On Reviewing

When Thomas Pynchon’s new novel Against the Day came out last November, I read all the reviews I could find. For example, Michiko Kakutani led with this scathing description in the November 20th New York Times:

Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, “Against the Day,” reads like the sort of imitation of a Thomas Pynchon novel that a dogged but ungainly fan of this author’s might have written on quaaludes. It is a humongous, bloated jigsaw puzzle of a story, pretentious without being provocative, elliptical without being illuminating, complicated without being rewardingly complex.

The opinions were not uniform, by any means. Less than a week later, Liesl Schillinger ran a much more favorable review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review:

IN “Against the Day,” his sixth, his funniest and arguably his most accessible novel, Thomas Pynchon doles out plenty of vertigo, just as he has for more than 40 years. But this time his fevered reveries and brilliant streams of words, his fantastical plots and encrypted references, are bound together by a clear message that others can unscramble without mental meltdown. Its import emerges only gradually, camouflaged by the sprawling absurdist jumble of themes that can only be described as Pynchonesque, over the only time frame Pynchon recognizes as real: the hours (that stretch into days) it takes to relay one of his sweeping narratives, hours that do “not so much elapse as grow less relevant.”

That’s right: one Times reviewer hated it, and another liked it. Louis Menand, writing in the New Yorker, came in mixed:

Thomas Pynchon is the apostle of imperfection, so it is arguably some sort of commendation to say that his new novel, “Against the Day” (Penguin; $35), is a very imperfect book. Imperfect not in the sense of “Ambitious but flawed.” Imperfect in the sense of “What was he thinking?”

By the way, MetaCritic has a list of the reviews of Against the Day here, ordered by favorability. There are 9 opinions rated outstanding, 6 favorable, 4 mixed, and 6 unfavorable. Kakutani ends the list.

Now, I have read and enjoyed all of Pynchon’s other novels, some more than once, and I eagerly anticipated this one. But when I picked up a copy of Against the Day at a local bookstore and browsed through it with Menand’s criticism fresh in my mind, I could really see his points, and found what I was reading irritating. Despite the 30% discount on offer, I put the book back on the shelf.

Three months later, my wife came across a copy in our local library. “At least read a few chapters with an open mind,” she told me. “If you don’t like it, I’ll take it back to the library. If you do like it, I’m sure I can find one at a discount through Alibris.”

And in fact, this time I really enjoyed the initial chapters. I now have my own copy, and am about a third of the way through the book.

What does all of this have to do with InfoWorld? One of my roles is reviewer. InfoWorld almost never has the luxury of running multiple reviews of a product. If I hate a product like Kakutani hated Against the Day, there is no Schillinger to offer an opposing opinion.

Reviewing is a special kind of journalism. Reviewing, by definition, is not just about reporting the facts: as a reviewer, I also have to say what I think. And here is where I have to consider the anxiety of influence.

I try to suggest that readers try a product for themselves, and I try to describe who might and might not find a product useful. But if I have set expectations with my strongly voiced opinions, I can color your initial evaluation, like Menand’s review colored my initial impression of Against the Day.

Most software gives you a 30-day evaluation period. Is that enough for you to shake my opinions out of your mind and decide what you think? Is software quality and applicability easier or harder to evaluate than the “goodness” of a Pynchon novel? Am I doing you a service by telling you what I think about a product, or am I leading you astray?