I REALLY THOUGHT I KNEW WHAT I WAS DOING

I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. Up until today I’ve posted my thoughts on the books I read and never asked for comments, although I did answer the few I would get. This however is not a post about a book; it is a post about ‘reviewing’ and what a blogger should and shouldn’t do when writing about books.

Two days ago I read a post about Bias when it comes to reviewing. In it the three participants come to the conclusion that in order to be credible, a reviewer should refrain from reviewing books written by people they are friends with. This idea pulled me up short. It is not a possible conflict of interest I’ve ever thought about, but now that it has been brought to my attention I’m left with a few questions I would dearly love an answer to. I posted my questions in a reply to the original post but don’t expect to find my answers there. After all, the post makes it perfectly clear where the author and his collaborators stand. I would like a wider perspective on this issue, which is why I am now turning to you; the people who read my thoughts on the books I read, the authors who know (of) me, and other reviewers.

I could try to summarize the original post here but am reluctant to do that. A summary would not necessarily be an honest representation of the post’s content and might easily be influenced by my personal feelings. I therefore hope you’ll have the time to read the original post before reading my questions and further thoughts below.

The original post can be found here:  A Discussion on Bias.

Below is a copy of my reply:

“I read this post last night and started a long reply before deciding to sleep on it and wait to see what my thoughts and feelings would be in the morning.

Sometimes a good night’s sleep does not provide all the answers.

I’m conflicted about almost everything the three of you have said in the post. Part of me is in complete agreement while another part of me screams that things are not quite that simple.

Allow me to start with a few thoughts/questions that sprang to mind as soon as I read the post:

·         Where do you draw the line? When does interacting with someone online turn into a friendship disqualifying you from reviewing their books?

·         If you’re staying away from reviewing books by a certain author because you are friends with them should you then not go all the way and also shy away from cover reveals, interviews and competitions? Isn’t there a real risk that the followers of your blog would assume that you promoting a book or author also means you endorse that/their work?

·         If you have reviewed and praised (a) book(s) by an author and become ‘friends’ with them at a later date, does that make those earlier reviews suspect?

·         Peer reviews are as old as books are. And while authors in the past didn’t have social media to keep in touch with each other I have no doubt that a lot of them knew each other and communicated in a time appropriate way. Of course in those days the reader had no way of knowing whether or not the reviewing author personally knew the author (s)he was reviewing. Does that not mean things are more rather than less transparent these days? If someone is suspicious about any given review it’s very easy to check the relationship between reviewer and author.

·         Should we not give the people who follow our blogs more credit? Provided we’re honest and consistent they’ll get to know our tastes soon enough and read the reviews accordingly.

On a personal note, I do have two blogs on which I write about books. I do this mostly on my own (I may have bullied the husband into writing a few for me). I don’t and never have referred to my posts as reviews. The headers on both blogs stipulate that I share ‘my thoughts on books’. I don’t claim to be objective, although I try to be.  I write posts for every single book I read, regardless of whether or not I ‘know’ the author. I trust the people who read my posts to get this. I like to think my posts are about the book, the story, the way it is written and whether or not it worked for me and why that was the case. I never questioned what I was doing on those blogs and now I am. Should I write a lengthy disclaimer? Or should I take comfort from the fact that up till now no author or reader has complained about my posts?

Not only does a night’s sleep not bring any answers, neither does writing a way too lengthy reply.”

When I wrote those words I tried to keep in mind that I was replying to someone else’s post rather than writing my own and tried not make it any longer than I felt it needed to be. Now that restriction has been lifted I’d like to add one or two things.

Does the fact that I know and adore Celine Kiernan and hug her every time we meet mean I’m no longer able to be objective about her books? I don’t think so. However would you look at my posts of her wonderful books differently, now that you are aware that I personally know her?

Should I refrain from ever writing about a book by Andrew Nugent again just because he was kind enough to mention my blog in his chapter in ‘Down These Green Streets’? I’ve never met or communicated with this author and as he says in his essay he knows nothing about me.  Still, suspicious minds might distrust anything positive I might have to say about his books in the future.

I don’t like the idea that in order to be able to write about the books I read I should refrain from interacting with the authors who write them. Most if not all authors I interact with, I didn’t get in contact with until after I had read one or more of their books. In fact, chances are I sought them out because their stories impressed or touched me rather than read the books because I happened to ‘know’ them.

It would really help me to know how others feel about this issue. Are the participants in the original discussion right and have I been naive to have never thought about this in the past? Should I change my approach and refrain from posts about authors I personally know?

My blogs started out as a means of keeping track of what I read. I did that on paper long before I even had access to the internet. If the consensus is that my approach is wrong or, worse still, that I could potentially damage an author with my posts, I am tempted to change the settings on my blogs to private and go back to writing those thoughts just for myself again.

NEW WAYS TO KILL YOUR MOTHER

TITLE: NEW WAYS TO KILL YOUR MOTHER

           Writers and Their Families

AUTHOR: COLM TÓIBÍN

Pages: 346

Date: 26/03/2013

Grade: 4+

Details: Non-Fiction/Essays

             Received from Penguin

             Through Nudge

Own

In this fascinating book, Colm Tóibín sets out to show how their families influenced the work of various authors. Divided into two sections he first concentrates on Irish authors: W.B. Yeats, J.M. Synge, Samuel Beckett, Brian Moore, Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle and Hugo Hamilton. The second part of the book, called ‘Elsewhere’ gives us glimpses of the lives and families of Thomas Mann, Jorge Luis Borges, Hart Crane, Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, James Baldwin and finally Barack Obama, a man we don’t think of as an author first and foremost. And there is one other author who returns in chapter after chapter although he isn’t given one of his own: Henry James.

Of course Henry James is a favourite subject for Tóibín. His book ‘The Master’ provides a wonderful description of James’ life and work. And having recently had the opportunity to hear him talk about the James family and their connection to Bailieborough, a town close to where I live, I fully appreciate the depth of his knowledge and his affection for his subject.

With skill and clarity Tóibín shows us how authors made use of their relationships – or lack thereof – with their families. For example, in the preface he reflects on the absent mother who, in the novels of Jane Austen and Henry James, is a vehicle to allow the main character to develop on their own, without maternal influences.

But the observations in this book are not limited to how the family influenced the work of the authors mentioned, they also reflect on their actual relationships in real life:

“Thus the two successful authors, William (Butler Yeats) and Henry James, each in his prime, had managed to kill their father rather fatally, as it were, by letting his work be published in book form.”

But the reader is given much more than the title of this book seems to promise. While connections between authors, their relationships with their families and their work are frequent, those works are discussed in detail that goes above and beyond the family relationship. So, with regard to W.B. Yeats and his (much younger) wife George we are shown:

 “…a symbol of the way writers use houses for their magic properties rather than their domestic space.”

And Sebastian Barry in his play Hinterland deals with the Father, as did a lot of plays in the early years of the twenty-first century. More specifically, he deals with the father and his short-comings, both as the head (and thus father-figure) of a nation and in his home life.

“If Ireland needed a public figure to become its disgraced father, then Charles Haughey auditioned perfectly for the role and played it with tragic dignity in a lonely exile in his Georgian mansion in North County Dublin.”

The chapter on Roddy Doyle and Hugo Hamilton provides the reader with a contrast in fathers. While father Doyle came from a republican family he had no real interest in the concept of Ireland and its language. Hamilton’s father on the other hand took such pride in his Irishness that he refused to speak English and forbade the use of that language in his house and thus managed to cruelly curtail his children’s’ childhood in the process.

In part two of this book, ‘Elsewhere’ we start with a look at Thomas Mann and his family. To say that the relationships within this family were unconventional would be putting it mildly. Covering among other things homosexuality and incest this chapter is rather gossipy in appearance and rather fascinating as a result.

With Borges however we are back in line with the title, be it that the parent being ‘killed’ is the father rather than the mother:

“It is as though an artist such as Picasso, whose father was a failed painter, or William James, whose father was a failed essayist, or V.S. Naipaul, sought to compensate for his father’s failure while at the same time using his talent as a way of killing the father off, showing his mother who was the real man in the household.”

I could give more examples of how authors deal with their families in their published work, but this book covers so much more than what is implied in the title. This book also discusses the authors’ work; sometimes staying on topic and discussing how their families and their relationship with them influenced it, but, at other times, giving a much more general description of their writings. In fact, there are some chapters in this book in which the author’s family is barely mentioned at all. Brian Moore’s story seems to be more about his absence from his native Belfast than about his relationship with his relatives for example. So I think it is fair to say that while for some of the authors mentioned their relationships with their families were hugely influential on their work, for others that was less or not at all the case. In fact, the first piece about James Baldwin doesn’t appear to be about his family at all but about his ‘relationship’ with America and the changes it was going through. The chapter James Baldwin shares with Barack Obama on the other hand is very much about their families or, more specifically, their absent fathers.

Tóibín may be writing about other authors and quoting from their work, letters and diaries – giving the reader a taste of the magnificence of those authors – his own writing is equally impressive in its thoughtfulness and fluency. It is clear that he is an expert when it comes to authors, their work and the connections between the various authors. At times this book reads as if he personally knows all these people he is writing about and is generously sharing this personal knowledge with his readers.

This is neither a quick nor an easy read. It is a fascinating book though. Ideally, I feel, it should be read in bits and pieces, a chapter started and finished when you are reading a book by or about the author in question. Especially since I found that I was far more interested in the chapters on authors and books I am familiar with than in those whose subject I had barely heard of. I know I will be revisiting certain chapters when I’m preparing for book discussions with my reading group.

Colm Tóibín provides his readers with fascinating and knowledgeable insights into authors as well as their work and in doing so also gives his readers a better understanding of those works and of what motivated the authors to write them.