Given the current state of publishing, the unofficial writer's commandment of only saying nice things about other people's books would seem more important than ever. Yet it's also a bit false to the truth of one's reading experience. For every book I read with excitement (which this year includes Someday This Pain May be Useful to You by Peter Cameron, several novels by Margaret Atwood, The Slave by isaac Bashevis Singer) there are at least ten more that were just so-so, or even dreadful.
My private benchmark for fiction is my limited bookshelf space. After moving from one cramped New York apartment to another several times, I realized quickly there was no point in keeping books that for whatever reason didn't mean something to me. So now as I read, I keep a pile of books to give away. Some of the books that make that pile aren't necessarily bad. In fact, a few might be fairly good, like Being Dead by Jim Crace, which I found well-written, sort of interesting, just a little glib, a bit too facile for my taste. I can't justify a place for it on my shelf between two gay writers named Cooper (Dennis and Bernard), each with dazzlingly original styles, and John Dalton's novel Heaven Lake, a fascinating trip to China.
Other books that weren't awful, but didn't make the cut: two Narnia books by C. S. Lewis, which I bought at a used bookstore after seeing the film version of Prince Caspian motivated me to reread the entire series. Lewis is a terrific writer and a lot of fun, though a bit creepy to read when you realize the religious propaganda going on in the background. All in all, good, but not necessary rereading like L. Frank Baum's Oz series or Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Prairie books.
I'm also shedding Le Divorce by Diane Johnson, a book with some scattered wit and a completely preposterous plot that was inexplicably nominated for a National Book Award. Speaking of award-winners, Johnson's in good company with the turgid Pulitzer-prize-honored Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I'm not quite sure what it is that people like about this book. It's flat, lifeless, written in the clean prose of a high school English textbook on composition. "But that's just the point!" exclaim the book's defenders. "It's a masterpiece of tone!" That's right, it's supposed to be boring. (Not that I'm against flat, dry affect, which works so well in the novels Stoner by John Williams, or Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell)
On the flipside, there's My Holocaust by Tova Reich, which suffers from the opposite problem. It's got too much going on. The book's characters are so cartoonish they might as well speak in balloons, kind of like the illustrations in Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, which also made my pile for being a one-note joke that got old after the first hundred pages.
Why take the time to speak ill of one's fellow writers, especially when so few people are buying books? First of all, it should not be bad form to say you didn't like or love another person's book. It's a necessary part of our cultural dialogue. Secondly, if we want to resuscitate the book business, encouraging people to buy any book that gets a good review or wins a prize is not the way to do it. Just as we passionately recommend the books we love, occasionally it's worth a little of our time to steer readers away from books we don't think can do them much good. Generally, I try to avoid negative critique (except when it comes to Republican politicians or so-called holy men like Rick Warren who espouse noxious opinions more worthy of Pontius Pilate than Christ). But every once in a while, a little venting helps to keep us honest.
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