This was not the Sunday Salon post I had originally planned, but a couple of things conspired to bring it about. First, was Liz B‘s very thoughtful (and eloquent) response to the Faking Nice in the Blogosphere essay in the Huffington Post. Second, was a conversation I had with a commenter on a recent post of mine. Add musing about Lenore’s post on bloggers’ unforgivable sins/pet peeves (which I followed mostly on Twitter), and you’ve got a post that’s begging to be written.
Once upon a time, when I was in school, they told me that journalists are supposed to be objective. Get every side of a story, they said. Tell the facts, they said. We’re here to give the public the truth, they said. And, for the most part, I believed them. I believed that I could be objective about the story I was reporting on. I believed there was a way to get the whole truth, to fully inform the public.
Then again, I was a naive 20-something college student.
See, leaving aside debates about the metaphysical here, I’ve come to believe that there is no “truth”. There is no objectivity. Instead, there are only various sides to a story. A reporter, a reviewer, a person telling their neighbor what happened at school yesterday: all of them are constantly choosing what information to put in and what information to leave out. If you, for whatever reason, believe one newspaper, one TV news station, one reviewer, one blogger to be telling the “truth” about something, then, my friend, you are seriously misguided. What you are getting is one perspective. Which is a whole other ball of wax.
Now, you may find you agree with that perspective. That is entirely your prerogative. Or you may not. Again: that’s your prerogative. In fact, to throw in my two cents about the Huffington Post essay, that is one of the things I love about book bloggers. See: everyone has their own individual take on books; if you’re a serious blog reader (or even a serious reader looking for recommendations), you’ll read a fair number of blogs to get a wide view on a number of different books. You find the ones you like, you respectfully disagree with others, and we’re all happy.
Except when we’re not. See, it’s the respectfully disagree clause that gets me. One of the things about blogging and opinions is that they’re personal. As an aside — that’s one of the things I think contributes to the value of the lit blogsphere: there really is no pretense of objectivity here. We all have our individual views, our individual biases, and we’re not really afraid to get personal, to honestly speak our minds, especially when we’re discussing what we think about the books we read.
However, that leads us sometimes to give offense. Authors, publishers, other readers don’t particularly like it when our opinions don’t fully mesh with theirs. Which is why they told us, in school, that journalists (or reviewers) needed to be objective, impersonal. If we didn’t bring our bias into it, then we were above giving offense, we were above opinion, above debate. Honestly, though? That’s all really bull. And I think, on some level, we know it. In America at least, we are constantly throwing terms like “liberal bias” or “conservative bias”, or in the Huffington Post’s case “niceness” and “rigor”, around, which means — honestly — that we don’t really believe in total objectivity.
I really shouldn’t wonder, then, that we’ve forgotten how to have a dialogue. See, I have my opinions — and that’s all I’m expressing here — and you have yours. Sometimes, Heaven be praised, we agree. Other times, we don’t. And, you know what? That’s not the end of the world. I respect that you didn’t like a book I loved, and I hope the reverse is true. I respect your honest opinion of my reviews, whether you think they’re too chatty (yes, I’ve been told that) or too nice or too honest and mean (yes, I’ve been told that, too).
However, I do have a caveat: when we are having a discussion — whether it be in comments or as blog posts — I would appreciate it if you quoted my reviews correctly; not what you think I said, but what I actually wrote. I would also appreciate it if we could have an honest, open discussion (I know I circumvent this by sometimes calling authors arrogant asses, and I apologize for that; I could choose my words more carefully) without name-calling, sarcasm, or prejudgment.
I know I’m asking a lot, but there it is: it’s my blog you’re visiting, be nice. They’re my opinions you’re reading, take them for what they are. I would only expect that you’d expect the same from me.
The Book Nut 
I heart you over coffee this Sunday morning, just as I heart you over coffee most mornings.
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I've actually been meaning to write a post about the whole issue of “objectivity”, because honestly, I can't wrap my mind around that. I agree with you that book reviews are individual perspectives, and that's what I actually want them to be. That isn't to say that people can't make an effort to imagine whether a different person in different circumstances would enjoy the book more/less than they did, of course, but what's an “objective” review? The other day I saw a comment deriding bloggers who dare call what they write “reviews” when obviously they lack the objectivity of professional reviewers, and I just…what? Yes, there are differences between bloggers and professional critics sometimes, or even most of the time. But impersonality or the lack thereof is not what those differences are about, I don't think.
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LaJ, thank you. You are just what I needed this morning.
Nymeth, I agree: objectivity, to a point, is imagining what *others* might think about a book. But, I don't think that's why we read blogs. I think we read blogs to get the personal perspective; the people who write the blogs, their personalities, their *opinions* are what draws us to their writing. IMHO. I'll be interested to see what you write up, if you ever get around to it.
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I'm a big believer in stating opinion as honestly (but politely) as possible, whether negative or positive. The idea of some people reacting so passionately against that is stunning and bizarre to me. I'm very thankful I haven't yet had to deal with that sort of situation. I'm sure I will one day, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to react as nicely as you did.
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Excellent post, Melissa, which is why I subscribe to your blog! I, for one, am very glad for different perspectives (even if I don't agree with them) because without that, things would be pretty boring and I most likely would not have more than 300 blogs in my reader!!
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I like your blog! I've added a link to it from my blog, on a new Book Review Blogs page. I'll soon be blogging about the importance of reviewers.
Thanks for doing what you do!
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I think a blog can be both personal and objective. For example, I'll review books, sometimes, with more an idea towards how others may like it, especially how children, teachers, librarians or parents may like something.
Tho I think this is perhaps also getting into a dialogue about what, exactly, is meant by being personal versus being objective. How do we define those words, especially as used here in the review blogosphere?
Your second to last paragraph is what hits home with me: whatever it is called, support what you are saying because otherwise there is no way to truly talk. So if you say simply “loved this book!!!” and I say “this book sux!!!” we have plenty of opinion but nothing to discuss. If you say “I love how the different plot threads all come together at the end” and I say, “I liked the different stories but found the end, where they intersected, a forced coincidence” we now have something to talk about: the ending, whether it worked for us, why or why not. So while we are being personal (and the personal can simply be one of us does or doesn't like multiple storylines in one book) we are giving objective reasons for our reactions. We are also removing it from the personal — we disagree, perhaps, on our interpretation of passaged but we are not saying “you liked/didn't like that? you're stupid.” (I exagerate because of brevity in comments. ha ha at how long this brief comment is)
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Amanda, thank you. I'm glad you've never had that experience. I hope you never do. Wendy and Suzette I appreciate your links and following; I'm always glad to know I have an audience. 😀
Liz — you bring up some excellent points. Defining “personal” and “objective” here in the blogosphere… My two cents: I think personal, for me, is when I write a review that really is, for the most part, my gut reaction to the book. I do try to say when I do that — especially when I have problems with a book, recognizing that those problems are *my* personal experience with the book, and not an overall judgment upon the book. Whereas objective, for me, is more an overall judgment of the book itself, apart from what I think. I've actually tended to shy away, as of late, from calling what I do “reviews” because I'm not sure they are.
I agree about the dialogue bit, as well: it takes time, and it's easier to leave a brief comment rather than taking the time to formulate a coherent point. (Which you did, thank you!) It's more time consuming to discuss things; perhaps that's another reason we tend to refrain from actual dialogue?
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Just commenting again to say I found Liz's comment and your response really helpful. I think my problem with some of the things I've seen people say about this issue is exactly now quite understanding how “personal” and “objective” were being defined.
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Wonderful post!
I've been amazed over the past few months at the increasing (and staggering) lack of respect that's being shown around the blogosphere. I feel like everywhere I turn there is drama of some nature brewing. I want nothing more than to go to blogs and read people's honest opinions — sometimes I'll engage in debate and dialogue sometimes not. But when I do I like to think I do so in a way that isn't offensive to the writer. In turn, I hope that others who comment on my posts are the same. I know this is all common sense and all but so many times I think we (and I include myself in this) get lost in the heat of the moment and forget that real people are behind these digital personas. We can agree to disagree and still get our points across.
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Friend, this is a thoughtful post. This is your space. I expect you to be honest here and because I trust your opinions, that's why I consistently stop by 🙂
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