LH: What do you think the purpose of a review is? If you also write about books on a blog, why? What does blogging let you do differently?

SB: There are those who believe that book reviews should confine themselves to a description of what a book is and avoid any attempt at evaluation. This is perhaps an offshoot of the marketing impulse to use reviews as a mechanism to help sell the book. My own feeling is that, although book reviews can have an effect on sales, they are not marketing tools. Rather, they represent an evaluative assessment of a particular work. Such an assessment should be based on evidence from the book under consideration and should rely on certain literary standards. (A reviewer who cannot see the literary merit in, for example, Moby-Dick or Madame Bovary – whether or not that person actually likes the books – will probably not do well in the business.)

But a good review should give more than a cursory “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to a particular work. It should engage actively with the text and should be cognizant of where the text fits in a literary tradition (or how it breaks from that tradition). It should be honest and discriminating, though not petty or vituperative. And it should be aware of any text on two simultaneous levels: the level of form and the level of content.

Clearly, this requires much of a reviewer: she must be, in Philip Marchand’s words, “very intelligent”; she must be knowledgeable about literary history; she must be courageous enough to offer clear opinions about matters of literary merit, as well as flexible enough to recognize merit in writing that might not be specific to the reviewer’s own taste or approach, if the reviewer is also an author. (Book reviewers, of course, are unique among critics in that they work in the same medium as the artists under review, and therefore have the potential to outperform their subjects.)

Although I regularly write print reviews (for Quill & Quire, where I am review editor, and for Canadian Notes and Queries, among other places), I continue to maintain a literary website, That Shakespearean Rag. The blog allows me certain freedoms that I don’t otherwise enjoy: I’m allowed to set my own agenda and to choose the books I want to cover, and I’m not restricted to a specific word count or a limited spectrum of books available for review. For instance, I can review international books, which I can’t do at Quill, and I can write about books that are not current releases. On the blog I am free to indulge my enthusiasms, rather than being beholden to any particular editorial mandate.

For the rest of the interview, please go here.

If I say I was surprised to ‘find myself’ writing more literary essays, more reviews, it’s only in part because of the somewhat shady status of the professional reviewer.  Like most writers, I’ve always had a healthy scepticism, in not a downright scorn, of criticism.  But the more I engaged in its practice, the more intrigued I became with its possibilities and limitations.  It offered “the fascination of what’s difficult,” in Yeat’s phrase.  To do justice to a book, to convey something of its substance, if not its essence, in a few hundred words is not entirely unlike the effort required to write a sonnet: Both demand compression, both depend on logical progression, and both — if one is successful — produce a kind of music.  More intriguingly, however, the review or essay, unlike the sonnet, has to submerge its effects; it shouldn’t call undue attention to itself; it has to be swallowed up in its subject — the book at hand.

… if criticism is an art, much of its artfulness lies in catching the attention of distracted readers; it takes something more, however, to keep their attention.  The critic must stimulate curiosity but he or she must also appeal to our innate sense of justice.  Like it or not, the critic is a judge, and sometimes, unavoidably, a hanging judge; that is the etymology of the word (from Greek krites,  ” judge”).  We may flinch from the “judgmental” but at the same time, I think, we’re strangely elated, as well as reassured, when we see justice done, even in so small a matter as a review; it sets the world momentarily aright.

There’s so much more to this fine, fine essay.  And this fine issue.  Please: go pick up a copy for yourself.

It’s the start of a new year for Canadian literature. The hoopla surrounding last year’s Giller has quieted down. The Governor-General’s Literary Awards have been handed out. Soon Canada Reads will fill the gap and take over the public’s imagination. For most literary institutions, January is a sleepy time.

Break time is over, though, for literary prize foundations. I’m sure the Giller advisory board has already started drafting up potential jury lists for 2010, and that someone at the Canada Council has been tasked with a similar function. But I’m also certain that none of the names bandied about will be those of Canadian literature scholars.

Why? Because apparently literary critics (as opposed to reviewers) have no place in Canadian literary prize competitions.

Consider this: In the last 15 years of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, only two of out of the 36 jurists have been academics – one of whom helped create the prize.

Or have a glance at the 2009 jury members for poetry or fiction for the GG awards. Or at any point over the previous 20 years. See any scholars?

for the rest of the essay, please go here.