.

Ebert, at least, understands that he does have a duty to the viewer, to give every movie a fair shake. And to know what he's talking about before he slams a movie.

I'm asking amatuers to behave more like pros. That's all.
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Post by Omphalos »

Pretty sure I, and others, responded directly to most of your points. Reading is fundamental, my little friend. If I were a judge, you'd have lost this motion. Probably gotten sanctioned too.

I guess in the end I was thinking it would be better if you did a review, rather than critiquing the review of a young contributor. Perhaps you could come up with a bullet list for Animal Farm too?
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Post by Darb »

Omphalos wrote:I guess in the end I was thinking it would be better if you did a review, rather than critiquing the review of a young contributor. Perhaps you could come up with a bullet list for Animal Farm too?
Actually, he already did.
The Egoist wrote:I'm asking amatuers to behave more like pros. That's all.
My friend, that brings us back to the two points raised by spiphany and myself ... we do not, and will not, be imposing official literary standards here, because this is not a peer reviewed professional journal, nor a site with content deemed 'officially endorsed' content. It is a free and friendly public forum open to all ages and backgrounds ... heck, we're just happy people read period, much less take the time out of their busy day to elaborate briefly about their likes and dislikes. You're imbuing this place with more literary rigor that exists or will ever likely to be imposed. The most we can, and do, is extol the virtues of good reviewing, and encourage people to put some modicrum of effort into their posts ... nothing more.

Also, I think my other friends around here were correct about your delivery being a bit too brusque, which has a tendency to provoke in many the very thing you wish to avoid ... namely, complaining about how you say things, rather than what you say. I think perhaps a little Dale Carnegie finishing work might be in order. ;)

Remember - this is a community of friends of all backgrounds and ages, not a courtroom of contention, and as spiphany pointed out, you havent exactly been elected to the role of arbiter of style ... not yet anyway. ;)
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Post by Omphalos »

Brad wrote:
Omphalos wrote:I guess in the end I was thinking it would be better if you did a review, rather than critiquing the review of a young contributor. Perhaps you could come up with a bullet list for Animal Farm too?
Actually, he already did.
What :?:

Sorry, that is not a list for Animal Farm. That's the original "bullet list" I was referring to.

Reading is fundamental. :wink:
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Post by Darb »

Oh, I can read just fine ... my sin was not paying careful attention on that one point, while in a rush to answer another. ;)

I hate it when new friends get off on the wrong foot, for wholly unexpected reasons.
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Post by g0ldenboy »

Egads! :shock:

I don't want to get in the middle of this debate; I'm just humbled that I provoked it (more The Egoist's doing really). Instead, I'll take the lazy route and say that I support most of spiphany and PolarisDiB's thoughtful opinions. :P

I will say that:

To avoid complications, it's always best to first write a review around the time that the book/movie/album is released. And although I respect certain books for their influence and agree that they should've been written, I believe in reevaluating against the standards of the current day so that people don't waste tons of time on something they could've read a paragraph about in a history book. In other words, as a reviewer I'm more concerned about the busy reader than the pioneer writer. But I think that was already apparent, heh.
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Post by voralfred »

If I may add my two cents to this debate, without (I hope) "pouring too much oil on the fire" (sans jeter trop d'huile sur le feu)

Since this forum has been open to reviews by all volunteers, and even encouraging all volunteers to offer them, and this has been its policy since the beginning, there is no point cahnging it. So g0ldenboy was entitled to write his feeling about Animal Farm
Conversely, I agree with The Egoist's opinion on the shallowness of this review. Arguing that the standards should be changed, and that the review should not have been written in the first place goes against the policy of this forum, and is going too far. But tearing the review to pieces, just as g0ldenboy has teared Orwell to pieces, is fair game, in my opinion
As Omphalos says, one can applaud g0ldenboy's efforts, but then it can be useful for prospective readers to explain at length how much
Omphalos wrote:he got it wrong

Personally I found IBDoF's standards too daunting to write reveiws. The length requirement, for instance: I was not always sure I had enough interesting to say to reach the 150 words limit, without putting in irrelevant material.
I did write quite a few reviews for IBList, with a much shorter length required.
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Post by PolarisDiB »

The Egoist wrote:What's upsetting to me is the idea that because I'm viewed as rude, my argument is being ignored.
I'm not ignoring your argument. I'm disagreeing with your standards while taking issue with your tone. I have not claimed that g0ldenboy's review was a good review or a bad review, indeed, I myself found little to react to which is why I did not reply to it. I am arguing that if it's true that his review is lacking certain important aspects of the book (fine), then add the information for discussion or write your own review. Instead, you chose the route of criticizing the forum in general and the reviewer in specific, only engaging in the text as a means to prove your point as opposed to making them the point.
Someone here said they didn't know about the cultural impact of Animal Farm until their junior year of college because it took that long to learn about the Soviet (and yes Soviet- not merely Stalinist, as it deals with Lenin and Trotsky as well) history and Animal Farm's impact to Western Communism.

So, were you qualified to review it before Junior year of college?

My answer is no.
I'm sorry, I missed the part of this website that asks for resumes or applications to make sure you're qualified to review. Oh wait, there isn't a section for that. So you think that this website should have it? Well you don't own it. If it's that important to you, then make your own forum and require such guidelines. Otherwise, people here are invited to approach it whichever way they choose, and it's not up to you to decide what their standards should be.

Particularly when we start talking about books that have been meaningful to millions of people for decades.
...and possibly not as meaningful to millions of other people, for starters. Classics stand as remarkable pieces of work that can and have compelled many different audiences throughout generations. That doesn't mean that it's set in stone that it has to be considered from any singular viewpoint. Other people might have a lot to bring into the discussion by talking about it in a different way. I'm not saying that g0ldenboy added anything new, but pointing out yet again that you are claiming your standards to be the standards of discussion, when they aren't. Here, the standards are stated as 250 words, minimum. They don't say what those words have to be about. I have my own standards for writing reviews, and I've debated my own standards with others, but I've never insisted anyone else write under my standards.
A professional reviewer better know what he's talking about.
Yes s/he should. Now where was it claimed that we here are professional reviewers? Oh, I see:
I'm asking amatuers to behave more like pros. That's all.
I'm saying that I don't mind you asking others to express further what they found in works or adding important areas of interest to the discussion, but I do mind you demanding other people meet your personal standards for quality on an open forum in which you are, in fact, acting very rude*. Also, it bears worth noting that the meaning of the word "amateur" came from "aimer" (to love) and means "a person who engages in a study, sport, or other activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons." Many people who review here do so for the love of doing it and to have a forum in which to discuss the work, not to gain accreditation in a professional world and have other people tear them apart for not writing in a certain way.




On the other hand, I don't know why I even bother debating this because I know I'm not going to change your opinion. But such is the knee-jerk reaction I get sometimes when someone decides their opinion is law. I have standards, too, but I sincerely hope I'm not as draconian a disciplinarian about it.

--PolarisDiB

*In what I consider to be social standards that aren't just my own--after all, I'm not the only one mentioning the "brusque" quality of your writing, the "strength" of your words, and other small indicators of shared displeasure you may have but probably haven't missed.
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Post by Darb »

I'd been hoping to stoke some debate about the nature and art of reviewing for some time, and made little headway. Then I bring in a new friend, and whammo ... more than I bargained for.
I don't know why I even bother debating this because I know I'm not going to change your opinion.
Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. Surely, one of the essential skills one must develop as a professional litigator is the ability to ride any horse of a debating point to the point of collapse, and then leap nimbly onto a new point and charge that one off in a different direction to it's eventual success or demise, etc cetera ad infinutum. Also, my friend Egoist is still new here, and provoking debate on some point of interest is his way to get to know people. The only problem with that is that in an online forum, where you cant see facial expressions and body language, it's easy for people to incorrectly presume an intent to do harm instead of an intent to debate ... and litigators are exactly that (professional debaters).
But such is the knee-jerk reaction I get sometimes when someone decides their opinion is law.
Ooooh, the irony. :lol:

Fear not, other than the 150 word minimum (which might actually be 125 ... I havent looked in some time) we're not currently planning to impose standards of content (other than a review not being spam). Debating such options is merely just that - debating. The critic's corner sub-forum is moderated, yes, but the database reviews themselves are only subject to a minimal word count, and conformance to the forum's posting guidelines (for things like decency, relevance, and plagurism).

However, the debate has raised a pet 2-fold issue of mine, which is how best to help inspire people towards qualitative review writing, and also how best to display/sort multiple reviews for a given work ?

Over on Amazon, where a popular book might have dozens or even hundreds of reviews, they have a voting system where people can vote on whether or not a review is helpful or unhelpful, and the ability to sort the reviews, by either the most helpful, or the most recent ... the former helps to stratify the reviews of a given work somewhat by allowing the decent ones to bubble up while the poor ones stay down at the bottom. However, I dont adopting amazon's voting system because in my own experience of climbing into the Amazon Top 1000 Reviewer ranks, I saw a lot of voting abuses that I'm not keen to see replicated here, and also because ranking systems are contrary to the egalitarian climate we're trying to foster here. However, it still raises the issue of how will we manage large number of linked reviews for a given book ? We havent faced that yet here on IBDoF where, because we're still a new and underpatronized site, and we're still (as of this writing) fortunate to have even 1 review for a given book, much less a half dozen. Heck, we can probably count the number of books that have 6+ reviews on the fingers of one hand as I type this ... but hopefully, we'll grow to the point where this will become a legitimate problem (someone slap me for the crime of praying for problems).

So, that leaves the following questions:

(1) How do we help inspire people to aim higher in their reviews, without deterring people from trying at all ? My modus operandi to date had been to try to lead by example, and (as time and interest permits) discuss other people's reviews and encourage them to elaborate further, if their opening remarks were overly terse. However, we're still a bit thin at the moment on other people who feel and do the same, and consequently, we have many reviews here in TCC that have no responses at all, which is a bit disappointing. That will change as our site continues to gain membership and levels of activity, but here in the early stages, it's still disheartening at times.

(2) How do we modify the detailed book view in the database to handle books with large numbers of reviews ? We havent had to face that problem yet, but we will eventually, and now is as good a time as any to look ahead towards how. As I indicated above, I'm not keen on implementing a reviewer voting/ranking system, ala Amazon. {pondering} Perhaps if a book has more than say 6 linked reviews, then instead of listing all 6 links, it could link to another view applet which offers members different ways of sorting them ? Such as:

> Most to least recent review.
> Most to least enjoyable rating.
> Most to least number of reviews written.
> Etc.

Anyway, I'm rambling, so I'll stop here. Meanwhile, I hope people continue to stay cool headed. We're all friends here, and the only real cause for even slightly raised eyebrows are a few pointed remarks that, if they'd been in the context of an in-person debate, would not have been taken as harshly as they were here in a text-only mode of interaction.
Last edited by Darb on Sun Apr 05, 2009 8:58 am, edited 5 times in total.
Darb
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Post by Darb »

Incidentally, has anyone else noticed the irony of a debate over freedom of speech vs the hypothetical imposition of standards/controls in a review thread for a book that's an animorphic parable about the (de)merits of communism ?

In a way, this virtual community of ours is a literary commune (etymological pun intended). :wink:
g0ldenboy
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Post by g0ldenboy »

I encourage comments, questions, criticisms, and whatnot. There's little that would truly offend me on an online book forum, and I'm always open to improvement (so you don't have to worry about deterring me from writing more reviews). However, I'm too easy of a target. Just because I'm eighteen doesn't mean I don't know the history behind a book or didn't "get it." I might not care as much about the history, but why does that make my opinion any less "qualitative?" And as spiphany mentioned, "we're not all literary[/history] scholars." If one has to be to like a book like Animal Farm, the book isn't as good as it's cracked up to be.
Darb
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Post by Darb »

GB: I for one thought you did fine in this particular review ... and as someone else admitted, you did better than I did at age 18. Props for that.

A lot of what's being discussed here is something of a reviewing philosophy bleve that has (as of this writing) spilled over into the following review threads ...

Your review of "The Hobbit"
StefanY's review of "Huckleberry Finn"
Egoist's review of The Sun Also Rises

I'd originally hoped to kick off a discussion like this over in the upcomming reviews & reviewing techniques discussion thread, but it wound up blossoming here instead.

Nothing ever goes according to plan. ;)
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