I’m not much of a reviewer. Not in terms of how many I’ve written, I’ve written quite a few but I’m not good at it. I’m not really a good writer in general. I don’t enjoy relaying or doing a play-by-play of a novel and then adding the always great “the setting is its own character” observation and adding words like Dickensian to it for extra flavor. You know, things nobody have ever thought about.
There is a place for them as not everyone is the same and some people want added validation or confirmation to something they are going to spend their hard-earned money or time on, but I’ve always been someone who didn’t want to do something that I felt a robot (now AI) could replicate, and now often does. It’s not something that I find useful but I understand their place.
I do enjoy works of criticism because I think the best of those are an art to themselves. If you read old Pauline Cale reviews or current ones from Angelica Jade Bastien or some from a few years ago by K. Austin Collins, or David Erlich or Adam Nayman (a handful of others) now, whether you agree with or not, or even find them sometimes insufferable, there is something there that they have that just separates their writing. Through experience or brain chemistry or just a deceptively simple way with words some people are just different and are not part of that those who can’t do something write about it group that I probably live in.
Really good ones are like films or books themselves. They can be exhilarating, have their own momentum, their own themes, and reveal something inside that artist’s head. I’ve always marveled at Charlie Jane Ander’s review of something as dumb as the second Transformers movie.
There are also people who can just write beautifully, like literary stylists ala Valente or Peake and their prose there are just people who can write like some people can just draw on a napkins with a dull pencil, one hand around their coffee as they doodle better than most of us can photograph.
The internet and culture seem to have moved more into the reaction game than actual criticism and this has been happening for decades now but just accelerated with things like YouTube and TikTok and what I call the rise of dork media and experts, which believe me has been almost entirely a silly endeavor, sometimes entertaining, and often disappointing when we get looks under the hood that reveals some truly bad actors and on very few occasions, revelatory in true talents we find. Someone like a Jenny Nicholson comes to mind. Typically though you just find people whose talent is time and desire to deep dive lore, which please don’t get me wrong has value and I indulge myself at times, but I sometimes can’t help to think these people are reading books or watching movies for us.
I don’t have rigor or the discipline that a critic does though. The talent just isn’t there.
I think I’m okay at sharing my feelings about what I just read though. Interestingly enough, this has less value than either of what I mentioned above as it serves no function, isn’t art, and should have no value to anyone. Who cares what I feel?
I don’t know why I’m talking about reviews this was going to be about a book I read but as I was beating on the aforementioned keyboard, my song morphed, it became something else probably equally uninteresting to most people, but something I had to dash out.
Have you ever had those discussions online or even ones you run into in real life and the topic is something along the lines of this is an underrated book or this is a hidden gem of a film not given enough flowers and get these wild choices that are completely given love?
One recent one I saw about movies almost broke me with people talking about Scott Pilgrim, Galaxy Quest, and Shawshank Redemption, and obviously, while this discussion doesn’t cost us anything they still just drive me crazy. These are beloved films, completely reclaimed by the planet or film Twitter (when it was called that and when it was not yet a complete shit show). If you evoke them anywhere online, the response will be overwhelmingly positive but people go back and look at the box office or just have a general lack of awareness and mention films like this all the time. In this same discussion, someone mentioned Magnolia and maybe I don’t understand the criteria but there is no underrated Paul Thomas Anderson movie and IF there was one it certainly would not be Magnolia, a movie that has Tom Cruise in it, in a performance where he legit probably should have won the Oscar for and would have if he didn’t follow a silly cult developed by a middling 20th-century science fiction author. Cruise was in Magnolia and Eyes Wide Shut in 1999. Killer two-piece in a one of killer years in film.
If you have similar discussions about TV people will often mention Freak and Geeks and it’s equally as infuriating. This show is on every top 100 shows of all time list. Everyone knows it was great. There is no mass of people who deny it. If you mention it on social media all you will see is love for it. It doesn’t matter that it was canceled way too early decades ago. The culture has reclaimed it.
The reason why this bothers me is that I came on the internet not to find people who agreed with me about art but to find people who can put me on to something I don’t know about. Treasures that I have not yet found in my own explorations. I like to know what truly moves you, book, show, or film that people love that is away from the gravity of consensus. It’s baffling to me when every year I see 20 top 10 end-of-the-year best lists and they all share 7-8 titles as if human beings agree on anything to that degree. It’s like… you just so happened to read the same things and love the same things? Gotcha. It’s a rather silly thing that we all just pretend to make sense of. It’s validating. It’s easy. It serves as and is a trophy to marketing divisions (good job, I know there are a lot of you on there – and some publicity people at publishers are among my favorite people on earth). It’s not personal. Now sometimes you have a consensus pick that is undeniable, and those are so exciting, but to have so many every year is not just puzzling, it’s impossible unless people are being herded to watch the same things.
Asking people what their favorites are is largely an unfruitful endeavor. What I want to know is what is your favorite that you don’t think is in anybody else’s top 25? What book did you stumble on that spoke to you, that spoke to you the unique human being, with a unique mind, and bringing a unique experience, worldview, life, and all that life life debris that makes you different from the person above and below you on my Goodreads follower list? What truly moves you and doesn’t just make you someone who reads what everyone says are the top books of the year? What’s on your shelf that isn’t on Oprah’s shelf or the Booker long list? What is your favorite book that isn’t on your best friend’s shelf because as close as you are, as many secrets as you share, not even they vibe to that exact frequency? What is actually yours in the way that before we had the internet to share?
These are people I typically seek, even though my choice for the best graphic novel of 2023 was a consensus pick (which happens sometimes). Not only that but if you search hard enough you might find me saying Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is my favorite novel of all time which is about as chalk of a favorite novel someone can have outside of classics like Moby Dick or The Great Gatsby or other modern favorites like Blood Meridian. But my favorite novel before that? It might low key still be my favorite novel, is Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled.
Even more evidence of my fraudulence, you will see me gleefully responding to and agree with such lists. We are after all humans, we are social, we want to be a part of something, we often meet and make friends because of shared experiences.
I still prefer those personal picks, not people computing, processing, and regurgitating all the lists they’ve seen, and adding one spin thinking it makes it their own. My next post will be a book that is one of my choices. A book I have in my top 10 that you don’t find on a lot of lists. Something that crushed me. Something that as I write the draft on really makes me admit how self-aware I am in my most potent moments that are also my worst traits. Something that exposed the monsters within me.
This post was originally supposed to be about that book but I wrote all this before thinking it would be part of that and then (correctly) decided… well damn, nobody would last long enough to get to the end.
Meanwhile, please share a book, a movie, or a TV show below that is in just your top 10. That thing that if I google lists, it isn’t on half of the lists associated with your generation or understood industry or artistic canon, Bloom’s or otherwise. Share a book that actually moved YOU and wasn’t just something you joined for and followed others to and agreed with.
Not a deep cut, but a true one.