The case against book reviews: On how and where average book reviewer misses the point - News

Al-Ahram Weekly

26-01-2025

On the occasion of the Cairo International Book Fair, Ahram Online shares reviews of recently published non-fiction titles.
Qera'ah Gheir Molzema
Translated by Iman Mersal
(Non-Required Reading)
Wislawa Szymborska, Al-Kotob Khan, Pp 170
Something is romantic and graceful about the text and spirit of the book 'Non-Required Reading," a prose which appears in Arabic under 'Qera'ah Gheir Molzema."
The book was originally written in Polish by Wislawva Szymborska, a Polish poet and writer who lived from 1923 to 2012. In 1996, Szymborska received the Nobel Prize in literature.
In 1953, Szymborska joined the staff of the literary review magazine Życie Literackie (Literary Life), where she continued to work until 1981 and from 1968 had a book review column.
Many of her essays from this period were later published in book form.
Non-Required Reading, a title from the literary column that Szymborska observed for four consecutive decades, was published in 1992.
Iman Mersal, an Egyptian poet and writer, is the book's translator.
This is Mersal's third translation after 'A Beer in the Snooker's Club' by Egyptian writer Waguih Ghali and 'A Fly in the Soup,' the memoir of Charles Simic, the Serbian American poet who was co-editor of the Paris Review.
Like Szymborska, Ghali and Simic were born in the first half of the 20th century.
So, in essence, the book is a collection of book reviews.
However, Szymborska and Mersal indicate that there is nothing typical about the choice of the selected books or the reviews written.
Szymborska herself knows that there is always a big discrepancy between the books that catch reviewers' attention, essentially politics and belles-lettres, and, to a lesser extent, memoirs and reprints of classics.
"Discrepancies" as a theme seems to catch Szymborska's attention. She clearly selected books that reflect on the discrepancy between myth and reality, the capacities of the senses, and those who appreciate figures, perhaps to an ecstatic point, and those who cannot even relate to them.
The failure to notice the discrepancies also appears in the selected reviews – with a tribute to the awkwardness of those who fear to admit this failure in public.
There are books on questions of happiness as a hard-to-define and hard-to-get sentiment, bravery as a confused concept, the changing meaning of greatness, and, above all, the act of artistic creation.
Some of the books that Szymborska selected for her beautiful reflections were written by Polish writers – but not all of them.
Some were written for adults, and others for children. None are in the genres that she said in her introduction would have had very little if any, chance of making it to the reviewers' columns.
Under the title The State of Fashion, Szymborska shares her thoughts on The Historical Development of Clothing by Ewa Szyller, Zygmunt Gruszczynski, and Wanda Piechal.
'This textbook for fourth-year students caught my eye in a display,' she said.
When she looked at the table of contents, she read the book, 'since how clothes took their form from the form of government was not immediately obvious to me.'
Then comes her reflection on Szczepan Pieniazek's When Apple Blossoms Flower, a book about the fascinating world of growing different trees worldwide.
The book's author, she noticed, wished to share her love for growing trees.
However, she wrote: 'If I fall head over heels for fruit-bearing trees and shrubs, then I must feel instant enmity toward the twenty thousand living creatures that threaten them."
"So much for my longtime affection for elks, who consume shoots and twigs in orchards. So much for my fondness for the equally voracious rabbit,' she continued.
Her "Great Love" was dedicated to reviewing a book on Anna, the spouse of Fyodor Dostoevsky, the prominent 19th-century novelist, that appeared under the title 'My poor Fedya.'
'I don't know who first christened these notes 'My Poor Fedya,'" Szymborska wrote.
It gives the impression that the young wife felt primarily pity for her sickly, manic, and extraordinary spouse. However, Anna actually admired and approved her unusual husband. "She loved him humbly and blindly,' she said.
Szymborska wrote that the book should have been titled My Splendid Fedya, My Wonderful Fedya, or My Wisest Fedya.
It actually examines the complex idea and feeling of love from the perspective of this loving but devastated wife, who was living in Germany with a husband 26 years older than her.
Regarding other books, Szymborska highlighted things that she said get overlooked by the typical book reviewers.
These include home décor, travel, heat waves, Yoga, pets, and some do-it-yourself titles.
Szymborska is a fascinating reader who is attracted to all of these – exactly as she loves to identify herself.
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