In my column at SleuthSayers this week, I give a glimpse into the course on reviewing I’m currently teaching at George Mason University—and specifically our recent class meeting on the ethics of reviewing, which offered readings and discussion with some perhaps surprisingly different perspectives on this topic. Here’s a sample from my post at SleuthSayers:
The column on John Updike’s rules champions the “role social responsibility of the critic” by building on E.B. White’s call for writers to “life people up, not lower them down.” A couple of the columns stressed the need for fairness in reviewing—not only in terms of being fair to the book being reviewed by specifically by avoiding conflicts of interest in several directions: reviewers shouldn’t be friends with the authors they’re reviewing, nor should they be enemies, perhaps for obvious reasons.
And yet in contrast, there are concerns that too much politeness might lead, in Julavits’ words, to “dreckish handholding” and a “trumpeting of mediocrity,” and Shafer said more frankly, “The point of a book review isn’t to review worthy books fairly, it’s to publish good pieces“—and he pointed to the “British model” of assigning “lively-but-conflicted writers” to create greater tension (and perhaps draw more readers).