Given the dangers of the former, as mentioned by various commenters here, I’m not at all sure that this is true!

TimT, I can assure you that there is very little about the world of literary reviews that is ‘refined’, at least not in Australia and at least not in the sense that I think you mean. The biffo leading to the current discussion is a case in point.

A sense of humour is good.

An ability to speak ironically about a text while at the same time directly communicating to the audience certain facts about that text – the ability to simultaneously exaggerate, entertain, and edify – is important.

And an honesty in how one approaches the whole task, that is crucial.

I was once so enraged by the snide viciousness of an Australian review (of a novel by someone I didn’t know) that I registered a domain name – http://www.skewerareviewer.com – to set up a blog where such reviews could themselves be ‘reviewed’ using the same tone / techniques as the originals. But then straightaway I couldn’t be bothered, and went back to writing my own book.

I agree with Delia about on-the-fence reviews (specially those filled with plot details and no discussion of technique or style or theme or or or…). Bravery and risk are required to write a good novel, but also to write a good review. Truthful bravery though; not swagger.

John Updike apparently once said: ”Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing
in the open sea.”

I was a bit pressed for time last night when I wrote that other comment, or I probably would have pointed out that I interpreted it, on the night, as a kind of social/class stereotyping – a putting in place of the enthusiastic Dan Brown reader by the other. (I think there is an interesting class dynamic when it comes to Dan Brown’s books, simply because they became so public, so suddenly, and therefore class judgment/stereotypes do enter into criticisms of his work.)

I was also wondering about different categories of reviews, the expressive modes of the trenchant critic:

- The biographical review, Nowra-style, pointing out the difference between the rhetoric of the author and their actual life.
- A political/rhetorical review, taking issue with the arguments made by the writer, and not necessarily with the style. (In the political review often assumptions are made about the style of writing that follow on from the disagreement the reviewer has with the writer).
- A review which wilfully misinterprets the book (in some way)- for instance, a reviewer points out the illogicality/hyperbole of the writer’s arguments or tone, and takes joy in it.
- The reviewer treats the badness of the book itself as a kind of artistic technique or device – ‘for years I have been longing for badness of the purest form’. This usually involves the reviewer presenting a dramatic/fictional version of themselves as well, otherwise the joke probably wouldn’t work.

Many other types of review, I’m sure.

I’m interested no-one has mentioned that recent publication ‘Creme de la Phlegm’ yet, a collection of angry reviewers. A lot of others who read the book found themselves overwhelmed by the anger contained within, but something must have made everyone buy it. I quite enjoy it myself – the bad review really is a wonderful art-form in its own right.

And the invocation of the spirit of a writer I’m thinking of as I write is James Wood’s superb “What Chekhov Meant by Llife”.

On the subject of discrimination, the very best critics give me an added dimension in a review which is a sense of their tastes, perhaps they even problematise those tastes or show a certain humorous self-knowledge about what does and doesn’t rock their boat. This gives me a freedom to enjoy their work more, because I learn to see how they think, and there is something wonderful about watching an expert’s taste develop and sound out its own edges. I’ve always admired Adrian Martin’s film reviews for this reason. I don’t always agree with his reviews, and sometimes even find his particular enthusiasms eccentric, but I always thoroughly enjoy his reviews because of their depth of knowledge and their enthusiasm for the medium itself. (TimT, Adrian’s reviews can be very joyful in both their likes and dislikes, and I’m thinking here of his extraordinary love letter to Terence Malick which begins with a stunning evocation of one of his tracking shots, reprinted in an odd Best Australian Essays).

A truly great review, I think — and this is certainly something Wood can do at his best — is almost a kind of act of translation, an invocation of the spirit of the work for the reader. I love a review that channels the feel of the work under review for me, gives me a sense of its energy, its charge, its family connections. I also most admire reviewers whose writing is always at the same time about a utopian sense of the medium they engage with, who look not only at the work under review but give a sense of the wider field and its possibilities.