Tag Archives: reviews

Updike’s Rules For Reviewing

More to remind me than anything else:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation–at least one extended passage–of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending. (How astounded and indignant was I, when innocent, to find reviewers blabbing, and with the sublime inaccuracy of drunken lords reporting on a peasants’ revolt, all the turns of my suspenseful and surpriseful narrative! Most ironically, the only readers who approach a book as the author intends, unpolluted by pre-knowledge of the plot, are the detested reviewers themselves. And then, years later, the blessed fool who picks the volume at random from a library shelf.)

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author’s ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it’s his and not yours?

Bonde do Role, Plastic Little, and Edie Sedgwick at Black Cat (20070911)

I came for Edie Sedgwick and left for Bonde do Role. I had never heard Edie Sedgwick before, but was lured in by the drummer who is also in S PRCSS and Antelope. Turns out that, this iteration at least, Edie Sedgwick had Jason Hutto of The Aquarium playing keys. They sounded a little rough, but excellent–very tricky tempos.

I had seen Bonde do Role before, and paid the price with a headache. At least one friend suffered the same fate, despite my warning. You might be too cool for school, but I’m too cool for bands who can’t respect a sound system.