Guest blogger, Patricia Grossman
If a group of 100 writers were asked how they felt about high school, I suspect that most would provide an impressive list of grievances, as high school in general (and alas) is not known for its benevolence toward the individualist. In preparing young people for their futures, high schools go by a set of one-size-fits-all academic standards that results in a letter grade in all subjects for all students. Writers tend not to flourish when measured within such strictures, and it is not until later, when they see the legitimacy of independent thought and an emotional life based on gradations that they and their work begin to thrive.
So how did we all end up back in high school again? Why do so many book review sources subject the most complex and nuanced of books to a letter grade, a 1-5 star system, or, in the case of at least one widely-read source, a couple of sentences following the underscored word verdict? Is this a cosmic joke on all writers who survived high school?
No, of course the effect on writers of these letter grades, stars, and verdicts is besides the point. These measurements are provided as a service to busy readers. Those readers have only one question: Should I read this book? And there is only one answer: A, B, C, D, E, F or ★–★★★★★, or verdict. On the Web, the star is particularly ubiquitous, used by all levels of reader and deployed everywhere from online bookstores to readers’ networks to literary blogs of some repute.
I remember, as I imagine many other writers and plenty of readers do, that when I first encountered this system for measuring literature, I was horrified. But after time, like a citizen in a totalitarian society, I became inured to the continuous insult to individual intelligence and sensibility conferred by the marks. Going against everything I know about how people receive literature, I insidiously started to believe the now institutionalized stars, letter grades, and verdicts. If they work for so many, I (unconsciously) asked, what’s wrong with me?
More than when we were in high school, writers are now meant to not only accept, but to seek these infuriatingly crude gauges of their abilities. Despite knowing better, everyone is in on the game: agents, editors, publicists. While it’s thankfully true that the best review sources don’t use these gauges and never will, their ranks are shrinking as the letter-grading ones expand.
What should a writer do about a book review industry that has come to embrace both the figurative and, in individual reviews, the literal bottom line?
1. Break free of the cult. The Powers That Be are wrong and you are right. Stars, letter grades, and verdicts are not for literature.
2. Let the review sources know you are offended. Write to their editors and ask them to buck the system. Do this not as writer but as a reader.
3. Don’t look. If your work gets one star, you’ll experience an absurd and unbecoming measure of devastation; if it gets five you’ll be falsely assured.
Most important:
4. Do what writers have always done; write for readers who would not dream of grading a narrative, readers who pick up a book because, whatever their ultimate impressions, they have found a fittingly private and intricate place to do their wondering.
Patricia Grossman’s latest novel is Radiant Daughter, 2010 Northwestern University Press.
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Smart and well-reasoned; Grossman has effectively nailed so much of what is wrong with the way we think about books today.