She Treads Softly: vacation termination

Sunday, January 4, 2009

vacation termination

I was forced by threat of plague to abandoned my New Year's vacation plans and head home early with my two nephews and niece squeezed into the back seat of the car. We had to drive through freezing rain and ice for about 7 hours of our whole 8 1/2 hour extended trip home - a trip that should be about 5 1/2 hours. Along the way we witnessed countless accidents and cars in the ditches. Oh, and for the record, Iowa stinks at sanding/salting roads. South Dakota and Missouri were great - on task and working hard.

Bad news: The whole trip took about 3 hours longer than normal.

Good news: averaging at break-neck speeds anywhere between 30 mph up to 55 mph, we made the trip on one tank of gas.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.