B741-DES610

On Critical Fair Play And Ethics: Cambridge University Press’s Contemporary Fiction: The Novel Since 1990, edited by Pamela Bickley
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 7/24/08

Addendum

  Today I received my complementary copy of Contemporary Fiction: The Novel Since 1990, a slim volume textbook of fictive criticism published by Cambridge University Press, and edited by Pamela Bickley. I received a copy because a review of mine is mentioned in the book. That review, of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, first appeared in the April, 2007 edition of the online literary magazine Hackwriters. Here is a link to the original piece at Hackwriters. I later reposted the essay on Cosmoetica. The excerpt from my essay/review is noted on page 127, in the Index, as merely ‘Schneider, Dan 116.’

  Yet, the slanting of the quotation from my review is juxtaposed with a preceding review that praises the book. Herein a full quotation from pages 115-116 of the book:

  Initial reviewers of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, on the other hand, were often divided in their assessment. Read the following extracts, bearing in mind your own impressions of the novel.

  White Teeth is so unlike the kind of comic novel currently in vogue among young British women -- the girl-about-town Bridget Jones wannabe -- that its very willingness to look beyond the stock in trade of boyfriends and weight problems is a mark of distinction. Smith's real talent emerges not just in her voice but in her ear, which enables her to inhabit characters of different generations, races and mind-sets. Whether it's her notation of Archie's blokish colloquialisms (''Blimey!'' ''I should cocoa''), Clara's Anglo-Jamaican patois ('''Sno prob-lem. If you wan' help: jus' arks farrit''), the banter of two ancient Jamaican grouches or of second-generation Bengali teenagers, the mongrel texture of metropolitan life rises vividly from the page. There is more than virtuosity at work here. Smith likes her characters, and while she is alert to their shortcomings and blind spots, her generosity toward them never flags.

  That is why White Teeth, for all its tensions, is a peculiarly sunny novel. Its crowdedness, its tangle of competing voices and viewpoints, betoken a society struggling toward accommodation, tolerance, perhaps even fellowship, and a time in which miscegenation is no longer the exception but the norm: ''It is only this late in the day that you can walk into a playground and find Isaac Leung by the fish pond, Danny Rahman in the football cage, Quang O'Rourke bouncing a basketball and Irie Jones humming a tune. Children with first and last names on a direct collision course.'' There are reasons, so late in the day, to be cheerful, and this eloquent, wit-struck book is not least among them.

(Anthony Quinn in the New York Times, 30 April 2000)

  Bad writers, young or old, never seem to understand that any information imparted- be it descriptive or conversational- should be justifiable, not merely an exercise in preening. In short, Smith is incapable of writing about something in fifteen to twenty words if a hundred can do- this the unmistakable hallmark of a bad writer…. White Teeth reads sort of like one of those randy British films that went abysmally wrong- think The Full Monty gone Southern Gothic grotesque. Too many scenes read like wan sketches or ideas that are on a to do list that is never picked up on again, and there are far too many actual lists within the book, such as a list of Millat’s and Alsana’s possessions, which serves no purpose in the tale, save to show ‘cultural awareness’. Many other scenes stand nakedly embarrassing in their content and detail, as Smith cannot even string a single full narrative paragraph together. It’s as if she had ADD, or was a filmmaker with a shaky hand held camera. In the end, this disjointed, unreadable mess is merely a wannabe underground baedeker to London, yet it has no index page, for Smith was too lazy to even include that gratuity. White Teeth is a bad, bad novel, with little redeeming about it, and Smith will have a long way to go if she is even going to approach middle brow mediocrity as a writer.

(Dan Schneider in Hackwriters, the International Writers’ Magazine, April 2007)

-Is there any reason why White Teeth should invite the vitriolic attack of the second review? What is your own opinion?

-Anthony Quinn, in common with many reviewers, has found the cultural hybridity of White Teeth both comic and celebratory. What is your own view?

  Oy vey! Where to begin? Well, let’s start with the actual text in the book, and work backwards to the permissions granted and what I was told about the book. Click on the link to Quinn’s New York Times review. In it we get no real qualitative assessment of Smith’s writing. All we get is a summary of the book, bravado for its being multiculturalism and then the end of the piece, quoted in full, above. This is important to note, for Quinn’s review is humorless and somberly PC. The review actually starts this way: ‘Zadie Smith's debut novel is, like the London it portrays, a restless hybrid of voices, tones and textures. Hopscotching through several continents and 150 years of history, ''White Teeth'' encompasses a teeming family saga, a sly inquiry into race and identity and a tender-hearted satire on religious antagonism and cultural bemusement. One might be inclined to assume that Smith, who began writing the book when still a Cambridge undergraduate, has bitten off more than she can chew; one might even feel a little huffy that one so young (she is 24) has aimed so high. Is it open season on Henry James's baggy monster? Yet aside from a rather wobbly final quarter, Smith holds it all together with a raucous energy and confidence that couldn't be a fluke.’

  Again, nothing but empty puffery- restless hybrid, teeming family saga, sly inquiry, and tender-hearted satire. Almost unnoticed in this critical fellatio is that even Quinn notes the book tanks in the end. In short, he admits it sucks, but needs to keep his bona fides alive in the critical establishment.

  Now, let’s look at my quoted review: two things stand out. First, is the wit I display, even in truncated form, and the second is that my quotation has been decontextualized, by the use of an ellipsis. Here is the full quoted text, with the underlined, bolded, and italicized being what is not quoted, so the reader can see what was omitted:

  Bad writers, young or old, never seem to understand that any information imparted- be it descriptive or conversational- should be justifiable, not merely an exercise in preening. In short, Smith is incapable of writing about something in fifteen to twenty words if a hundred can do- this the unmistakable hallmark of a bad writer. Witness this paragraph from early in the book:

  Overhead, a gang of the local flying vermin took off from some unseen perch, swooped, and seemed to be zeroing in on Archie’s car roof - only to perform, at the last moment, an impressive U-turn, moving as one with the elegance of a curve ball and landing on the Hussein-Ishmael, a celebrated halal butchers. Archie was too far gone to make a big noise about it, but he watched them with a warm internal smile as they deposited their load, streaking white walls purple. He watched them stretch their peering bird heads over the Hussein-Ishmael gutter; he watched them watch the slow and steady draining of blood from the dead things - chickens, cows, sheep - hanging on their hooks like coats around the shop. The Unlucky. These pigeons had an instinct for the Unlucky, and so they passed Archie by. For, though he did not know it, and despite the Hoover tube that lay on the passenger seat pumping from the exhaust pipe into his lungs, luck was with him that morning. The thinnest covering of luck was on him like fresh dew. Whilst he slipped in and out of consciousness, the position of the planets, the music of the spheres, the flap of a tiger-moth’s diaphanous wings in Central Africa, and a whole bunch of other stuff that Makes Shit Happen had decided it was second-chance time for Archie. Somewhere, somehow, by somebody, it had been decided that he would live.

  Note the stream of clichés, the excess modifiers, and the shit references. Soon after this paragraph, Smith launches into a dialogue where shit is all the characters mention. Why? To use as a metaphor for their life. Real original, eh? This sort of paragraph should never have made it out of her writing workshop, much less into print. Nor should the phrasings of the omniscient narrator, who in describing Archie, uses sentences like this: ‘He kind of felt people should just live together, you know, in peace and harmony or something.’

  Coming from a narrator who is limited, and a character in a tale, this is fine, as are the use of colloquial clichés. But, from an omniscient, it reeks. And the narrator does little but ramble, often telling us what is happening, and why, instead of allowing the reader to discover what the character’s motivations are. Now, if one is a good enough writer to tell, then this is no problem, but a quick reread of the above trite paragraph quoted manifests Smith cannot accomplish such. Her lack of understanding of this leads to the schism between what the book is trying to tell (not much) and how it tells it (not well).

  But, what more can be expected from an archetypal example of style over substance (although there is little style, as well)? She, herself, even recapitulates that error, as she even changed her name from Sadie to Zadie to sound more ethnically chic. White Teeth reads sort of like one of those randy British films that went abysmally wrong- think The Full Monty gone Southern Gothic grotesque. Too many scenes read like wan sketches or ideas that are on a to do list that is never picked up on again, and there are far too many actual lists within the book, such as a list of Millat’s and Alsana’s possessions, which serves no purpose in the tale, save to show ‘cultural awareness’. Many other scenes stand nakedly embarrassing in their content and detail, as Smith cannot even string a single full narrative paragraph together. It’s as if she had ADD, or was a filmmaker with a shaky hand held camera. In the end, this disjointed, unreadable mess is merely a wannabe underground baedeker to London, yet it has no index page, for Smith was too lazy to even include that gratuity. White Teeth is a bad, bad novel, with little redeeming about it, and Smith will have a long way to go if she is even going to approach middle brow mediocrity as a writer. Anything to the contrary is merely critical fellatio. Blurb that!

  So, what is the result of the ellipsis? Well, it removes a quoted piece from the text, which subliminally makes my review seem less ‘in depth’ than Quinn’s, when, in reality, my whole review is longer and quotes far more from the book to make my case for Smith’s poor prose. I include five lengthy snippets from the novel, yet the excerpt reflects none of this, for it, and, furthermore, it removes some deft analysis: ‘Note the stream of clichés, the excess modifiers, and the shit references. Soon after this paragraph, Smith launches into a dialogue where shit is all the characters mention. Why? To use as a metaphor for their life. Real original, eh? This sort of paragraph should never have made it out of her writing workshop, much less into print. Nor should the phrasings of the omniscient narrator, who in describing Archie, uses sentences like this: ‘He kind of felt people should just live together, you know, in peace and harmony or something.’

  Coming from a narrator who is limited, and a character in a tale, this is fine, as are the use of colloquial clichés. But, from an omniscient, it reeks. And the narrator does little but ramble, often telling us what is happening, and why, instead of allowing the reader to discover what the character’s motivations are. Now, if one is a good enough writer to tell, then this is no problem, but a quick reread of the above trite paragraph quoted manifests Smith cannot accomplish such. Her lack of understanding of this leads to the schism between what the book is trying to tell (not much) and how it tells it (not well).’

  Go ahead, I dare you to find a lengthy and cogent exegesis like this in Quinn’s piece (quoted or the original). The best he can muster is this, from the piece, directly preceding its quoted end: ‘This underscores one of the book's most salient conflicts -- the need to belong versus the renouncing of patrimony -- which Smith attempts to spell out in a grand finale, a fortuitous meeting of parents and children at Marcus's FutureMouse exhibition on New Year's Eve 1992. By this point the novel has squandered a little of the good will it has been so stylishly accumulating, and one wishes that a firmer editorial hand had steered it away from its overeager braiding of plot lines. (A flashback to the mystery of Archie's wartime test of character is at once pat and faintly ridiculous.) The focus becomes fuzzy, and the writing, hitherto so confident, suddenly feels labored and scrappy.

  But perhaps this overreaching is a natural consequence of Smith's ambition.’

  Note what stands out- the fact that Quinn is emotionally involved in the review- he is making excuses for the bad writing most of this quotation admits, by closing it with: ‘But perhaps this overreaching is a natural consequence of Smith's ambition.’ Or, it could be that Smith is simply a bad writer.

  I earlier mentioned that my quotation, even truncated, is filled with wit. And note how the book’s editor, Pamela Bickley, even cut off the very ending of my piece, which anticipates her critical dishonesty and Quinn’s phoned in review: ‘White Teeth is a bad, bad novel, with little redeeming about it, and Smith will have a long way to go if she is even going to approach middle brow mediocrity as a writer. Anything to the contrary is merely critical fellatio. Blurb that!’

  But, more importantly, the use of wit I display stands in naked contrast to the quoted questions I included- only two of the four are quoted since they reference my and Quinn’s reviews. Here is the question re: my review: Is there any reason why White Teeth should invite the vitriolic attack of the second review? What is your own opinion? Note how the second question is added to give a patina of objectivity that the first question lacks. Why? Because the first query does not mention me (the reviewer) by name, as if I was some voice from an anonymous rabble, not even worthy of direct mention; even though editor Bickley admits that White Teeth got negative reviews in the past when she writes, ‘Initial reviewers of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, on the other hand, were often divided in their assessment.’ Secondly, the use of the modifier ‘vitriolic’ gives away Bickley’s opinion, and it is not even-handed. Vitriolic means ‘something felt to resemble vitriol especially in caustic quality; especially : virulence of feeling or of speech.’ Virulence means ‘the quality or state of being virulent: as a: extreme bitterness or malignity of temper.’ Yet, note how the word implies an emotive quality to my writing, and one that is negative: bitter and malign, even though, manifestly, my quotation contains humor, and is actually the far more objective. It is Quinn’s, as displayed above, that resorts to emotional appeals to booster the book, while even his intellect admits its weaknesses.

  Now, let’s look at the question involving Quinn’s quote: ‘Anthony Quinn, in common with many reviewers, has found the cultural hybridity of White Teeth both comic and celebratory. What is your own view?’ Note, not only is Quinn’s name quoted in full (first and last name), but the question begins with his name, as if he is a respected critic worthy of approbation. The fact is that Quinn is mainly a film, not book, critic, so he’s not even in his field of expertise, and as a film critic it’s no surprise that his review falls back on the emotional, and exemplifies the bad sort of review that my review opens up ripping: ‘I get really tired of the bland sort of reviews that pass for negative criticism. You know what I mean. In it, a reviewer who is scared shitless of making an enemy of a writer, or a publishing house, writes a few mild rebukes of the writer, but comes around in the end to praise the writer as being terrific, as a writer and person, and that it was just this book, or a portion of it, that failed.’ Second, whereas my review was made to seem as if a lone nut shouting in the void (although contradicted by Bickley’s own words), the reader of this question is reassured that Quinn’s opinion is ‘safe’ and ‘in common with many reviewers.’ There is not even a hint of objectivity here, although, as with my query, a secondary query is asked to make the first query seem objective. Thirdly, the rest of the query is filled with PC bullshit: cultural hybridity (as if having a book with multiple characters from different backgrounds is something unique to Smith, and demanding of its own neologism), and positive terms describing Quinn’s opinion: ‘comic’ and ‘celebratory,’ versus my ‘vitriolic attack.’

  Now, none of this should surprise me, and it does not, but that is not the point of this essay. My surprise, or lack of it, due to the lack of critical fair play, and the breach of ethics by editor Bickley, is beside the point. But that still does not excuse the lack of a critical fair playing field. One might argue, given that Smith studied at Cambridge University, it would be ludicrous to expect them to be even-handed; but, is it really that much of a stretch? Is there nothing to be said of fair play and ethics, especially in regards to textbooks, which are presumed to be critically neutral? Or, is the distortion so presented run of the mill? Manifestly the latter is the case, but this only leads to the rise of such conspiratorial claims as a ‘liberal media’ by people with axes to grind in other directions.

  So, let me stay specific, and now quote from email exchanges I had in regards to the use of my quotation. I was alerted to the request by Sam North, a write and editor to Hackwriters- a site I have contributed to for over four years now. Herein a series of unexpurgated emails:

From: Editor Hackwriters
Date: Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 4:28 PM
Subject: Re: Feb Hackwriters submission
To: Dan Schneider

Dan, got your latest reviews>
This came in and I am hoping you will agree yes. As your know at Hacks I can grant academic publications secondary publishing rights, if you didn't, well you do now, and this came in and I think you should accept.  I will delay saying anything and if you want to deal with them direct, OK by me.
Only usual request I ask is that they mention your name and Hackwriters. (You may also want them to mention Cosmoetica)

Let me know either way.

Hilary Frost
Permissions & Rights

Nuffield Hill Cottage, Nuffield, Henley-on-Thames,  RG9 5SN,  UK
Tel: (0)1491 641649  Fax: (0)1491 642188

hfrost@gotadsl.co.uk

Reference Number: 1045

24th January 2008

Urgent Please

Dear Sir or Madam,

We are clearing permissions for Cambridge Contexts in Literature: Contemporary Fiction by Pamela Bickley on behalf of Cambridge University Press.  It is a textbook for AS/A level and early undergraduate students.

In this book the author proposes to include the following material for which we would be pleased to receive permission for non-exclusive World English Language rights:

   Review- copied below - by Dan Schneider of White Teeth, Hackwriters, April 2007;
The book will extend to approx. 128 pages, have a total print run of 10000 paperback copies (only 3000 copies of which will be sold in North America under the same imprint), and cost £8.50 each.  It is due for publication in June 2008.
We would be grateful for confirmation that you hold the copyright.  If you do not please advise us who does.
If you request a fee please invoice Cambridge University Press c/o Hilary Frost at this address.
We will make a full acknowledgement in the usual manner.
Many thanks for your co-operation.

Yours faithfully,

Hilary Frost

Bad writers, young or old, never seem to understand that any information imparted - be it descriptive or conversational - should be justifiable, not merely an exercise in preening.  In short, Smith is incapable of writing about something in fifteen to twenty words if a hundred can do - this is the unmistakable hallmark of a bad writer.
Š. White Teeth reads sort of like one of those randy British films that went abysmally wrong - think The Full Monty gone Southern Gothic grotesque.  Too many scenes read like wan sketches or ideas that are on a to do list that is never picked up on again, and there are far too many actual lists within the book, such as a list of Millat's and Alsana's possessions, which serves no purpose in the tale, save to show 'cultural awareness'.  Many other scenes stand nakedly embarrassing in their content and detail, as Smith cannot even string a single full narrative paragraph together.  It's as if she had ADD [Attention Deficit Disorder], or was a filmmaker with a shaky hand held camera.  In the end, this disjointed, unreadable mess is merely a wannabe underground Baedeker to London, yet it has no index page, for Smith was too lazy to include even that gratuity.  White Teeth is a bad, bad, novel, with little redeeming about it, and Smith will have a long way to go if she is even going to approach middle brow mediocrity as a writer.
                               (Dan Schneider, Hackwriters, the International Writers' Magazine, April 2007)

  So far, so good. I know that they have trimmed my review, but I have no idea of the way it will be used, nor that any questions will follow. I replied:

From: Dan Schneider
Date: Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 5:21 PM
Subject: Re: Feb Hackwriters submission
To: Editor Hackwriters

Is this an anthology of reviews? Is there any actual payment? Or should I contact them directly?
I have no problems w/a reprint. Just wanna hear more of what this is about.  DAN

  Again, still good. I further ask:

From: Dan Schneider
Date: Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 5:24 PM
Subject: Re: Feb Hackwriters submission
To: Editor Hackwriters

Also, is it the whole piece or just the quoted text?  DAN

  I get a reply from Hackwriters:

From: Editor Hackwriters
Date: Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 4:11 AM
Subject: Re: Feb Hackwriters submission
To: Dan Schneider

Hi Dan, it's an academic book and they want to use your piece to illustrate literary reviewing.
You can ask a fee but in general we don't. (It won't be much, £25 if you are lucky).
So readership will be tiny but respectable and that is good on your CV.
(You ever considered teaching literary criticism? You could do it easy).
Hope that's OK. Yes contact them direct but just make sure your name and Hacks is credited.
CC me in if you will.

cheers
Sam

  Still no problem.

From: Editor Hackwriters
Date: Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 4:12 AM
Subject: Re: Feb Hackwriters submission
To: Dan Schneider

PS, probably just the quoted text.

  Again, still no problem, but then I’ve yet to hear from Cambridge. So, I write them, and copy Sam from Hackwriters:

From: Dan Schneider
Date: Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 5:26 PM
Subject: Fwd: Feb Hackwriters submission
To: hfrost@gotadsl.co.uk
Cc: Hacks- Sam North

Hillary: I am the author of the quoted piece. Sure, go and run it. 2 questions: 1) will it just be the quoted text? 2) Is there any remuneration? Even if a free copy?
Regardless, you have my permission. If you run it, please credit it as 'Dan Schneider, webmaster of Cosmoetica.com, reprinted with permission from Hackwriters.com.'
Please let me know.

Thanks,

DAN

  Now, note how I ask some queries, and state how I want to be credited within the book. This is important, because, naturally, my website received no accreditation. We know Quinn came from the New York Times, but who is this random Internet guy? With no fee paid, they do not even do me the courtesy of mentioning my website. Yet, I state this in my first contact with them. Ms. Frost responds:

From: <hfrost@gotadsl.co.uk>
Date: Sat, Jan 26, 2008 at 7:30 AM
Subject: Re: Fwd: Feb Hackwriters submission
To: Dan Schneider

Hi, Dan'

Thanks for getting back so promptly.  Sure you can have a complimentary copy - you'll need to give us an address.  I can get you the context of your text, though I don't have it at the moment, but I think it will just invite comment in comparison with another review of a more positive profile of the book.

Many thanks for your permission.

Hilary

  Now, it should be stated that I have been quoted before in online and print magazines, and when I have requested a mention of Cosmoetica and/or a reciprocal link I am almost always granted that courtesy in lieu of meager payment. Note that I stated that a condition of my permission was ‘please credit it as 'Dan Schneider, webmaster of Cosmoetica.com, reprinted with permission from Hackwriters.com.’ And this was bolded. By accepting my permissions, with no qualifiers, Frost, on behalf of Cambridge University has de facto acknowledged and agreed to my request for mention of my website. This is standard practice online and off. So, why did they not do the little I asked? Believe me, there is extensive accreditation of other writers in the book, in sections wholly apart from the one that references Zadie Smith. So, again, why the diss to me? The reason is simple- they are trying to marginalize me, even as they quote from me, to give the sheen of ‘fairness,’ just as they undermine my opinion in the way they quote it out of context and then use modifiers to make my review seem malign and out of the mainstream.

  Now, Frost claims that she will get me the context of the piece, but reassures that ‘I think it will just invite comment in comparison with another review of a more positive profile of the book.’ Well, this is true, to a degree. There is the invitation of comparison on the side by sides, and in the added second questions to both the main questions of my and Quinn’s reviews. However, the reassuring tone belies the out of context quotations and the unfair way the two reviews are framed- with my review shown in the worst possible light, and Quinn’s in the best (even as a small pretense at evenhandedness is presented), much less editor Bickley’s subtle biases in the framing of the queries.

  Nonetheless, I then gave my address and a month or so later asked what the status of the book was. Now, I could have asked for context, and maybe even have gotten it undiluted. But would they have changed their text due to my objections? Not if reality and a knowledge of the way the literary cronyism of the modern publishing industry works is accounted for. Yet, because a whole industry or group of people do something poorly, wrongly, or unethically, that does not excuse the individual institution (Cambridge University) nor the individual (editor Pamela Bickley) from acting in fair and ethically responsible ways. Cambridge has brought a small amount of ignominy and shame to itself with such a framing of a critical question, and it would not surprise me if other writers mentioned in the text had similar gripes about how their opinions, texts, and accreditations were handled. If so, I urge any to contact me and I will add any relevant information as an addendum to this essay. If Cambridge refuses to hold itself and its minions accountable, the least I can do is leave a public record of their disgrace.

  To wit the above; I rest my case.

Addendum:

An exchange with Cambridge University. My email to them and a reply, and my reply, and their reply:

From: Dan Schneider
Date: Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 6:56 PM
Subject: Re: Contemporary Fiction: The Novel Since 1990 Dan Schneider Excerpt
To: hfrost@gotadsl.co.uk, aeb53@cam.ac.uk, office@godolphinandlatymer.com, engassoc@le.ac.uk
Cc: Hacks- Sam North <hackwriters@gmail.com>, Editor Hackwriters <hackwriters@yahoo.com>

_____________________________________________________________________________________

From: John Jackman <hfrost@gotadsl.co.uk>
Date: Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 4:31 AM
Subject: Re: Contemporary Fiction: The Novel Since 1990 Dan Schneider Excerpt
To: Dan Schneider

______________________________________________________________________________________

From: Dan Schneider 
Date: Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 7:59 AM
Subject: Re: Contemporary Fiction: The Novel Since 1990 Dan Schneider Excerpt
To: John Jackman <hfrost@gotadsl.co.uk>
Cc: aeb53@cam.ac.uk, office@godolphinandlatymer.com, engassoc@le.ac.uk, Hacks- Sam North <hackwriters@gmail.com>, Editor Hacks <editor@hackwriters.com>

DAN

______________________________________________________________________________________

Return to Bylines