Archive for Journalism

I am signed up to Ama­zon Vine. Ama­zon cus­tomers belong­ing to this ini­tia­tive are given the oppor­tu­nity to select two prod­ucts per month to review. As I write, the pro­gramme is ‘invi­ta­tion only’. I think I was invited because I wrote a clutch of reviews of Alfred Hitch­cock movies sev­eral years ago, and I had clocked up enough reviews to gain an invitation.

There are plusses and minuses. You get to keep the review prod­ucts for free – and that’s a big plus, espe­cially if you’re on the ball enough to bag some pricey loot. A big plus too for the Can­cer Research shop at the top of Cart­way, if the loot isn’t the kind of thing I’d like to own long-term.

Minus: I wouldn’t know how to con­struct a good review if I could craft a witty end to this sentence.

Gen­uinely worth­while review­ing is a for­mi­da­ble skill, and one I don’t nat­u­rally pos­sess. It goes with­out say­ing that hardly any reviews on the Ama­zon site achieve any­thing like my def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess, but most par­tic­u­larly not those by peo­ple who have been invited to review. Demo­c­ra­tic review­ing means a del­uge of ill-informed bile and unchecked opin­ion. I’ve read in numer­ous places the opin­ions of web-savvy writ­ers and artists who say they’ve had to develop a hugely thick skin to the acid bile of Inter­net opinion.

Now, as a reviewer, I’m not a ‘flamer’. I try to keep it bal­anced. (I’m embar­rassed by the sheer num­ber of three-star reviews I give out.) Paul Mor­ley once said that the worst thing to hap­pen at the now-ailing NME was the intro­duc­tion of star rat­ings. Review­ing is so much more sub­tle than that.

Stars are fine for those snappy first reac­tions: “I didn’t much like this; not as poppy as their first album”, and for tech­ni­cal specs: “The trans­fer to high-definition is flaw­less…”, but be hon­est, who has this amount of snap or the tech­ni­cal gump­tion to comment?

I don’t.

So every review I write becomes a bat­tle with myself to under­stand quite why I’m review­ing what I’m review­ing. Those Hitch­cock reviews were from a per­spec­tive of how suc­cess­ful I felt the movie was, in terms of its sto­ry­telling and con­struc­tion. ‘0 out of 7 peo­ple found my review helpful.’

“Lis­ten mate,” came one user’s review of my review, “we don’t care what you think about the film, what’re the extras like? What’s the trans­fer to DVD like? Is it in 7.1 sur­round sound or 5.1?”

You know, I have no idea. And nowhere near enough enthu­si­asm for such things to look at the back of the DVD case. I just con­cern myself with the cre­ative aspect. I’m a 1D reviewer.

The inevitable out­come of such a demo­c­ra­tic approach to review­ing is a total deval­u­a­tion of crit­i­cal points of view. I don’t take on board what Ama­zon reviews say. Do you? Unless I really have no idea which – I don’t know, ADSL router – to buy, because they’re all much of a much­ness to me.

The lat­est review I am cob­bling together in my mind is on Gra­ham Swift’s Mak­ing An Ele­phant – a col­lec­tion of short pieces and ephemera about “Writ­ing from within”, so the sub­ti­tle says. I’d already decided what I was going to write after the first ten pages. What sort of a review is that? It’s based on what I think of Gra­ham Swift, and what some­one else wrote about him once in Pri­vate Eye.

I have come to my key­board now, typ­ing these words, to dis­card this ini­tial deci­sion about what I am going to write, and hope­fully come up with a response worth reading.

Per­haps I should be sus­pi­cious about why Ama­zon Vine is feed­ing me through this par­tic­u­lar man­gle: what does Ama­zon want? A bunch of mouthy free­load­ers who are des­per­ate to crow for the reward of a free item (and who simul­ta­ne­ously are unclog­ging Amazon’s Ridge­mont stor­age facility).

I’m spin­ning in ever-decreasing cir­cles here, aren’t I? I’d bet­ter go an take it out on Gra­ham Swift.

j