Wait until next year

Boak and Bailey wrote recently about honesty in writing about pubs and beer. It is for Patreon subscribers only, but it is well worth subscribing to them if you have any interest at all in the subject matter. I won’t quote from it, as it is behind a paywall and that doesn’t seem fair, but I will say it gave me plenty to think about – not just in terms of writing about pubs and beer, but in writing about anything. 

I think all writing needs to be honest on some kind of fundamental and foundational level. Even fiction. If there isn’t some kind of capital-T Truth to writing then what is the point? It just becomes something empty, an attempt to please or a parlour game or just a means to some other end. Readers can sniff out inauthenticity, and if there is no honesty to the writing then the whole thing falls apart. I think this is one reason why AI writing is so unsatisfying, and basically offensive. There’s no humanity to it. It is just a Magic Guessing Machine giving you an approximation of what it has calculated you want to read. If nobody could be bothered to write it, I can’t be bothered to read it.

I believe that writing, or at least writing worth caring about, is a form of deep communication between writer and reader, a form of humanity in a world that often seems to lack it. Honesty is a key component in making that connection. Truly “bad” writing is when that attempt at connection is absent. Technically bad writing can still survive if there’s kind of humanity lurking underneath. I’d much rather read a failed attempt at Truth than technically perfect heartless prose.

However, when it comes to any form of criticism (be it of pubs and beer or music, books, theatre, sport) I think it gets a little more complex. Behind the pub or album or book is a human being, or several human beings, who were more likely than not trying their best. Where is the humanity in making them feel bad for their efforts? But then where is the honesty in only saying nice things?

I suppose this an ethical dilemma for anyone undertaking criticism, from the broadsheet book reviewer through to the person leaving a bad Google review about a restaurant. Is it fair to potentially put someone’s livelihood at risk, just because you didn’t like what they did? Should you demoralise someone and put them off their efforts just because they weren’t to your taste?

There is the risk of the writer just conducting an “Owl review”. I can’t find the original article on this, but it is the act of essentially criticising something for not doing what you want it to do, even if that wasn’t the intention of the originator. So, for example, criticising a book for not having enough owls when that was not something the author was setting out to do, just because you like owls. There’s definitely plenty of this in pub writing – most pub writers have a good idea of their Ideal and when a place doesn’t meet that Ideal it is easy to criticise it, even if the place is attempting to do something quite different.

It is fundamentally more difficult to write a negative review than a positive one. Enthusiasm is a great impetus to writing. Revenge might provide a similar thrust, but generally leads to less worthwhile results. If something is quote-unquote “bad” it needs a whole lot more context than explaining why something is quote-unquote “good”. Outside of reviewing just plain obviously terrible stuff or conducting a hatchet job, a reviewer needs to set out why something didn’t succeed, to be constructive, to illustrate their own viewpoint or if they can’t do that at least be entertaining rather than just dismissive.

This feels even more complicated with pubs. Often a review is only really seeing a snapshot of a place, how it happened to be at one moment in time. I know plenty of pubs that feel incredibly different depending on the time of day or day of the week, depending on who is working there that day and who is drinking there. I don’t think you can give a proper, full assessment of a pub unless you have got a feel for the ebb and flow of the place. Maybe you just caught it on a good day, or a bad one.

I suppose I have come a few conclusions on this. First, criticism is more valid (or if I’m being truly honest, perhaps just far easier) when you are punching up rather than punching down. Taking down a major writer or a popular band or a major pub company feels more constructive than taking down a self-published author, an obscure artist on Bandcamp or a local independent pub. 

Second, any writer who is even considering these issues, who sees this as a dilemma rather than something to dismiss, is probably on the right track. We won’t always get it right, sometimes we should be negative and that might affect others, but at least in considering the consequences of our actions we will be attempting some kind of accountability and, well…honesty. 

Finally, writing (especially criticism) is almost always just as much about the writer as the subject matter. In explaining what we like and dislike, and in how we go about that, we reveal just as much about ourselves at what we are praising, critiquing or condemning.