In The Washington Post's The Style Blog Ron Charles comments on a recent piece [not freely accessible] by Arthur Krystal in the Chronicle of Higher Education, leading him to wonder about meanness in book reviews.
He notes:
Krystal is right, of course, there's no need to be cruel, but sometimes the exasperation of slogging through a dull, stupid or monumentally over-hyped book gets the best of even the nicest person.He also observes:
As a reader of many, many reviews, I have to admit I'm more alarmed by the number of dull ones than the number of unkind ones.He'd also like to see more authors fight back -- suggesting that might lead to: "more robust review pages" .....