Thursday 29 November 2012

The Bad, Uninteresting Review


Edward Thomas believed there were four kinds of reviews. The last, worst and most common? The "bad, uninteresting review":
"The bad, uninteresting review consists of second-hand words and paralysed, inelectric phrases; and the better these are strung together the worse it is, because it means that the wretched man, woman, or child, is deceiving himself, making a virtue of his necessity, his hurry, his obtuseness, his ignorance. Such work is terribly uninteresting to anyone without a superhuman interest in whatever is inhuman. Sometimes it may be read in a comatose condition by readers with a respect for all printed matter, and in a sort of enthusiasm by relatives of the reviewer. But the only thing to be said for it is that it produces money, which produces food and clothing for aged parents, fair wives, innocent children. Against it must be set the fact that it is waste of time and energy, like sending clean things to a laundry"

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