by Eric Rauchway

Gawker disagrees with me by suggesting the NYTBR "wouldn't be any more useful if the sensibility was Edmund Wilson's." A friend writes to say that my proposed four maxims of book reviewing are all wrong, especially the one about writing a book before reviewing one--people who don't write books compose more "cutting" book reviews. Another friend tells me I am wrong about why academics travel, and that really, David Lodge is right. All of these welcome corrections remind me, I wanted to write about the flip side of reviewing and offer four maxims on being reviewed. 1. Consider whether, if you had heard a specific criticism when writing the book, you would have written differently. If not, you can ignore it. 2. You may get praised for the wrong reasons. Suppress your impulse to correct this, because 3. You will get criticized for the wrong reasons. Suppress your impulse to correct this, too, because 4. Except for those critiques falling under maxim number (1), reviews of your writing do you no good. Which is what people were complaining about last week: Book reviews most often use the book as a platform for the reviewer's own opinions. Maybe they rally a reliable community around for a good stoning (or, in more sophisticated groups, death by a thousand cuts). Reviews only rarely start a constructive conversation because generally, they aren't trying. Even more rarely, they perform the

essential function of criticism, that of introducing readers to new work, strange work, things they wouldn't ordinarily encounter--a duty no major critic had undertaken consistently since Edmund Wilson quit regular reviewing in the late '40s.

Where did I read that, you may ask? In the most recent NYTBR (thanks to another friend, writing). So maybe Gawker and I are both wrong: The sensibility of Edmund Wilson might be useful, and the NYTBR might be making use of it.