Criticism

Hola flamingos!

I thought I’d take some time to write a little blurb about criticism, now that I’m back to reading more than I was for the longest time. I’ve considered writing reviews of movies, of video games, of all kinds of different media in the past, but the only thing I find myself wanting to write reviews for turns out to be books.

I usually only write five star reviews these days. In fact, I only do that. My own moral compass has been shifting towards the fifth star and staying there. What brought it into focus was a two star review for my debut novel, The Yoga of Strength. I’ll even link to the dud review right here. The title of the review is ‘Needs an editor’ (when I brought the review to my editor with Atmosphere Press, Nick Courtright, he had a bit of a scoff, and not in the Newfoundland English meaning of that word (a meal)). For further reading on why it might morally behoove one to only give five-star reviews if one deigns to write one, I’d recommend reading my friend and fellow author Jon’s blog post.

In truth, The Yoga of Strength is without a doubt my ‘roughest’ work. I feel like my work has improved since then, though I feel The Yoga of Strength has more heart than anything I’ve written since. But still, the book has a 4.14 out of 5 star average rating out of 49 reviews, including a few glowing five stars like this one. Not too shabby. I’ve even given it to people after they’ve read some of my more recent work and I’ve received glowing compliments on it.

But that review, that two star clunker, has always stuck in my craw. How could this person hate my work, the thing I poured all of my heart and soul into, that much? A few of the things he mentions I even consider features, not bugs. My ego, the early parts of it anyway, the fragile stuff I grew when I was my daughter’s age (four) and which used to command me to throw myself on the floor in a bawling heap, was bruised quite heartily.

Still, I graciously thanked him for his review via e-mail, even though he said in his two star review that he should have given it one star (thanks, brother!) He told me that my reaction was better than some of the ones he received for his ‘honest’ reviews, usually authors furious with him for being so ‘mean.’ As an aside, the Loki in me didn’t let it go completely. After reading his excoriation of my language as a mixture of fine wine and motor oil, my next series written was a bawdy tale set in a medieval world where flowery language and absolutely filthy jokes stand next to one another. I dedicated the first book in that series, Top Man, to him. I said, ‘I couldn’t have done it without him.’

How’s that for lemons into lemonade?

My most recent series, The Thoth Quadrilogy, nears its end. At least, I’ve almost finished the first draft of the last book in that series. It’s a tale about an apocalypse that I started during the pandemic. Another bawdy tale, it’s told from first person and, like all of my work, it’s not exactly conventional (fellow author Dennis Liggio wrote of the first two books in series, ‘the most fucked up shit I’ve ever read, and I’m on the Internet’). Based on what he’s written about the books, it’s not because it’s a one-note dick joke. It’s partly because of the philosophical content that goes with the writing. Limerick-esque humor and deep existentialism make strange bedfellows, though perhaps not without reason (see halo and pile of poop coming out of flamingo above). There are some heavy undertones (it’s an apocalypse after all) and a lot of those undertones are about the life-shattering nature of sexual assault and how we live out our trauma eternally until we deal with it. Sure, it bounces back and forth between absolutely ridiculous jokes about Kool-Aid being the Elixir of Immortality and fourth-wall breaking humour that would give Monty Python a run for its money, but some of the stuff is quite serious.

Similar subject matter came up in The Yoga of Strength. And similar stuff re: sexual assault was taken apart as being clumsily handled. The myriad assumptions that entered into the reviews offered, both in terms of the author’s own participation in art (or lack thereof) and the lack of rationality in how people sometimes deal with abuse, became apparent. To wit: some people thought it was handled well, some people thought it was handled poorly.

Before I started writing, I made a decision that I would write the things that my unconscious brought to life. In fact, ‘learning to write’ involved me turning off all of my critical faculties and trusting that what came out of me would be true and good art. For me, the artistic process has been akin to riding a bike, as in, it requires a doing and not a thinking about doing. I don’t break it down, plot it out, write backstories, do all of these things that work for other people. Courage has been the guiding factor in my own writing, and part of that courage is to leap from the cliff and assume that everything will turn out in the end.

It does. At least, that’s my experience. I still go through enormous moments of self-doubt, of self-discouragement, of absolutely terrifying moments where I think I’ve completely missed the boat. And then I just keep writing and the plot resolves itself. Almost invariably in ways I did not expect.

Kind of like life, I find.

And still people are not going to like what I create. I will get the nasty reviews to go with the glowing ones, the things that are one word shy of an assault on my grandmother to go with the ‘you’ve changed my life’ starry-eyed expressions that make me wonder whether I might start a cult.

The truth, it seems, is that all art is in the eye of the beholder. But I cannot in good conscience do to others what I feel is done to me when I receive nasty reviews. I’m not going to get into the psychology of projection, which I have discovered in my own mind, but I would rather put flowers than rat shite into the world if I can avoid it. If something is really not worth my time, why say anything at all?

Criticism, it seems to me, is an exploration of one’s own philosophy of life. I think that critics play an important role, though in my darker moments I think that Keaton’s Birdman soliloquy hit the nail on the head. When we criticize, we don’t really take any risks, unless those criticisms are so out of left field that we get excommunicated from society for expressing them. Another thing that I’ve noticed is that the nasty ones always get more upvotes than the positive ones. There’s more… juice, in writing controversial things. Or perhaps people think you’re being more honest when you look on the dark side of life. It’s partly the reason why the media makes so much money from the polarization of society, it seems to me.

For me, writing five star reviews isn’t just to amp others up. It’s providing an honest assessment of a person’s expression. People go on and on about how ‘the real world’ isn’t a place where everyone gets a gold star, and in truth, it’s not. But in my corner of the world, I choose which wolf to feed. And though I might notice small blemishes, spelling errors, usage errors, or unbelievable aspects of a tale as I’m reading, I generally don’t let those dictate my assessment.

If you’re entering the arena, if you put on your armour and prepare for battle, you deserve five stars. At least, I’ll be there to give them to you.