The form of the dismissively satirical structure makes it one of the more unique book reviews that I ever started to read. [via Mathilde]
On the Recent Publication of Kahlil Gibran’s Collected Works by Alan Jacobs:
I
Expansive and yet vacuous is the prose of Kahlil Gibran,
And weary grows the mind doomed to read it.
The hours of my penance lengthen,
The penance established for me by the editor of this magazine,
And those hours may be numbered as the sands of the desert.
And for each of them Kahlil Gibran has prepared
Another ornamental phrase,
Another faux-Biblical cadence,
Another affirmation proverbial in its intent
Or he could have just given it a pass to someone who would actually attempt to read with interest. It’s more of a book retort than a book report.
Although he does get the meat of his criticisms against as well as a brief bio and seems to be informed POV with his spin for flavor. When someone is cranky I find it hard to weigh how much someone attends to accuracy to make an arguments. How much is in light or jest? He touts the exaggerated nature of the poetry he’s talking about. To what degree does he take up that in his review? How much is exaggerated? Why do reviews anyway? as Shane Neilson in NPR article chatted about. I can understand what he railed against – one wants to be supportive and not do sloppy throwabout words that are defamation critical, about the writer, not the writing, which is the range satire can easily fall into. We’re all on the same cooperative team as writers.
At the same time, if we keep it all in a positive band, the band gets corrupted with gradations so a lukewarm response becomes adjusted to mean a slam and a fabulous raving positive become adjusted by the reader to mean, it’s solidly ok. It coaches everyone to be more (over)sensitive hearing and eggshell walking.
To have something really negative be a negative, allows negative to be negative and postive to be real without the extra exercise of reading between the lines. At the same time, is it playing nicely with others? Is it reasoned? Is it tactful? Is it useful? Is it primarily about the book or primarily about the reviewer of the book?
I would have to read the original book and the review in detail to decide on any of these but I can say this: The review is effective in the catchy sense. It flagged to me the book coming up and primed it to my mind. My sense of humor fails in it being critiquer-fronted and feeling badly for the person who is writing earnestly, but on another page of aethetics which this guy doesn’t want to appreciate, only mock. The tone is prancing about. There can be room for that tough-fluff of satire.
At the same time I’d like to read a complementary and a complimentary review to round out the view respectfully and reflectively.
he nailed it
It’s been a while since I read Gibran’s The Prophet, which was given to me as a gift when I was thirteen. At the time I remember being flummoxed, wondering if this was supposed to be great poetry and I was too young to get it, or if a whole lot of grown ups had been bamboozled by this guy. Later as an adult I reread The Prophet and came to the conclusion that my thirteen year old self was apparently a lot brighter than the adults around him. The Emperor has no clothes . . .
The ‘book retort’ listed above had me laughing out loud — Jacobs nailed Gibran’s style perfectly! I find it a fair representative of Gibran’s work without any exaggeration — that’s what makes it so funny.
A book reviewer is a _critic_ with the duty to understand what the work is, represent it accurately, and utilize some insight to discuss the work. I find all three attributes to be present in Jacobs’ review of Gibran’s work. If he had been taking on an unknown poet I would have wanted a lengthier discussion to clarify the matter, but Gibran is well enough known that it can be safely assumed that the reader had either encountered his work, or can find it readily enough.
M. Kei, Editor, Atlas Poetica