In today’s Standard (I managed to get a copy at Kings Cross – they’re never available much beyond 5.30pm at Oxford Circus or Piccadilly Circus), David Sexton pontificates over two pages about why “bloggers” are so hostile towards Ian McEwan.
This is the piece that Sexton is talking about. Following a series of Guardian Book blogs on the best books of each year of the last decade, the author asks for nominations for the worst book of the decade. What the piece is really about is over-praised books, or titles that received good reviews but which weren’t all that good.
Sexton finds it astonishing that so much venom can be saved up for McEwan.
Let’s take this back a step. Is everything McEwan’s written good? No. At least not in my view and I’ve only read a handful of his books. I loved Atonement but thought that Amsterdam (which won the Booker) was vastly over-rated. I enjoyed Enduring Love, but both Saturday and On Chesil Beach left me wanting. Those are my views and they count for as much or as little as you like.
In the internet world you’re always going to find extremes, and just as people like to vent at one another in pubs, they like to write to newspapers. In this day and age, we’re able to comment on anything we like and enjoy doing so. Witness then, the nearly 900 comments (at time of writing) accompanying the Guardian’s blog.
Is Sexton new to the internet? Is that why the strength of opinion takes him by surprise? Has he never been to a debating chamber where people will happily argue back and forth. A blog’s comment section such as this is just such a place. And when you marry that with a subject that we can all easily hold forth on like which book, in our opinion, was given the most undeserved praise, then the comments can fly.
And I take exception to Sexton calling all the commenters “bloggers.”
Bloggers hunting in packs never make a pretty sight, of course. By and large, bloggers remain writers who have not been able to find more rewarding outlets for their work and are therefore pre-packed with resentment, whatever subject they address. They rarely come to praise.
First off, you’re talking about commenters – the same people who write to your letters page too. Bloggers maintain or contribute to their own sites. There’s a subtle and yet fundamental difference, which while it might seem of little import, is relevant to the argument. They’re also a wide variety of society.
I love Word magazine, but a story in a recent issue – preceded by a podcast in similar vein – made the same mistake. In that instance it was about the “feedback” that Lily Allen received when she spoke of her beliefs surrounding music piracy (her views were not to everyone’s liking).
That Word piece spoke of “the message boards” and those who contribute to them.
In both cases, the people to whom disdain is being shown are a broad church. Speaking of them in a simplistic terminology really doesn’t do justice. They’re Word magazines readers; they’re Guardian and Evening Standard readers. They’re not some subspecies who hunt “in packs.”
Can unpleasantness occur if we’re not careful? Certainly. But that’s the same kind of argument that suggests that everyone who watches football is a hooligan.
And I seriously doubt that all those 9000 or so comments come from people who’ve “not been able to find more rewarding outlets for their work.” That’s a low, and thoroughly unfair blow.
Sexton might want to look around at the comments under the sister pieces in this series in which commentors praise lots of books from each year of the last decade and recommend titles to one another. It’s not all bile you know!