Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

mainstream writer David Lodge has written several novels peopled by university lecturers in English
Literature. He pokes a lot of fun at academic pretensions and, on occasion, his characters point out that
whether or not the reader enjoys a piece of prose has nothing whatsoever to do with criticising it!)
And when you have done all of these things, you may consider sitting down and writing a review or a
criticism. How do you put it all together? In an anthology of reviews and criticisms called Picked Up
Pieces, John Updike gave some advice on this point.
Firstly, he said, try to understand what the writer was attempting to do and do not cast blame for not
achieving what was not attempted. After all, both Peter Benchley and Herman Melville wrote a book
about a man hunting a great white denizen of the deep, but it would be most unfair to condemn Jaws
because it lacks the depth and subtlety of Moby Dick. Such things are simply not there, so don't go
looking for them and don't complain that they are not to be found. Considered in its own right as a
simple thriller, Jaws is a perfectly good book.
Updike goes on to suggest that the flavour of the book is best conveyed by quoting passages from it.
I'm not sure I go along with this unless it is used to illustrate a point about one of the specific areas of
analysis I discussed above. Quoting for the sake of quoting seems unnecessary to me -- but I'm not
going to be dogmatic about it.
He also suggests that plot summaries be kept to a minimum, a point with which I whole-heartedly agree.
Nothing is worse than reviewing a book by simply listing the plot elements and describing what happens.
Apart from anything else it often spoils the book for a reader (if you know what is going to happen in
advance, why bother reading in the first place?) It takes no skill to say "and then the hero..." and it adds
little or nothing to a discussion of the book.
Finally, says Updike, if you judge the book is deficient in some aspect, cite a successful example,
preferably from the author's own works, but failing that, from the work of some other writer if you feel it
illuminates the problem.
To these I would add a last command -- keep it short. Samuel Delaney wrote an entire book of criticism
about one short story by Thomas Disch. That is simply overkill.
I don't claim that the things I discuss in this article form the only approach to writing a critique, or even
that the factors I have concentrated on are the only possible ones. However they are the ones that
work for me, the ones I consider to be important because they directly affect my feelings about the
story I am reading.
Now I would like to share with you a final point that only recently occurred to me. You should consider
also the physical nature of the pages themselves. Modern books often seem to be printed very cheaply
and sometimes the ink rubs off on the fingers, necessitating a trip to the bathroom to wash the hands
after reading. Lately I have noticed that after washing my hands I have to wash the soap as well because
it looks so grey and scummy covered in the grime it has removed from my hands. Modern publishing
practices have added a whole new meaning to the phrase "dirty book".
So -- this is Phlogiston and the latest Bearded Triffid and to paraphrase A. A. Milne, now we are ten.
Therefore will you all please picture suitable animals in your head and sing along with me:
Well done, Alex.
Hippo birdie two ewe
Hippo birdie two ewe
Hippo birdie, hippo birdie
Hippo birdie two ewe.