<![CDATA[The Cornerstone Of Criticism]]>Darryl Campell names "the four classical elements of literary criticism," which are: "Reaction. Summary. Aesthetic and historical appraisal." He argues the first of these, the brute fact of liking a book or not, is inescapably what drives the reviewer:

In the beginning, there is ego. As George Orwell put it in his essay "Writers and Leviathan": "One’s real reaction to a book, when one has a reaction at all, is usually ‘I like this book’ or ‘I don’t like it,’ and what follows is a rationalization"

The decision to like or not like a book is where every book review begins. This is what gives the genre its underlying suspense — will Michiko Kakutani like this book or won’t she? — but also its frustrating sense of chaos, because no matter how technically sound or philosophically sophisticated or beautiful a book might be, something minor or tangential can turn off a reviewer so much that he or she decides the book is not good.

For a review that basically shreds a book with humor and aplomb, tomorrow's NYT review of Naomi Wolf's vagina book is a classic. Money quote:]]>