Book reviewing, it would seem, has been in crisis from the start. As early as 1757, a contributor to Britain’s Literary Magazine complained that “critic is no longer an appellation of dignity,” because book reviewers had turned into “Visigoths,” “critical torturers” who took “malicious pleasure” in tearing authors apart. A century and a half later, in the very first issue of The New Republic, Rebecca West was sounding an equally pessimistic note, although for opposite reasons: “There is now no criticism in England. There is merely a chorus of weak cheers, a piping note of appreciation . . . a mild kindliness that neither heats to enthusiasm nor reverses to anger.” And in 1959, Elizabeth Hardwick famously said much the same thing about reviewing in the United States: “Sweet, bland commendations fall everywhere upon the scene; a universal, if somewhat lobotomized, accommodation reigns.”
The Life and Death of the Book Review
