Good reviews, of course, please writers greatly, but not as greatly as bad reviews upset them. Writers are an irritable tribe, and remember a bad review with tenacity and bitterness long after the good ones are forgotten. Since it is a rare book that does not encounter at least one reviewer with a hangover, or who has just had a domestic quarrel, or who has been selected by the review editor for a known antipathy to the author, it is a rare scribbler who does not carry somewhere the quietly or otherwise suppurating wound inflicted by barbs of criticism.

Subscribe or Sign In to read the full article