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Magazine
THE SHASHI THAROOR COLUMN
Verbal fisticuffs
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`A review, good or bad, is a transient thing; a book, if it was worth writing, will endure long after the review is forgotten.'
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I HAVE recently been involved in a minor literary controversy in the pages of the New York Times, whose editors felt compelled to acknowledge to their readers that the author of what is politely called a "mixed" review of my recent book Nehru: The Invention of India had himself received a mixed review from me some years earlier for one of his books. Turnabout, to up-end a cliche, was not considered fair play.
The episode was trivial, but it reminded me of a far more entertaining incident in the same pages a decade earlier, involving Norman Mailer. Short, strong and beer-bellied, with a pugnacious thrust of jaw and wiry grey hair, the eminent novelist (The Naked and the Dead), biographer (Marilyn), reporter (The Armies of the Night) and polemicist (The Prisoner of Sex) is a considerable presence on the American literary scene. Boozy, brawling and bold, reviled by feminists for his attitude to women, excoriated by the right for his opposition to the Vietnam war, Mailer is one author who is as much read about as read. The former enfant terrible of American letters has, in a turbulent career, married and divorced a succession of women, drunk himself silly in public, marched in raucous protest demonstrations, run unsuccessfully) for Mayor of New York, and bibulously engaged in public fisticuffs.
Criticising the work of such a combative figure is hardly a low-risk occupation. Other authors might react to an unjust review with the attitude of the old Persian proverb, "when the caravan passes, the dogs bark" (for why should a caravan be distracted by every barking dog?) But not Norman Mailer. In the early 1990s, reviewers trashed Mailer's long-awaited magnum opus, Harlot's Ghost, a 1,334-page novel about the CIA and the American psyche which ended, ominously enough, with the words "To Be Continued". The London Sunday Times' Peter Kemp, a notoriously trenchant demolition expert, called the novel "the appalling manifestation of a defunct talent". But the review that really got Mailer's goat, perhaps because it appeared in the one publication that matters most to American writers, was that of John Simon in the New York Times Book Review.
Simon, better known as a theatre critic, found Harlot's Ghost an "arbitrary, lopsided, lumpy novel that outstays its welcome". Mailer's "hang-ups are too naked, puerile, perverse", wrote Simon, adding that "what he lacks is (a good) editor". Worse has been written by reviewers — and some of Simon's 2,500-word critique was even complimentary — but Mailer blew a gasket. He stormed into the offices of the New York Times, demanding — and obtaining — a meeting with the Managing Editor of the paper and the editor of the Book Review section. Simon, he alleged, was biased against him: Mailer had apparently described Simon years ago as being "as predictable in his critical reactions as a headwaiter". Simon, in return, had reviewed a play starring Mailer's daughter Kate, and called her a "rotten" actress "who mugs and simpers". Mailer demanded that the Times grant him the right of reply.
Somewhat to the astonishment of the American literary establishment, the Times said "yes". Though Simon protested that he not only stood by the review but that its only defect was that "it was too kind", the Times gave Mailer the space for a 1,500-word response. This repeated the author's accusations against the reviewer, and added the delectable snippet that he had challenged Simon, after the critic's attack on his daughter, to meet him outside if he was a man of honour. But the burden of Mailer's charge was that Simon had misrepresented himself as someone who "had a rather neutral relationship" with the author, and therefore could be counted upon to do a fair review. In fact, Mailer said, Simon's reviews of two of Mailer's earlier books had been so venomous that he should have been disqualified from reviewing this one.
Simon replied, somewhat pompously, that "it is characteristic of Norman Mailer's cult of personality (instead of cultivation of craft) that the attempted refutation of my review addresses itself to just about everything except the review itself". The then editor chimed in that Simon "wrote a fair and balanced review that met the standards of this newspaper." But, she added, "normally the Book Review would not assign a book to a critic who had frequently disparaged its author's work, or one who had a personal relationship, positive or negative, with the author." (Those standards, incidentally, are widely upheld in America but completely ignored in England, where books are usually reviewed by friends or enemies of the author, and reviews are often the occasion for either mutual back-scratching or the settling of scores. My own reviewer is British-based.)
There are writers who believe that any publicity is good publicity — as one publisher put it, "people will remember that they've read about your book long after they forget what they'd read about it". So Mailer's attack on Simon, even if it drew attention to the negative review of his book, fuelled more interest in it. Some uncharitable observers saw the entire episode as an attempt by the larger-than-life author to revive his novel's flagging fortunes in the nether regions of the bestseller lists. If so, it didn't work; Harlot's Ghost sank rapidly off the charts.
Predictably enough, the Mailer-Simon exchange itself became the subject of further polemics. Letters flooded in to the Times, and the strongest arguments went against Mailer. "If you're going to pander to Norman Mailer's wounded ego," one reader asked the Times, "why not save time and trouble in the future and simply let Mr. Mailer review his own books? He clearly enjoys writing about himself in the third person, and assigning him the review would make a lengthy rebuttal unnecessary (though Mr. Mailer would, of course, still be free to threaten himself with physical injury if he came to doubt his own fairness.) Not only would this be a service to Mr. Mailer, it would be a service to readers, who could then sample Mr. Mailer's writing style before committing themselves to 1,300-plus pages." As for himself, the reader went on, he had planned to buy Harlot's Ghost, but "after slogging through the overdone prose of Mr. Mailer's counterattack" had decided his $30 would be better spent on beer.
All of which is not very encouraging to any author who may be contemplating assaulting a nasty reviewer, even if only in print. The moral of the story, it seems to me as one who has both written and received reviews, is that it is better to leave well enough alone. A review, good or bad, is a transient thing; a book, if it was worth writing, will endure long after the review is forgotten. Let the dogs bark; the caravan must move on.
Visit the author at www.shashitharoor.com
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