Enough About Me #15: In Which a Phone Call Leads the Author to Discover What Amazon.com...

A good friend of mine is an obsessive Amazon.com visitor and, just the other day, called once again to discuss the latest posted review of my work. For those of us who feel that the Ebert & Roeper "thumbs-up, thumbs-down" system is still too subtle, my friend has divided my reviews on Amazon and elsewhere into two brand-new categories: flip-offs and suck-offs. As in: "Some jerk from Chicago flipped off your book." Or: "You got a great suck-off from some dude in New Jersey."

I really try hard not to read reviews, good or bad, mainly so they don't affect my writing?a good review can make me want to keep writing the same old thing to keep pleasing the same old person; a bad review can make me want to toss everything I've been working on into the trash. But sometimes, reading reviews is unavoidable, particularly when someone consistently calls you with the highlights and lowlights from the latest posting.

I have to say, though, that there's a certain beauty to Amazon reviews, and upon occasion in both the flip-offs and the suck-offs, you can find observations every bit as insightful as, say, those of Michiko Kakutani. One particular Amazon reviewer even managed to track down my address and has become an entertaining pen-pal. Meanwhile, even in the harshest flip-offs, one can still marvel in the spirit of democracy that they represent, much in the same way that bathroom walls can often provide a school's most compelling reading material. And the flip-offs also offer a needed reminder that even the greatest works of literature are never termed great by unanimous consent. I still remember one of my classmates' responses to The Great Gatsby: "Sensationalistic garbage," the future math professor declared, holding up a copy of the book, adding, "If this is such a 'great novel,' who is the protagonist?" And I can't complain too loudly about nasty reviews, since in Mrs. Shachter's second-grade class at Boone Elementary School, my flip-off to the third-graders' rendition of "Guantanamera" ("Mrs. Kantz's students screamed the words they did and whispered the words they didn't") was the only review that wasn't displayed on the class bulletin board.

Keeping all this in mind, I thought that I'd see what Amazon reviewers had to say about some of my favorite books and that I'd create a little list for myself and any other writer, reader or publisher so that we can keep our sense of perspective whenever news of the next flip-off, or suck-off, comes along.

Blindness
José Saramago
"I just found this whole tedious book to be one long philosophical exercise. The contrived style of no quotation marks and identification of the speaker only added to my general "big sigh" reaction. No one had names? Oy Vey! I'm outta school and this book took me back to some of the more annoying people and teacher's who lived in their heads. Thumbs down on this one."
Reviewed by K. Gullette, California

Cannery Row
John Steinbeck
"Nice descriptions of the Monterey Bay area where the book takes place and very realistic characters is about all you'll get from this work of Steinbeck's. What's missing is a story."
Reviewed by Tommy Peter, Baltimore, MD

The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Hmm, looks like the literary critics got it wrong again when they pushed this book into the university reading lists. This is nothing more than an adequately written soap opera of a love triangle that ends in tragedy. I expected great writing; I found the author's writing to be merely adequate and the characters to be wooden. The story is of the lowest common denominator type: a sleazy romance that would have been equally at home in the Harlequin Romance series."
Reviewed by Jmark2001, Florida

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
Italo Calvino
"The story just doesn't make much sense. The first chapter is intensely boring. The second and third chapters seem to have interesting stories that abruptly end. At page 200 I honestly still had not much clue what was going on in this book. I don't recommend this book to anyone."
Reviewed by Mauka Showers, Evans, Georgia

Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
"While cultural pundits try to convince you that some literature is better than other literature, the truth is that all art is relative to individual tastes. Thus, it doesn't make any sense to think that a novel like this one is really any better than say, Michael Crichton or Stephen King. Aesthetic standards can't be grounded. Thus, don't listen to anyone who tries to distinguish between "serious" works of literature like this one and allegedly "lesser" novels. The distinction is entirely illusory."
Reviewed by A Reader.

The Man Who Was Thursday
G.K. Chesterton
"A good read if you're a hard-core Christian in desperate need of affirmation. To the rest of us it's a tremendous bore."
Reviewed by E. Moeckel, Chicago, IL

The Power and the Glory
Graham Greene
"I don't think you have to be religious to enjoy the novel, but it would certainly help. However, if you are at all cynical, which I openly confess to being, you will also be disappointed by the ending of the book, and lose faith in Greene's capabilities as a writer."
Reviewed by Joanna, UK

The Secret Agent
Joseph Conrad
"It is simply terrible. Thank God it is little more than a short story."
Reviewed by "Moosifier," England

The Trial
Franz Kafka
"Besides his idea of an unyielding bureaucracy controlling the lives and destinies of all people, Kafka achieves little through this novel. It is quite obvious that the novel is unfinished. Much detail is included that does not contribute to the ideas and themes and is, to be blunt, pointless. Characters are introduced and events occur which do not advance Kafka's intentions but simply create dullness within a novel that would otherwise be thoroughly interesting."
Reviewed by The Book Bandit Jake, Minnesota

To The Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf
"A failure of epic proportions. What makes it an even greater failure is the fact that some people consider this one of the greatest books ever written. To speak the honest truth, I can't remember I time when I have not enjoyed reading a book, as much as I didn't enjoy reading this one. "
Reviewed by M. Jones, Utah

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P.S. After I was done with the "books" section of the Amazon website, I worked my way into the music department, where I found this review of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, by someone from Vancouver named "Bliggick." It goes like this:

"I was maybe, 17 when this album came out. Me and my friends were all into music and would proudly play our new albums to each other and go to the big concerts. I was the perfect target market at the time and I already liked pyschedelic music by Hendrix and others but somehow I could never get into this album and still don't care to listen to it even though it has been impossible to escape from at times."

My sentiments exactly. Maybe there's even more to be learned from these reviewers than I had initially thought.