Learning from a Scathing Book Review
I enjoy reading book reviews. Besides helping me keep up with new books, they teach the craft of writing.
A recent review by Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post offers a few lessons. The author of the book tries to connect three men around a bombing case; the reviewer asserts that one of the men had absolutely nothing to do with it. So why try to tie the three men together? Yardley writes:
Blum is hell-bent on achieving Significance. It’s not enough that the Los Angeles story is interesting on its own merits; he has to tart it up by connecting it to the rise of the movies, which “had become integrated into American life, a natural part of the national consciousness.” He’s after Relevance, too, which is why he writes, of the “terror campaign” of bombings in 1910.
There’s a principle in that: Don’t manufacture significance. An obvious point, to be sure, but it’s helpful to remember that someone will always call you on the carpet if you violate it.
The whole review is worth reading.
Ah, yes, Relevance. Tom Holland’s Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic (New York: Doubleday, 2003) is a good popular history of that period, but I probably wouldn’t have read it had not been given to me as a gift. The book jacket advertises that parallels will be made between the Roman Republic and the “imperial adventures” of the USA, and Holland enjoys using anachronisms. For instance, Bibulus is called a “refusnik” (202), Crassus is described as “Macavity-like” (223), and Caesar is a “master of spin” (305). Fortunately, Holland writes gracefully, and George W. Bush never makes an appearance—although Pompey’s campaign against Mediterranean pirates is called the “War Against Terror.”
October 24, 2008, 5:24 am