Revenge of the Panned

How should writers respond to bad reviews?

Yesterday, a delightful frisson made its way through the writing world.

The Pulitzer Prizes were announced, and Jayne Anne Phillips won the Pulitzer Prize in Literature for her novel, NIGHT WATCH.

What made that news especially pleasing was this: NIGHT WATCH got panned in the New York Times. I mean, completely trashed. Utterly destroyed.

The Times’ critic, Dwight Garner, began his review thusly:

“Jayne Anne Phillips’s new novel, NIGHT WATCH, about a woman and her daughter in a genteel asylum in West Virginia around the time of the Civil War, is sludgy, claustrophobic and pretentious. Each succeeding paragraph took something out of me.”

Oof.

Garner went on to lavish praise on Phillips’s previous short stories; to say that her earlier work “meant more to me, I’d guess, than any fiction published in the last fifty years.”

But this one did not do it for him.

And then yesterday – sweet revenge! – the Pulitzer committee awarded the book its prize.

It was an important reminder that a critic is just one person; that a review – good or bad -- is just one person’s assessment, made during one moment in time; that not everyone is going to agree.

It also got me thinking about the larger question of reviews and how writers should handle the bad ones.

Writers of my generation were taught that the wisest course of action was ignoring bad reviews. Our editors and publicists gave us the same advice our moms gave us when we were five years old and the little boy on the bus pulled our hair. Don’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’s bothering you. Pretend it isn’t happening. Don’t call any extra attention to it, and definitely don’t call any attention to your own hurt feelings. Tomorrow’s another day, and there will be other readers, and they will have different opinions.

Which, now that I think about it, sounds kind of…gendered. Except I’m pretty sure men were told the smae thing.

We all probably got a version of that famous quote from Kingsley Amis, about how you can let a bad review ruin your breakfast, but you shouldn’t let it spoil your lunch. We all probably heard the old chestnut about how all press is good press. Shake it off. Move on.

Not every writer has been able to manage that task.

There’s the infamous tale of Richard Ford spitting on Colson Whitehead, two years after Whitehead panned Ford’s short story collection in the Times. And the equally infamous story of Richard Ford shooting one of Alice Hoffman’s books, then mailing Alice Hoffman the injured tome, after Hoffman panned one of his books in the Guardian.

(Actually, maybe Richard Ford’s the exception that proves the rule. Also, would a woman novelist’s career have survived her spitting on one critic, and shooting another’s book? Hmm).

Richard Ford aside, even after Twitter and the like gave us all the chance – or maybe, more accurately, the temptation – to fire off responses to bad reviews, practically in real time, most writers were able to resist.

But it’s been interesting to see that start to change.

Exhibit A: In March, the Times reviewed Geraldine DeRuiter’s collection of essays, IF YOU CAN’T TAKE THE HEAT: TALES OF FOOD, FEMINISM AND FURY.

“Geraldine DeRuiter, the pungent voice behind the Everywhereist blog, knows how to rant,” the review began. It praised her “viral takedown” of a Micheline-starred restaurant, said her writing is “brimming with venom and verve,” and praised her “mastery of irony, profanity and stream-of-consciousness indignation” and her “rightful gripe” about “the way women blunt their anger and soften their voices in order to placate and please.”

It also took aim at “significant gaps in DeRuiter’s skill set,” writing “DeRuiter has an ‘all eyes on me’ narrative persona – ravenous, pugnacious, irrational, loud.” “While reading this book, my eyebrows were sometimes raised in admiration; too often, sadly, in exasperation,” the review concludes.

It was an interesting review; one I’d call mixed, not negative. I’d add that it’s the kind of bad review that did a good job of describing the writer’s voice and views in a way that, I’d bet, made the right kind of readers add it to their TBR pile.

So. I didn’t think the review was terrible.

The author did.

“Not only did the NYT just skewer my book (I called out one of their reporters in the book for misogyny, the review skips over that entirely) but the image they used is one of the most hateful and violent things I’ve ever seen in a book review. I’m fucking speechless,” DeRuiter wrote on Threads.

She accused the Times of tone-policing. She took special exception to the illustration, of an elegant female diner devouring a head that appeared to be her own – or maybe it was meant to be a cake version of her head? Either way, the head had red lipstick, which DeRuiter was wearing in her author photo, so she was convinced the head was her.

She rallied her readers on social media, who came to her defense, flooding her replies, trashing the critic, buying her book as an up yours to that review specifically and the Gray Lady in general (why is it always the Times that ends up being the place that runs these bad reviews, you ask? Probably because the Times is pretty much the only place running reviews at all).

Did it work?

Did responding to the review help DeRuiter sell more copies than she would have if she’d ignored it?

Did it benefit this book?

Will it benefit her brand, her long-term career?

The book hit the Amazon bestseller list. And DeRuiter’s response felt on brand and in line with the voice she’s developed as a food blogger. I suspect the pan-cum-kerfuffle sold more books than a positive review would have (it is a truth universally acknowledged that a Times review, while a lovely ego boost, doesn’t generally impact sales too much).

So maybe clapping back can be a good thing?

Exhibit B: Alexandra Jacobs Was Not A Fan of Anne Lamott’s latest (“Anne Lamott Has Written Classics,” read the headline. “This Is Not One of Them,”)

Lamott didn’t hesitate to share the bad news on Twitter (yes, I know it’s not called Twitter any more. I am not calling it X. Elon Musk can fight me).

“A bit of a set back here: just got the single worst review of my life prominently featured in the New York Times, brightly illustrated for maximum visibility. Alexandra Jacob’s (sic) had a LOT of fun writing it,” Lamott wrote. “Feel doomed. Am going to sulk, and overeat.”

“Welcome to the club,” replied Kara Swisher. “You, me, all the women who step out of line. And yet we are bestsellers on the NYT list. Ignore it.”

“Jealousy is so sad,” wrote the novelists and memoirist Suzanne Finnamore. “I will pray for her ass.”

“I already bought the book, but now I shall buy it TWICE. For SPITE, Annie Lamott. For SPITE,” wrote memoirist Lily Burana.

This, again, felt very on-brand for Lamott, who’s built an identity, over many books and many decades, as being the relatable, flawed friend you’d want at your side, sulking and overeating, if you’d been the one to get bad news.

Just as they did with DeRuiter, Lamott’s legions of fans rode to the rescue, lifting her up, tearing down Alexandra Jacobs’ work, her looks, and her relative lack of fame and fortune…in ways that did not always make me feel entirely comfortable.

Still, though: the book debuted at number one on the Times list. Revenge is sweet!

My personal policy is this: I don’t read reviews. Not even the good ones. Not even if they’re in the Times. I have very little discipline in many aspects of my life, but I am long practiced and iron-willed when it comes to staying away from Amazon and Goodreads, and from mainstream media attention. The week that one of my books comes out, I remove all the social media apps from my phone, along with the widgets for the big newspapers. If I’m looking at a screen, it’s my Kindle.

I know myself, and I know my own limits. I know what I can tolerate and what’s going to make me want to hide under my bed and cry.

And responding to a pan, engaging with the review, and then responding to the responses – boosting the ones that agree with me, arguing with the ones that didn’t – feels like a time suck. It’s giving it real estate in your brain. It’s picking at the sore spot and pressing on the bruise. Ultimately, my feeling is that it’s a waste of energy that could be more pleasantly and productively turned toward, for example, a work in progress.

As satisfying as raging in the moment can feel, ultimately, it’s hard to win a war of the words with critics – and newspapers – who buy ink by the barrel. It’s hard to get the tone right; to not sound petty or wounded, especially when you feel petty and wounded.

But if responding has become the new order of the day, do it like Cynthia Ozick, who rebutted Lionel Shriver’s pan in a letter to the editor, in verse:

“In the quiet of her nook/the writer is shook/ and roars her wrath/Anathema!/For the blow Shriver’s given/ May she never be shriven.”

In other words, if you are determined to open fire, do it in a witty, memorable way; one that aligns with the voice of your book; one that shows you aren’t taking yourself too seriously and will send people hastening to the bookstores to track down more of your work.

What do you think? Should writers respond to bad reviews, or ignore them?