The Fundamentalist Approach to Book Reviewing

[Plaid Adder]

This link came my way through several interemediary steps from Neil Gaiman's blog:

http://www.stephsbookreviews.com/html/Leah_s_Way/leah_s_way.html

Basically, what happens is that "Steph" reviews a "Christian" novel called _Leah's Way_ and pans it. One Sue Eccleston, who is somehow connected with the small press that put out the novel (Windstream Press), then entered into a correspondence with Steph that is worthy of the Hate Mailbag. It's entertaining reading, but it also is very revealing about what the right-wing thinks constitutes "professionalism." Eccleston tries to convince Steph that if she were "professional" she would remove the review from her site. Steph replies that from her POV "professional" means giving an honest opinion and trying to really inform her readers, as opposed to helping publishers sell books. Eccleston never appears to grasp that, instead accusing Steph of being part of the Goebels-style propaganda machine that we "hate anything Christian liberals" are all running somehow despite the fact that the "hate anything *really* Christian neocons" currently control all three branches of government plus the mainstream media.

Yeesh,

The Plaid Adder

[agates]

1. Wow

The un-Christlike behavior of "Christians" continues to amaze me. Thanks for finding this and posting.

[beam me up scottie]

2. Ann?

Ann, is that you?

[The Witch]

3. Can anyone find an e-mail address for these people?

I'd really like to send them the following:

To Whom It May Concern:

Having not read the book in question, I have no opinion on it.
However, I do have an opinion on the exchange I have read and
wish to offer this evaluation based on its merits. You are
welcome to read or ignore it as you choose; responses are also
welcome, although I'd ask you to state specifically if you
wish responses to be kept private. Also please note that
admonitions about my personal morality and the worth of my
life will be disregarded.

The evaluation follows.

First, please compare the following:
"But everyone is entitled to their opinion, and there is
no such thing as bad publicity." -Ms. Eccleston
and
"[I]f you claim to be as professional as you are, you
would at least volunteer to remove the negative review of
Leah's Way from your website." -Ms. Eccleston

Also, I'd like to offer in response to the statement by Ms.
Eccleston that "You judge books not on their merit but on
your own prejudicial beliefs," a breakdown of Ms. Steph's
(I do not know her last name) review with special attention
paid to those comments that may be considered as partisan:

"Leah is a terrible excuse for a protagonist ... with no
redeeming characteristics." 
[Can be considered partisan only in the fact that Leah's
religion may be a redeeming characteristic.]

"[W]e know the good people because they’re clean-cut and
believe in God, and the bad characters are easily identifiable
through their shaggy hair and atheism... ." 
[Can be considered partisan only if one disagrees that belief
in God makes one good and atheism makes one bad; in other
words, if one does not agree with the book's apparent
premise.]

"...their shocking belief in evolution, a theme the
author seems strangely reluctant to let go."
[Can be considered partisan if one feels the main theme of the
book should not be the wrongness of the belief in evolution.
Having not read the book, I cannot comment on whether this is,
in fact, a major theme of the book.]

"The prose is cloying and desperately overwritten." 
[Cannot be considered partisan.]

"As is common in Christian fiction, the dialogue is
painfully awkward... ." 
[Can be considered partisan only in that it generalizes about
Christian fiction. The evaluation that dialogue is awkward in
this particular book is not a partisan comment.]

"The pacing is poor, skipping huge chunks of time and
devoting too many pages to unimportant scenes in its rush to
tell the story of Leah’s entire life." 
[Cannot be considered partisan.]

"the climactic ending is an absurdly saccharine chat
between Leah and her God" 
[Can be considered partisan only if one believes that
criticizing any imagined account with God is anti-Christian.
Stating that the scene in question is absurdly saccharine is,
once again, not a partisan comment.]

"[A] Blether Fiction Award simply means that an amateur
reviewer judged the book to be a 9/10." 
[Cannot be considered partisan; additionally, can only be
considered inaccurate if the reviewer in question was or has
been paid for his or her reviews of this or other
publications.]

"Leah’s Way is a perfect example of crucifiction,
ignoring plot and character development in favor of beating
readers over the head with a religious message." 
[Can only be considered partisan if one believes that no book
with a religious message can be low-quality.]

Thank you for your consideration. Please feel free to respond
given the caveats listed above.

[Plaid Adder]

4. Here's the 411 from PMA:

Windstream Publishing Co.
Address:
303 Windstream Pl.
Danville, CA 94526

Contact: Richard Botelho
Phone: [phone] / Fax: [phone]
E-mail:
WWW: http://www.windstreampublishing.com
Number of titles in print:

Categories:

Distributors: Baker & Taylor, Ingram, Faithworks

The homepage link doesn't seem to work. Perhaps they took the site down. However, the interesting thing is that the main contact address listed is Richard Botelho...author of *Leah's Way.* One wonders if perhaps Sue Eccleston is as real as "Jeff Gannon."

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[ContraBass Black]

5. Let me know when you get a response.

[PATRICK]

6. Damned if you do and

damned if you don't. Because you ain't "us". Seems to be the rule. I would honestly prefer some of my stuff to be reviewed by various types of clinically insane people- if it wouldn't cause them to come to harm.

[Jack Rabbit]

7. Shrug

It's pretty sad when an honest opinion gets one upbraided like this. What is really sad is Ms. Eccleston's projecting. She points to reviews from a vox populi site as "professional", but gets upset when a real book reviewer slams something her house has published and thumps her as some sort of elitist. Well, no duh! A professional book reviewer is supposed to be some sort of elitist, complete with a set of criteria by which she would judge any book that goes before any personal attachment or revulsion of the book's message. What Ms. Eccleston is projecting, of course, is the accusation that Steph is imposing her own religious and theological views on her judgment of the book. It seems that Ms. Eccleston really expect that that is what a book reviewer should do, as long as those religious and political views mirror her own.

It is, of course, entirely possible for a Christian-oriented novel to be good, even great, literature. One might think of the work of Dostoyevsky, for example. Steph never says it isn't possible. All she says is that this particular book isn't any good.

It works the other way, too. Just because Uncle Tom's Cabin was written in the noble cause of abolishing slavery doesn't make it great literature. Personally, I find the book dreadful and would cite many of the same faults with it that Steph finds with Leah's Way, including "clunky prose and bad pacing", "uninteresting or badly rendered characters" and "heavy-handed proselytizing dressed up as fiction." For me, Uncle Tom's Cabin is of historical interest, but worthless as literature. That doesn't mean I think abolishing slavery was a mistake.

Ms. Eccleston is wrong to jump to any conclusions about Steph's religious or political views. Steph is just as right to keep those views to herself. For all we know, Steph voted for Bush. What we do know is that Steph has a set of literary criteria and uses it. This criteria has little to do with religious or political views, just that clunky prose and poorly developed characters make for bad reading. Steph makes it clear that she finds these faults too typical in this genre of fiction. This would be just as true if the books were promoting Zen Buddhism or Islam.

[hippiegranny]

8. Gawd

these religio-nutbags are a friggin trip, aren't they? But hey, thanks for turning us all on to Steph - I really enjoyed cruising her website, even if I don't totally agree with all of her reviews. (For instance, she gave "Angels and Demons" and "The Secret History" the same review (7/10), though not for the same reasons. How can you give "The Secret History" a 7? I thought it was BRILLIANT! "Angels and Demons, " on the other hand... totally cardboard cutout characters.)

[Jack Rabbit]

9. Another thought on this subject

The subject being propaganda disguised as art, especially bad art.

I once read that Friedrich Engels was sent a manuscript from a Marxist writer in the hopes that Engels would assist in getting it published. Engels read the manuscript and returned it to the writer saying something to the effect of: "You kiss your heroine's dialectical materialist lips and look into her proletarian eyes. I know I wouldn't want to."