'No Business Reviewing a Work of Fiction'

I don’t think I have reviewed a novel since 2004, when I took on Cynthia Ozick’s Heir to the Glimmering World for the Houston Chronicle. I occasionally read novels, usually older ones, and have since I was a kid. I’m always happy to recommend good ones, whether on the blog, via email or in conversation. William Maxwell, Henry Green and Italo Svevo are recent examples. I’m confused by my reluctance to review fiction, though it may have to do with my uncertainty over how much plot to paraphrase. Too much, and it’s boring and delays critical evaluation. Too little, and you’re not doing justice to the narrative. 

In the April 1955 issue of Encounter, W.H. Auden reviews Cards of Identity, the second novel by the English writer Nigel Dennis. I haven’t read it and know nothing about Dennis. Auden too is timid about reviewing fiction, and begins like this:

 

“I really have no business reviewing a work of fiction at all. In the first place, I can no more imagine myself writing one than I can imagine myself doing up a parcel properly.”

 

I find Auden’s declaration of humility refreshing and liberating. The reviews I find most annoying are those in which the reviewer tells the writer how he should have written the book in question, presuming to usurp the writer’s role. Auden continues:

 

“In the second, my tastes are much too limited. For me, a novel should be short--not more than 35o pages--and, preferably, funny. I like novels to be about my betters, in body, wit, energy, breeding, or bank balance; I know that there are many admirable persons who live in poky flats and drink cocoa but I don’t want to hear about them. (The genius of Dickens, my favourite novelist, lies in his capacity to transform the lower middle class into an aristocracy which it would be a privilege for any Proust to enter.)”

 

The class bias, in my case, doesn’t apply. I could happily reread Dreiser and Daniel Fuchs. As I’ve gotten older my preference has shifted to shorter fiction, and I have a weakness for good comic writing. When young I was an omnivore. I read Gravity’s Rainbow twice the year it was published – the second time so I could review it. No more of that. Auden as reviewer is never less than charming. He even admits to practicing a form of bibliomancy, or divination by book:

 

“When, therefore, as happens now and then, as happens in this case, I see before me a novel written by an old friend, it is with trepidation and the prayer ‘O God, please let me like it’ that I take it up. Taking up Cards of Identity, I looked first to see how many pages I should have to get through -- 37o. A bit on the long side, but possible. Then, like those who consult the Bible for guidance, I opened at three pages taken at random, one near the beginning, one near the end, and one somewhere in the middle, and read a passage on each, a procedure which I have found infallible in judging a new volume of poetry but which is, I suppose, very unfair to a piece of fiction.”

 

The method works and Auden goes on to enjoy Dennis’ novel, which I find encouraging. Offhand, I don’t recall him having reviewed another work of fiction, though I haven’t checked. His verdict:

 

“[The] treatment is purely English, in the tradition of writers like Ben Jonson, Peacock, and Wyndham Lewis. His book is very funny and unbelievably tough, a jolly farce which, nevertheless, makes all those naturalistic novels in which men beat each other up, women die of syphilis, and no lavatory would dream of flushing seem the work of vegetarian social workers.”