Dana Hansen Reviews Phillipa K. Chong's Inside the Critics' Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times
Phillipa K. Chong. Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times. Princeton University Press. $29.95, 192 pp., ISBN: 9780691167466
Reviewing a book about book reviewing for a book review outlet that I edit is a remarkably meta exercise, one that has left me – as it undoubtedly will others in the same line of work – feeling very “seen.” Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times is a deep dive into the inner workings of journalistic book criticism in “the Anglophone publishing field,” and a must-read for critics and editors alike.
Phillipa K. Chong, an assistant professor of sociology at McMaster University in Hamilton, has conducted this vigorous and revealing investigation through interviews with a number of critics (a term she uses interchangeably with reviewers) whose complicated and not always well understood job it is to evaluate books as artistic and cultural objects. Chong’s ultimate aim is to understand “how evaluators work, how evaluations get produced, and thus how value gets made.”
Her meticulous analysis, serious and scholarly in tone, is structured in three major parts, each of which addresses a type of what Chong identifies as uncertainty faced by reviewers in their occupation. Epistemic uncertainty concerns the challenges critics face in determining the quality of a book – an aesthetic object – under review. Social uncertainty relates to critics’ concerns about reactions to their reviews from their fellow writers and broader literary community. And institutional uncertainty is about the rapidly changing profession of book reviewing in general, and the role of critics as “cultural consecrators” in particular. The bottom line is: contemporary book reviewing is a fraught business with high levels of uncertainty and unpredictability.
As part of her examination of epistemic uncertainty in book reviewing, Chong learned a lot from her interviewees about how reviewing works, including the ways in which books are selected for review, how reviewers are matched with books, and the common criteria reviewers employ in their assessments of those books. For anyone curious about what happens behind the scenes at review outlets, these chapters are especially enlightening. The editors she spoke to (all of whom remain anonymous in her book) express similar approaches to choosing and assigning books for review. So-called “big” books from famous authors are obvious and frequent choices, but so too are “interesting” books, works that offer fresh perspectives on old themes, or introduce new and socially significant ideas.
Editors often attempt to assign books to writers with relevant knowledge of the book’s topic either through personal experience, scholarly expertise, or their own published work. With respect to fiction reviewing especially, there is valuable insight here about the advantages of employing published fiction writers as reviewers. According to one editor Chong interviewed, “going through the experience of writing a book gives one access to an insider perspective on the creative process. And this is advantageous for reviewing because the critic is able to judge a book on a very nuanced level.” When it comes to the issue of social uncertainty in book reviewing, however, these advantages interestingly can become drawbacks.
Chong wades into the troubled waters of negative reviews with a fascinating chapter entitled “Reviewing as Risky Business,” in which she addresses what she calls the “switch-role reward structure” of book reviewing. Novelists, for instance, are often asked by editors to switch roles from writer to reviewer, and to evaluate the work of other working writers. She notes, importantly, that this is a phenomenon that doesn’t generally happen in other artistic fields. While it can be beneficial to have a reviewer who can offer an “insider perspective on the creative process,” understandably writers are hesitant to write truly negative reviews in large part because writing communities are small and tight-knit, and worries about reprisals or damaged reputations loom large. Chong learned from her interviewees that an effort is made to “play nice,” and not to “punch down,” particularly regarding first novels. Her findings in this section of her book have far-reaching implications for the future of book criticism, and will be familiar to anyone with a sense of the perennial debate around the need for more exacting analysis and evaluation in reviews.
That this debate continues to preoccupy editors, critics, and readers is itself a good indication that book criticism as a profession (though certainly not one most people can make a living doing) has some life in it yet; it also suggests, however, that as a profession – or perhaps better said a practice – reviewing is changing, as its parameters and value are being questioned, and traditional outlets for criticism are transforming or folding. The final section of Inside the Critics’ Circle examines critics’ conflicted thoughts about their roles as evaluators, how they experience a lack of what Chong refers to as “groupness,” or “a sense of book reviewing as a bounded category to which they feel belonging,” and the shifting boundaries between different branches of reviewing, from academic reviews to amateur Goodreads-styled reviews.
Chong’s discussion of critics’ concerns around the purpose (to inform? to entertain? to sell books?) and importance of their work in the midst of what she calls an “existential crisis facing book reviewing,” is both worrisome and hopeful. She optimistically notes that in the face of so much uncertainty around the future of professional book reviewing, “the relative scarcity of the traditional book review may not be an indication of its fading cultural relevance but have the inverse effect of making book reviews more precious, and in this way enhancing their cultural importance.”
Inside the Critics’ Circle confirms what editors and critics already know: we’re on shaky ground. But Chong’s are heartening words for those of us who, for whatever personal or professional reasons, commit significant time and energy to making space for vital conversations around reading. Impressively, Chong has managed in this study through substantial empirical data to draw a clear, detailed, and nuanced picture of a rather tricky profession – like any that seeks to place value on the aesthetic – to pin down.
Dana Hansen is the editor-in-chief of Hamilton Review of Books.