WAR on Critics

There’s this bizarre tradition – I’m sure the critics invented it – where writers are not supposed to respond to bad reviews or negative criticism. It’s just ‘not done.’ We’d be seen as tacky or inappropriate or ridiculous or whatever. Maybe we are meant to be above it all? Nonsense. We’re human and we’re being attacked, for godsake. (And if we’re Irish and being attacked, where’s me hurley stick, there’s heads to be broken!) Look, everyone else gets to defend themselves. It's a basic right. I’ve always wanted to start a journal called WAR – Writers Against Reviews. Writers could send in their favourite horrible review and proceed to tear it to shreds with all the creative genius and biting sarcasm they have in their arsenal. Rebuttal with butt. And the less literary and more personal the writer gets about it, the more interesting it would be. Example: Anne Enright, who won the Booker Award for her amazing novel The Gathering, was attacked by an Irish Times critic on the very day of the announcement of her award. She, of course, could not respond to this enemy action with the obvious riposte: "I've just won the Booker. You have published how many award-winning books? What? None? Who, I ask you, is The Winner here and who, The Loser?" And of course writers can never, God forbid, respond to their child critics online on amazon.com. One children’s writer told me he has to sit on his hands to stop himself from writing back, "Oh yeah? Well you suck too, kid, and at least I can spell!" Here’s what I have promised myself. As soon as I turn seventy, I am going to become one of those batty old battle-axes who says exactly what she wants to say, whenever she wants to say it, and hang the consequences. Yeah, I know I'm already edging in that direction, but believe me I hold myself back. Wait till I really get going. Woo-hoo. Fun times ahead.