The Wisdom of Crowds

Thinking more about my post on Friday morning, I see a possible misinterpretation hidden in my desire to write “stronger” book reviews. The word “stronger” implies a competitive model in which the most informative reviews rise to a place of prominence (whether the place reserved for the three “most helpful” reviews on Amazon.com or the pages of those few magazines that talk about literature) while the rest fade into obscurity and are forgotten. I’m skeptical of attempts to adapt Darwinian descriptions of nature into prescriptions for society.

One of the amazing things about the internet is that from an aggregate of uninformed opinions we can approach a truth (big emphasis on can). Consider the case of Lior Zoref, who brought a live ox on stage at a 2012 TED conference and asked 500 uninformed conference attendees to guess it’s weight (estimates were sent electronically so that the average could be calculated on the fly). The average of all their guesses was 1,792 lbs, just three pounds away from the ox’s actual weight of 1,795 lbs.

This is amazing and comforting. First, imagine there were a bovine expert in the crowd. In the laboratory, three pounds could make a big difference, and only bovine experts have the training and know-how needed to increase and apply our knowledge of this creature. With the crowdsourcing method, however, even if the expert had precisely guessed the actual weight (hit the bullseye, so to speak), his guess would be worth no more than the others in contributing to our wisdom. At the TED talk, the lowest guess was 308 lbs (1,487 lbs off the mark) and the highest was 8,000 lbs (6,205 lbs off the mark). Yet each of these guesses and 497 others contributed to the average just as much as the bovine expert’s did. Value can be assessed – albeit with different degrees of utility and reliability – both in the laboratory and in the marketplace.

The most fitting model for how book reviews should be weighed and processed is the marketplace, because the problem book reviews try to solve is one of simple economics:

1. Readers have limited time and money that they want to spend on a book in exchange for whatever form of satisfaction that literature offers (spiritual, educational, erotic, etc.).
2. They can’t know which book offers the best rate of exchange unless they hear the opinion of someone who has already made the exchange.

Literary experts can tell us many valuable things that the average person can’t, but they have no more ability to say whether the average person will find a book satisfying than anyone else. As more voices join the conversation, the collective wisdom grows stronger, and, unlike in the competitive model, everyone who participates prospers.

Writing Stronger Book Reviews

Song of Songs 8:6 says “Love is strong as death.” Not “stronger than,” like I would l have expected from this ancient equivalent of an R&B album, but “strong as.” Since my crisis of confidence during grad school — the ego can only take so many personalized “you suck” notes from professors –  I’ve become afraid of writing. My love of writing is strong as my fear of the results.

But it’s not just a psychological impediment — there are real flaws in my craftsmanship. (Did you just gasp ironically? That’s so mean!) The little writing I do consists of Amazon reviews and journal entries about novels and poems. It takes me at most four hours to write what I until recently considered a good review. But here’s what I think it would take to write a really good novel review. I base this in part on some things I noticed about Michael Gorra’s excellent review of William H. Gass’s new novel in the most recent New York Review of Books.

1) Read the author’s complete body of work and know something of his or her biography before passing judgment on the book being reviewed. You can’t really judge the novel without that full picture. This may seem like an excessive prohibition, but what it really says is only real literature nerds should try to write authoritatively about literature. (I use Chris Hardwick’s definition of a nerd: someone so obsessed with the details of one subject –  whether Spider-Man comics, chemistry, baseball stats, or the life and novels of Jonathan Franzen — that he or she finds being correct about that subject more rewarding than social esteem.)

2) Dig into the plot without “spoiling” anything for readers, but don’t be too afraid of the spoiler. There are only so many ways a typical novel can go, so the real question isn’t where an author goes but how he or she gets there. Think of it like a movie trailer — you have to give away some of the funniest jokes or the most dramatic lines to get people interested — combined with an objective critique.

3) Speaking of objective, don’t offer excessive praise or scorn. Avoid words like genius / idiot, brilliant / stupid, sublime / banal. These loaded words are so overused that they’ve lost all definite meaning. All readers will see is good / bad. If a sentence can be reduced to simply “I like this” or “I dislike that” then it should be thrown out.

4) Don’t be afraid writing long reviews. Write 2000 good words, then cut off the fat and reorganize and smooth out transitions until it’s closer to 1000 words. No one ever complains because a review was too informative. Real people are going to spend real money on a book — sometimes for themselves, sometimes as a gift for someone else — and your review could be a deciding factor on what they choose.

5) If you’re reviewing on Amazon or any system that uses a star rating or numerical rating in conjunction with a written review, carefully consider your options. Readers put a lot of faith in these systems; I know from comments I’ve received that some readers look only at the stars given and ignore the text completely. Most books should be two, three, or four stars. Use your ones and fives sparingly so they mean something. Read up on what the star or numerical rating system for your chosen outlet actually means and how it can affect sales, then choose responsibly.

These rules boil down to being more honest with myself and with those errant souls who actually find and read my reviews. I’m trying to come to a place where I can think of myself as a reporter and the novel as an event that happened on my beat. What’s going on, who’s involved, what are people thinking and saying about it? If I can’t answer those simple questions, from now on I’m going to think twice about publishing that review. But when I do publish, I’ll be more willing to stand by the strength of my judgment.

Site Under Construction

Yo. So this site is still in the works. Originally I wanted it to be a review of almost all contemporary art, music, film, etc., but I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I know absolutely nothing about anything other than literature. So I’m regrouping The CB into a literary review, and I hope to have it all together by sometime in early 2013.