Bad Book Reviews are Good

I admit it — I like reading really scathing reviews. The kind of reviews that make you wince in embarrassment for the skewered writer, but also make you wish you could deploy such devastating rhetoric in real time against your own opponents, ideological or aesthetic. Reading these kinds of reviews is like being a witness to a horrible yet sublime accident, but one where no one is hurt except emotionally. It's schadenfreude at its best (and worst).

This past week has been a particularly good one in this respect, since I've come across two book reviews that had me wincing all the way through. First was this review of Bernard-Henri Lévy's American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville by Garrison Keillor. Here's a choice bit:

And what's with the flurries of rhetorical questions? Is this how the French talk or is it something they save for books about America? "What is a Republican? What distinguishes a Republican in the America of today from a Democrat?" Lévy writes, like a student padding out a term paper. "What does this experience tell us?" he writes about the Mall of America. "What do we learn about American civilization from this mausoleum of merchandise, this funeral accumulation of false goods and nondesires in this end-of-the-world setting? What is the effect on the Americans of today of this confined space, this aquarium, where only a semblance of life seems to subsist?" And what is one to make of the series of questions — 20 in a row — about Hillary Clinton, in which Lévy implies she is seeking the White House to erase the shame of the Lewinsky affair? Was Lévy aware of the game 20 Questions, commonly played on long car trips in America? Are we to read this passage as a metaphor of American restlessness? Does he understand how irritating this is? Does he? Do you? May I stop now?

And then there is this choice piece of righteous indignation: Alan Wolfe's review of Rodney Stark's The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. Here's my favorite part:

Jesus, Stark goes on, is responsible for more than liberating us from scrolls; to him goes the credit for all of Western civilization. If he had remained a Jew, we would live in a despotic world bereft of science and reason. Lots of women would die giving birth, and a significant percentage of children would not live past age five. Firmly ensconced in the dark ages, our societies would be horrendous places to inhabit, lacking "universities, banks, factories, eyeglasses, chimneys, and pianos."

Thought experiments have their place, but Stark's, it must immediately be said, is vile: even the most notorious anti-Semites give Jews credit for the banks.

I doubt I will read either book, but I wouldn't be surprised if I were to someday read these reviews again. Hurts so good!