Are Novelists Too Wary of Criticizing Other Novelists?

Published: September 3, 2013 The New York Times

Each week in Bookends, two writers take on pressing and provocative questions about the world of books.

By Zoë Heller

Illustration by R. Kikuo Johnson

Zoë Heller

Participation in “book chat” is not just a public service, but an act of self-interest — a defending of the writer’s vocation.

Novelists are not remotely wary of criticizing one another’s work in private; they do it all the time. Only when they’re asked to commit their shoptalk to print do they grow reticent. A hardy few are prepared to engage tough-mindedly with the work of their peers — Geoff Dyer, for example, or John Banville, or Cathleen Schine, or the late, great Elizabeth Hardwick — but they are the exceptions. Most fiction writers end up deciding that discretion is the greater part of critical valor. Some recuse themselves from reviewing any contemporary fiction at all. Others review only those novels they can praise in good faith. Still others adopt a tactful, discursive reviewing style that allows them to write about books they don’t rate without actually copping to an opinion.

Before we rebuke these writers for their intellectual cowardice, we ought to acknowledge the genuine difficulty of the task they shirk. The literary world is tiny. The subgroup represented by novelists is even tinier. If you’re an author who regularly reviews other authors, the chances of running into a person whose novel you have criticized are fairly high. (All the higher, if you happen to live in New York City or some other center of ambition.) It may not be the worst thing in the world to find yourself side by side at a cocktail party with the angry man whose work you described as mediocre in last Sunday’s paper, but the threat of such encounters is not a great spur to critical honesty.

Membership in any small, somewhat beleaguered professional community engenders not just social anxiety but also collegial loyalty and empathy. A novelist can avoid literary functions, but not his fellow feeling for other novelists. Once you know the hard labor it takes to complete even a lousy novel — once you’ve experienced the sting and misery of your own bad reviews — it’s only natural to feel some hesitation about inflicting pain on a colleague. 

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