Critiquing the book review

This piece by Ben Yagoda is seven years old but still worth a read. Yagoda asks why, in many cases, reviewers, that is, critics, and the general public can dramatically differ on books, as well as movies and such. He lists four types of critics, per traditional breakdowns.

His focus, though, is on what he calls "soft touches" and "logrollers," along with related puffers.

"Soft touches" are also "review sluts," in the pockets of public publishers and movie studios. "Logrollers," to extend from him, would be those who puff in hopes of good reviews back. I suspect this is primarily a fiction problem.

Rather, the big problem, he thinks, is more than that. It's that familiarity breeds just the opposite of contempt. To that end, and more, he quotes Orwell:

It is almost impossible to mention books in bulk without grossly overpraising the great majority of them. Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books one does not discover how bad the majority of them are. In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be “This book is worthless”, while the truth about the reviewer’s own reaction would probably be “This book does not interest me in any way, and I would not write about it unless I were paid to.” But the public will not pay to read that kind of thing. Why should they? They want some kind of guide to the books they are asked to read, and they want some kind of evaluation. But as soon as values are mentioned, standards collapse.

Well put. Or is it?

Yagoda actually thinks Orwell and Ellen Hardwick are wrong on WHY this happens:

Orwell and Hardwick present the “gross” overpraise as calculated; I think it usually is not. As a friend of mine suggests, critics fall prey to a sort of hermeneutic Stockholm syndrome. They experience so much bad work that they get inured to it. They are so thankful for originality, or for a creator’s having good or arguably interesting intentions, or for technical proficiency, or for a something that’s crap but not crap in quite the usual way, that they give these things undue credit.

Even better put, perhaps. I think it's probably 65-35 non-calculated, rather than almost always more or less semi-conscious.

In either case? It's part of why I have a "touted by reviewers unduly" bookshelf at Goodreads, for books that get a particular downvoting when they're not what they are. "The Eastern Front" lost at least one extra full star, if not 1.5 or so, because of this. Here, at least, I think it is semi-conscious, not semi-unconscious. I personally rated Lloyd's "Passchendaele" at 5 stars. I suspect many critics, whether more conscious or less, bank-shotted off that to overrate this. Happens elsewhere, such as Major League Baseball players winning undeserved Gold Gloves.

It's worth noting that Yagoda's book-world focus is on fiction, where a focus on creativeness of craft — even if not good, just creative — is part of what drives this. That's also why I suspect this is more conscious in the non-fiction world.

I know in fields like history, or biblical criticism, "hot young bucks" come to notice, and if nothing else, critics don't want to look like they're missing the boat if they do a truly critical review. So, they may pull punches.

The brain is still not massively modular for language

 And thus, Noam Chomsky is still wrong.

But, that's about all you'll learn from Steven Mithen's new book. Actually, if you, like me, knew the former a decade or more ago, you're not even "learning" that.

The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together the Six-Million-Year Story of How Words Evolved by Steven Mithen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Maybe a 2.5, but I just can't round up it up.

First, the subhed isn't true, or not fully. To use British English, the conclusion chapter is a damp squib. (There is no "the answer" on the origin of language ability. Any body who has claimed so in the past is lying; and, anybody who claims so in the next 20 years, minimum, will also be lying, IMO.)

That wouldn't be so bad, the "big reveal" not really existing, if Mithen had moved the ball forward in some ways with an incomplete answer, either in the conclusion or earlier in the book.

He doesn't.

Chomsky's massive modularity of the brain being dead? That's been known for years, and accepted by about everybody other than bitter-end Ev Psychers. Within the world of linguistics and language evolution, Michael Corballis said so seven years ago, in his much better book — extended review of it with the Chomsky angle, based not just on his book, is here. Indeed, Corballis hoists Chomsky by his own petard.

A "soft" version of Sapir-Whorf being true? Yes, but that's also been known for some time, if we keep the emphasis on "soft," as I've discussed in brief. However, Mithen appears to go beyond a soft version.

Take page 139. Here, he claims in English that many words signifying slowness begin with "cr": that is "creep," "crawl" and others. Took me 30 seconds to think of the "sl" word of "sleek" and "slalom." True, the second is a modern formation off a skiing-specific term, but that's how new words develop.

Side note: There's a moderate to moderately-high, but not extremely high, level of anecdotalism in this book.

On S-W, there is the one good idea, supported by some research, that it is right-eye dominant, with language control being in the left hemisphere the cause. BUT! He has no studies on people for whom language areas in their brain are distributed across both hemispheres, which Mithen says earlier is not uncommon.

Back to the conclusion. I doubt his claims that Homo erectus was using so-called "iconic" words as early as 1.6 million years ago. Even if they did, outside of Africa, such proto-languages went nowhere anyway, and thus are evolutionary dead ends. Also, even if they were using such words, it was only as a proto-language and not an actual language. Maybe proto-proto-language is more exact.

(Side note: Mithen is basically "hominid evolution 101," as far as modern understanding of the hominid family bush's development. There's no deep dives here, whether connected to linguistics or not.)

Conclusion gets worse. Mithen claims that H. heidelbergensis was using words for specific minerals, spears and other implements, etc, by 200,000 years ago. Evidence? None. Because there isn't any, and won't be. At this point, even without a "big reveal," we're starting to get into territory critiqued and criticized by Stefanos Geroulanos in "The Invention of Prehistory." Related to that, I think Mithen may have a semi-saltationist mindset for language development stages as well as its alleged earliness. Read Corballis for other angles.

Also, and also noted by a few other reviewers, the book is highly digressive. Lots of it is about the evolution of words within modern languages, etc., and has basically nothing to do with the evolution of language per se.

Finally? An issue that reared its head in the introduction, but is not unique to Mithen.

That is an essentially axiomatic exclusion of cetaceans from having developed language. No proof is ever offered; just an assumption is made.

Yes, I know that it's harder to study orcas and dolphins, than primates, in the few places where humans still enclose them in cells, and that it's a lot harder to study them, and humpback and other whales, in the wild. But, studied they have been. See Wiki's page on animal language for more. Even if cetacean communication, whether a proto-language or less than that, would not fall in line with human evolution, it could still provide discussion for linguistic development in general, and the philosophy thereof. 

Corballis also falls short on this issue.

Update: These researchers say the laryngeal theory of speech origins is yesterday's news. Via other pieces at PopSci, other ideas of Mithen also appear to be less than firm.

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Problems at the biblical criticism subreddits again — OT festivals, Bart Ehrman, Luke-Acts

At the two where I'm banned.

At Ask Biblical Scholars, someone asking "How can you debunk Unitarianism?" Violates sub rules on invoking theological belief, but had been up there for 3 days when I saw it. Poster is a thrown-off Jesuitical heretic hunter.

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Also there, somebody talking about "Fulfillment of Leviticus 23." (That's about, per the P author, Yahweh designating various festivals.) Claims parts of it have been fulfilled in light of a Rapture. Poster is a premillennialist of some sort, possibly a Messianic Christian to boot. (The "Feast of Trumpets" is today's Rosh Hashanah, and that's proof of being a Messianic Christian.) Post had been removed from other subs, but up at ABC for 3 days. See his video at another sub. Dude, you ARE nuts.

And, I can be banned there and mods don't do shit about stuff like this.

++++++++

At r/AcademicBiblical?

A question about the status of women in antiquity in general, based on Augustine's Confessions. Breaks the rules.

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Here, some general nutter claims that Bart Ehrman does NOT do critical source analysis, then doubles and triples down on that in comments.

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Here's someone confused. They claim Luke and Acts must have different authors because Acts contradicts Paul's letters. Totally irrelevant. Just as irrelevant is a commenter claiming that Luke never indicates in Luke that he intended to write a sequel, quoting a JVM Sturdy:

Nothing in Luke’s Gospel suggests the author intended to write a sequel. The prologue (1:1-4) certainly does not advocate this view. Acts does, however, suggest at an early point – in its prologue, no less – that it is the work of the author of Luke. I regard this as a fictitious attempt to claim a literary relationship with Luke through deliberate stylistic imitation.

And? Hundreds, if not thousand of authors have written books not intending to write sequels, but eventually doing so.

And, there's the introit to Acts, despite what the author says. JVM Sturdy, you're wrong. The book is actually called "Redrawing the Boundaries: The Dating of Early Christian Literature," and appears Not.Even.Wrong.

Per this link, I think that the Luke-Acts differences on relationship to the Jews is some issue, but not insurmountable. I disagree on Acts using the Pastorals. The piece cited for that uses the Westar Institute as point of takeoff, making it a bit dubious IMO right there. (I mean, I know how Westar sucks.) And, it claims all the letters inspired Acts. Erm, how do you explain the contradictions between Acts and the genuine Paulines? And, the idea that a post-Trajan final version of Revelation circulated enough to be used by the author of Acts (and occurring before it)? Laughable.

It's more examples of what I've said before: Some hot young bucks with "out there" ideas attract too many r/AB commenters like moths to the flame.

A few updates

Mainly blogroll, links list, etc.

On the blogroll, I got rid of Gary the ex-Lutheran. Had enough of him. It wasn't quite Gnu Atheism, but most of his stuff lacked that much depth. And, he overrates Bart Ehrman. And, a couple of his fanboi commenters got to be quasi-Reddit chud types.

I added Aeon when I discovered it had a feed.

And, I just added Thoughts on Papyrus, the site of someone who follows my Goodreads reviews. They read mainly fiction, but they also write about classical music.

Top blogging, third quarter

 Since I don't post here as often as my main blog, I don't do a monthly update of the most-read items.

But, I do post a quarterly roundup, and here we go.

With all of them, I'll have a bit of explainer, but more with ones more than a few months old, as well as nothing their original time provenance, etc.

No. 10? Aeon, in a piece puffing John Rawls and puffing the author's new book about Rawls, ignored that, at the time, Walter Kaufmann crushed Rawls. I helped Aeon out.

No. 9? From not quite a year ago, with the help of Paul Davidson of "Is That in the Bible?", I riffed on Idan Dershowitz about the development of the book of Deuteronomy and other things.

No. 8? From more than a year ago, but timely for upcoming US elections, I talked about fascism in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

No. 7? A recent book review. Tim Alberta's "The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory" was sadly lacking in several areas, above all, a failure to discuss eschatology, millennialism and US support for Israel.

No. 6 was another recent book review. "Catastrophe Ethics" was wrong from the start.

No. 5? Back to biblical criticism, and again, bank-shotting off Davidson. My "Paul, Passover, Jesus, Gnosticism" piece from back in 2009 takes a critical look at 1 Corinthians 11 and the institution of the Eucharist by Paul.

No. 4 is my takedown of Chris(sy) Hanson, someone who isn't totally what they claim, but with whom the AcademicBiblical subreddit is infatuated.

No. 3 looks at some other r/AB stupidities, like the burial of Jesus.

No. 2? Another extended book review! Joseph Horowitz butchers what could have been a great concept about 20th-century musicians exiled to the US.

And ... No. 1

Inspired by my summer vacation this year?

Per the old philosophical bon mot, indeed, de gustibus non disputandum on natural beauty.

Non-wingnut conservative-to-moderate evangelical Christianity ain't dead

The Texas Tribune recently offered a pointed comparison-contrast to Tim Dunn's political-religious quasi theocratic compound just down the road, by profiling Connection Christian Church in Odessa. Here's pastor Dawn Weaks: 

"Christian Nationalism is an example of this kind of arrogance parading as Christianity,” she said. “There is nothing Jesus-like about that."

That's the bottom line.

The church, a member of the Disciples of Christ, has a history far beyond the Dunns' independent church. And, that itself is important. That said, the Trib perpetuates some stereotypes. I lived in Hobbs for a little less than two years, and nobody asked me my religion at H-E-B. That said, I didn't introduce myself to others. (I still think it's a stereotype or cliché; I'm sure that even when two strangers introduce themselves, it comes up far less than 100 percent and probably less than 75 percent. Maybe less than 50 percent, which definitely makes it stereotype, not generalization.

This is something Tim Dunn, other than brief speculative thought about the future of the Southern Baptist Convention, simply missed in "The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory," per my review. Denominations, even one as loosely congregational as Southern Baptists, ride at least a bit of herd over individual churches and their pastors.

That said, the story is nowhere near perfect. It's got clichés, such as claims that people in Odessa ask strangers in the supermarket what their religion is. From personal experience, I can say this never happened to me.

There's also a BIG contextual failure on this:

This year, Pew Research reported that 80% of Americans believe religion is losing influence in American life. And nearly half of those who say religion is losing influence said it is bad for society.

In fairness, it later cites this from the same survey:

In the same survey, less than a third, 27%, of white Evangelical Protestants wanted Christianity declared the official national religion.

While that's not the same as "losing influence," it does offer some framing. But, it's a further one-third the story down. In addition? NO URL for the Pew story. THAT's not acceptable.

And, reporter Nic Garcia's not a newbie. These things aren't excusable.

Here's how to butcher a book about early 20th century American classical music

 Now, I'm not a former music critic of the New York Times, unlike Joseph Horowitz, but when I was a Dallas Symphony Orchestra season-ticket holder years ago, I regularly conversed by email with Dallas Morning News critic Scott Cantrell. And, I've read plenty of in-depth books on various specific composers, histories, etc. Plus, I work in the media business myself, and know something about editing as well as writing.

So, I'm not speaking out of nowhere. First, my expanded-from-Goodreads review of "Artists in Exile," then my comments on how, IMO, this could have been made better.

Artists in Exile: How Refugees from Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts by Joseph Horowitz
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

One of the best two-star books I’ve read, but, it’s a two star book, in large part due to authorial framing combined with deceptive title.

Loses a star for deceptive title if not more. Not all the classical musicians were exiles and a majority of the film actors and directors were not. Started grokking more by page 250. “Artists” turns out to be selective. Other than briefly referencing Thomas Mann and Vladimir Nabokov as one last attempt to prove his thesis that “Russians” were flexible in exile, Germans not,” no authors are included. No painters or sculptors are included at all, besides a fleeting mention of de Kooning and one other. No architects are included. So, that’s really close to two full stars there. (Yes, he says that in his subtitle, the book is about "performing artists." But, he does mention, if briefly, non-performing artists, and again, Mann and Nabokov are dragged in to push a thesis that IMO isn't tenable.)

Some sort of physical-racialist essentialism by talking about a Balanchine body type that is “itself Africanist.” For a Jewish author writing about people who were, when actually exiles, largely Jewish, this seems dangerous territory.

Claims symphony and opera aren’t frequently revitalized in modern America? Really? Never heard of John Adams? (I’m not a big opera buff, to be honest.)

Stravinsky was in Paris before WWI and wasn’t “expelled.” Balanchine may be considered an economic refugee from 1930s Paris, but wasn’t an exile.

Stravinsky didn’t “capitulate” to Schoenberg. Also, why would an alleged “Germanophobe” regularly visit Weimar Germany?

Balanchine seems used as a foil to beat Stravinsky over the head. Insinuating he was unoriginal by being stimulated by Balanchine after Diaghilev and before Craft.

I didn't care for what seemed to be dissing of Stravinsky's later-life composing work in general. (He deserves fire for any antisemitism, and an epic firefight between Craft and Cal-Berkeley music professor Richard Taruskin shows just how bad it was, while at the same time showing that it can arguably be made even worse than it was.) Being an aficionado of both "Threni" (which may have been borrowed from Krenek's "Lamentatio" with its own serial technique mixed with Renaissance counterpoint that would have grabbed Stravinsky's ear — even he says it might have) and "Abraham and Isaac" (see link above) he wrote some good serial music. Maybe Craft gave him a nudge into that, but I think Stravinsky had long been interested in the idea. Craft discusses that more in an interview.

Having read Craft’s bio (or extended biographies) of Stravinsky, and articles about the Craft-Stravinsky relationship and the bio (a good overview here), let’s just say I’m not totally solid on Horowitz’s thesis.

I’m no more sold, if even as sold, on Horowitz's inflexible Germans and flexible Russians thesis. Perhaps that’s why authors are largely left out, and painters, sculptors and architects totally are; they would upset the thesis. In addition, exiles from places like Francoist Spain (Dali, for one) would further muddy the waters. Add in Duchamp (France) and Mondrian (Netherlands, but in France when he fled for Britain, then the US). I'm sure this would upset the thesis. This is just tagging a few names. To tag another, in music? Darius Milhaud.

Varese was clearly even more than Balanchine not an exile. Boris Aronson wasn’t, either. Rouben Mamoulian MAY have been an exile, but it was from Georgia more than Tsarist Russia per se. Don't forget that Georgia in all of its subsections did not become Russian imperially owned until the late 1820s; ditto for Armenia. So, considering Balanchine and Mamoulian "Russian" is a stretch; Horowitz seems to admit this by calling Mamoulian "deracinated." Of course, he also calls Hungarian Jews "German." Again, there's a thesis at work that he's determined to push, true or false.

Most the actors and directors, although eventually forced to remain in the US during the war years, weren't exiles, either. They freely came to the US in the late 1920s.

A few good things?

Arthur Farwell? Had never heard of him. Through the miracle of YouTube, I played Navajo War Dance No. 2.

Beyond the efforts of WRR every January, had not heard of one-third or more of Black composers mentioned.

That American modern classical music has suffered due to failure to follow Dvorak’s urging to ground itself on Black music is has a fair amount of truth. 

That said, I am not as big of a Dvorak fan as Horowitz appears to be. His American Suite, for example, has some generic descending fourths "American Indian chants." And, I don't think it's as "little-known" as he claims.

Also, jazz, its roots ultimately but not solely African-American, DID have some effect, of no little means, on American classical composers. So, too, in smaller degree, has the blues.

Going beyond Dvorak to the literary, calling James Fenimore Cooper an "Indianist"? Mark Twain is laughing in his grave.

Update: With further thought, I also think Horowitz's sub-thesis, that the "cult of the performer" is purely an American thing, is also overstated. Paganini comes immediately to mind. Joachim, for whom Brahms wrote his violin concerto, next. Liszt, even though composer first, certainly played on the cult of the performer when younger.

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OK, now, to make this better? 

First, drop the "Exiles" title. Sometimes, it's an editor or publisher that suggests a book title after not liking the author's, but in this case, I'm sure it was Horowitz.

Second, change that title to something about music, because it's clear that's what it's about.

Third, drop the Germans vs. Russians schtick.

Fourth, simply focus on the development of American classical music from the time of Dvorak's and Mahler's visits on, looking at "native" development, European visits, interactions or lack thereof and more. 

Film, to the degree it involves music scores, and the theater, with musicals and incidental music, comes along for the ride. You semi-ignored literature and totally ignored art and painting, so nothing lost.

Expand by 50 pages. Trim the Balanchine, as that's ballet first. Expand on American-born composers.