The Craft: On Teaching Book Reviewing

After 20 years of teaching reviewing to university students, I’ve completed the course for what is almost surely the final time. What have I learned from teaching how to review books, as well as other arts, including movies, television, music, dance, drama, visual art, architecture, inter alia?

Here are a few of the lessons learned, in no significant order:

*Formulas do not work well. Every semester, a few students (usually the relatively rare ones who care more about receiving a high grade than about pure learning)ask “What are the elements of a good review?” For a few years, at the beginning, I did my best to provide an answer. Then I realized that much of the time, I failed to follow any formula in my own reviewing, without my editors complaining a bit. As a result, during the semester-long course (30 class meetings plus one-on-one conferences) we talk a lot about letting the specific book determine the content of the review. It took me years to get over the feeling that I was copping out by telling students that each review must proceed organically from the specific work of art.

*Early in the course, it’s vital to orchestrate a common reviewing experience, where all the students write about the same book or same movie or same music CD. The discussion demonstrates starkly that there is no single way to think about a book. For the rest of the semester, the students are tolerant about vast differences of opinion when we discuss the form and content of their reviews during class time.

*Some students are brilliant at reviewing certain genres within the book world, but not at all brilliant at reviewing other genres. The same student who writes a brilliant review of a Kurt Cobain biography is lost when trying to write a review of a Troy Jollimore poetry collection or a Joyce Carol Oates novel, or vice versa. There is no substitute for deep knowledge about a genre or a specific author. During every class period I discuss an ideal world where every reviewer is extremely knowledgeable about what she is reviewing. Then I discuss the reporting techniques that can help (this is a Journalism School, after all). These are techniques akin to backgrounding for a political beat or education beat or business beat at a newspaper.

Mostly, the course keeps me humble. Many of my friends and relatives remind me regularly anyway that I have much to feel humble about. The "humble" deriving from my teaching a reviewing course is of a different nature. I have realized, for example, that I cannot write intelligently about music without knowing how to compose a song or play an instrument. I hope I write intelligently about books. As a published author, sometimes manuscript editor and avid reviewer, I should have learned a great deal. Then along comes a book that baffles me in its content and/or structure, and I feel humble all over again.

-- NBCC Board Member Steve Weinberg