Glynn Marshes writes:
And yes, she’s standing atop the capital-L Literature bulwark, and yes, she’s wringing her hands — difficult to avoid when you’re an elitist defending elitism from the unwashed hordes. That said, she makes some good points about the way readers-as-consumers approach the task of so-called “book reviews:”
I spent some time this week trawling through customer reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, in order to look for trends — paying particular attention to the scathing one-star reviews that inevitably warn all other readers against buying or reading the disliked book . . .
Although there is a great deal of variation in the five-star reviews, the one-star reviews are overwhelmingly alike, even across genres and styles of literature. I noticed the recurrence of three principal objections: (1) this book was confusing; (2) this book was boring; and (3) this book was badly written.
“Confusing”, “boring” and “bad” are fine complaints, and in many cases may be pertinent complaints, but they are not criticisms. They are three different ways of saying that the work in question failed to evoke any response from the reviewer at all. Far from describing and critiquing a literary encounter — the job of criticism — such “reviews” only make it clear that a literary encounter never took place.
In other words, such reviews say more about the reader than the book.
She also dances near something related that, to my mind, is equally as interesting: that reviews are highly personal; that posting 1-star reviews is — perhaps primarily — a demand for validation:
The machine of consumerism is designed to encourage us all to believe that our preferences are significant and self-revealing; that a taste for Coke over Pepsi, or for KFC over McDonald’s, means something about us; that our tastes comprise, in sum, a kind of aggregate expression of our unique selfhood . . .
I freaking HATED that book, therefore I aaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmm 😉
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
“posting 1-star reviews is — perhaps primarily — a demand for validation”
I don’t think her problem is that the reviews are self-centered. It’s that they’re inarticulate, although I’m not sure why she’s surprised that people who don’t like good writing aren’t very good at writing. Sitting down and writing a 5 paragraph in-depth critical analysis of a book on goodreads is just as much about personal validation as a 1-sentence “this was boring” review. In fact, all art consumption, like all art creation, is about personal validation. We’re all just trying to make manifest our quality through Bourdieuvian distinction. Our tastes do comprise our unique selfhoods. The distinction she draws between literature and consumerism is just the distinction between difficult and complex tastes revealing what she and I consider good/high qualities, and easy and simple tastes revealing bad/low qualities. She should cut the crap and accept her own nature as just another social animal competing for status.
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Indeed!!!!
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Not sure about books, but it’s not uncommon for music reviews to have a full one, two, or three sentences about how the reviewer first met the music, and how it fits into the greater life story. How is that not using one’s tastes to define one’s identity?
And high or low music seems not to make a difference, although pop fans are more enthusiastic. From Amazon:
“This was the recording that introduced me to Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto, making me wonder how I had missed it in all my years (15+) of listening to classical music. I listened to my cassette until it was completely ruined.”
“The first time I ever heard of Duran Duran was when some UHF channel ran a daily half-hour of cutting edge music videos (for 1981), and they constantly ran “Planet Earth.” My niece and I used to laugh and I said, “You want to bet we never hear from these guys again?” A year later, I was a senior in high school, and this song kept getting played on the radio, a funky little ditty with infectious basslines, murmurings about being “hungry like the wolf,” and somebody told me it was a new group called Duran Duran who did the song. I was shell-shocked! I wasn’t entirely won over until I saw how well they performed on Saturday Night Live (Look for the installment with guest host Robert Guilluame), and rushed right out to buy Rio.”
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