From One Disgruntled Pooter

Wednesday November 29, 2006

Stop reading now if you’re bored with the whole Rachel Cooke and Susan Hill and John Sutherland debate. I’d read countless blog posts criticising Cooke’s views before I decided to go and read her original article for myself. Now I’ve read it I think it’s time I added my own tuppence worth.

To me, Rachel Cooke’s piece reads like one of those deliberately barbed articles that are photocopied and handed out to students in seminars for discussion:

  1. Discuss her use of language (for example ‘a hurricane in the hip flask that is British literary life’)
  2. Discuss her choice of title
  3. Discuss her argument
  4. Conclude with how you agree/disagree with her.

My answers are:

  1. Hmmmm. Could do better
  2. Hmmmm. Oh, I see. The chap from Diary of a Nobody. Very clever
  3. She doesn’t like bloggers
  4. I disagree.

Of course these answers wouldn’t win me many friends in a seminar, so I am going to go into why I disagree.

The hurricane in the hip flask refers to Susan Hill’s very public falling out with a literary editor who wrote to her informing that he would not be reviewing any more of her work following her blog post about book reviews. Cooke doesn’t think much of Hill, and really doesn’t like her blog, which she dismisses partly because of the (horror of all horrors) X-Factor posts she’s seen there.

However, the main jist of the article is Cooke’s contempt for book bloggers and how they possibly couldn’t be taken seriously as real critics. By this she means the printed word as opposed to the words on the web, which is a fair stance to take, but she holds the paid literary critic in a much higher esteem than I ever would:

I’ve written before about the importance of critics. I said, in essence, that they were useful because they know a lot (also, you know who they are, unlike so many faceless bloggers and internet reviewers who hide behind the anonymity the web provides).

Do they and do I? Why do they know a lot, because they are a book reviewer who sees their work in print? Is this an instant licence to a fountain of knowledge? It’s impossible to argue that they ‘know’ a lot, and insulting to same someone else doesn’t. And personally I don’t know who they are. In fact I would argue that many bloggers are becoming much more recognisable as personalities in their own right. Most literary critics remain faceless to me.

Cooke had some internet bad luck when she found herself under attack on a blog entitled Shit Sandwich. I’ve never seen Shit Sandwich so I can’t comment, but it’s unfortunate that she got off on the wrong foot. One nasty blog experience and then all blogs are tarred with the same brush. Devoting herself to one entire day of blog reading, I can’t help thinking that she sat down at her laptop with hatred in her veins:

so much of the stuff you read in the so-called blogosphere is so awful: untrustworthy, banal and, worst of all, badly written.

I disagree and I’ve said before how I’m always surprised at just how much well written stuff I’m always finding. But that’s her opinion and she’s entitled to it. What upset me the most (and prompted this restrained rant) was her patronising conclusion:

I read and I read; I dutifully followed every link…. Look, it’s great that people are sharing their love of books on the internet; I’m glad it makes them happy.

You poor, poor deluded bloggers. Do it if you must, if it makes you happy, but you couldn’t possibly expect me to take you seriously, could you?

Well, I find I can’t share my love of books with the literary critics in The Guardian and The Sunday Times. I read them, because I want to find out about new and interesting books that are being published, but I can’t interact with them, and I can’t follow their progress as they work their way through a classic novel. I can’t share or learn from their current library and, if blogging’s so worthless, I can’t enjoy the extreme pleasure of sitting down and writing myself.

Rachel Cooke doesn’t like The X Factor, and nor do I much, but I suspect that she doesn’t much care for any sort of pop music. Or popular culture as a whole, which is where blogging fits in, and where there’s no place for intellectual snobbery.

Filed under |

I’ve emailed The Observer regarding it. Interesting piece. It sounds to me as though the journalist seems threatened by blogging – and that wouldn’t be the first time I’ve felt I’d encountered that.

Do we make the journos (particularly the “op-ed” ones) feel insecure? It wouldn’t surprise me. I know we could do better than some…

...but equally, some are a lot better than us.

Anyway, like I say, I’ve emailed The Observer with a challenge. Book reviews by professional reviewers vs bloggers: each person profiled but not linked to a review – and see if the readers can identify which is professional and which isn’t…

What d’ya reckon Steve? Think we could take ‘em on?

Come and have go if yer think yer erudite enough…!

(Hmm. I’m not sure that’s quite got the same ring to it)

JackP    29 November, 09:44 PM   

Yes I think you’ve got it – she does feel threatened as the likes of us have infringed on an, up until recently, cosy little world.

Interestingly, Cooke mentions Kenneth Tynan in her article and I imagine there was only about a dozen or so critics at the time of his heyday, all strolling through the West End without a care in the world. But (and thank God) it's not just the privileged few who can pass comment any more.

There are a lot of ‘paper’ critics who are better than bloggers, but an awful lot who just don’t make the grade. I’ll be up for your challenge. Bring it on!

Stephen    29 November, 10:05 PM   

Great piece, Stephen! Like you, I noticed the patronizing tone of her article. Her argument was so full of flaws that I was amazed it got past her editors. And this came from a professional journalist. Granted, I understand that the blogosphere isn’t always, well, friendly, but I’ve also noticed that a lot of bloggers tend to take disagreement personally. Cooke seems to have taken Shit Sandwich’s disagreement with her very personally, and I suppose that’s simple human nature. But I think Cooke would’ve done a lot better had she cooled off and put her emotions in check. Her opinion of blogs was already made up even before she embarked on her lazy research, so I can’t even take her seriously.

Brandon    29 November, 10:08 PM   

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