Kurt Vonnegut on scathing book reviews: “Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Vonnegut Quote on Book Reviews”
Grant, you know what it’s like when you read a book review and it’s just absolutely scathing, just awful, horrible?
Well, I found this great quotation from Kurt Vonnegut about how, you know, nobody really needs to do that.
Nobody really needs to write that kind of review.
He wrote, any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous.
He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Exactly.
I mean, right.
Bless their heart.
When I worked in music a long time ago, we’d review records.
I was a small-time music reviewer for a couple of small papers in the Midwest.
And we’d always have this conversation because it’s so much fun to go after a bad record.
And yet, there are all these good albums that you probably should spend your time on instead.
Why give any space to the stuff you don’t like when there’s so many other things to be lifted up?
Exactly.
