Do-it-yourself literary criticism is more than just harmless fun

             IN THEORY, anyone can publish a manifesto or broadcast a music channel on the
             Internet. In practice, however, a certain amount of technical know-how is required.
             Yet there is at least one field, previously restricted to the few, that has genuinely
             been opened up to the masses. By visiting the pages of Amazon.com, the most
             popular online bookshop, anyone can try their hand at literary criticism.

             Amazon’s egalitarian approach to book reviews—namely, that anyone can say what
             they like about anything, and award it up to five stars—looks, on the face of it, a
             brilliant idea. Each book has its own page on Amazon’s site, and whenever a reader
             submits a new review, it appears automatically. Amazon gets to fill its pages with
             free reviews (there are currently over 1,000 customer comments on J.K. Rowling’s
             “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”) and potential buyers of a book can see
             what other readers thought of it, for better or worse, rather than reading just the
             blurb from the publisher and the views of professional critics.

             Other online bookstores, such as those operated by Barnes & Noble and Borders,
             two large bricks-and-mortar bookshop chains, provide similar features. But as the
             largest store, with over 80% of the online market, Amazon has the most customers,
             attracts by far the greatest number of reviews—nearly 3m of them to date—and,
             accordingly, encounters the most funny business.

             For this critical free-for-all lends itself to subversion of various subtle and
             not-so-subtle kinds. Thousands of reviews are submitted every day—Amazon will
             not say exactly how many—so it would be impractical to vet them all. Instead, a
             team of editors scours the site, spot-checking that reviews conform to the company’s
             guidelines.

             Single-word reviews, for instance, or personal attacks on the author, are not
             allowed. Nor are reviews that contain obscenities, give away the ending, or refer to
             other reviews. Ultimately, however, the reviewers are anonymous (they are not
             required to give their real names) and offending reviews are removed only if
             Amazon checkers notice them. So there is plenty of scope for mischief.

             It was inevitable, for example, that someone would submit a review of the Bible
             signed “God”. It was removed—God is presumed not to use email—but another
             review has since popped up to take its place. The Bible, it opines, is “not as good as
             the film”. There is also nothing to stop writers giving their own books glowing
             notices. One writer, Lev Grossman, was so mortified by the bad reviews that
             readers gave his first novel (“infantile trash”, “puerile pap”) that he submitted
             several anonymous ones of his own (“hilarious”, “fabulous”) to redress the balance.
             His ruse succeeded until he wrote an article detailing his deception. The fake
             reviews were promptly removed.

             Authors are, in fact, provided with their own way to hold forth: by clicking on a link
             marked “I am the Author, and I wish to comment on my book.” Most authors who use
             this feature post jolly messages expressing their desire that browsers will buy, and
             enjoy, the book in question. A few even give their email addresses, thus inviting
             readers to communicate directly. Yet authors who have posted messages know that
             while Amazon does vet them, it does not check that they really come from the
             author—except in the case of big names. Mr Grossman submitted an author’s
             comment, purporting to be from John Updike, in which he admitted to being a
             “talented but ultimately overhyped middlebrow author”. Unsurprisingly, it was
             deemed a fake, and was removed.

             Still, the fur really starts to fly as a result of postings from readers, not writers.
             When James McElroy’s “We’ve Got Spirit”, which documents a year in the life of a
             small-town cheerleading team, was published in February it was well received by
             the mainstream press. But many of the people mentioned in it felt betrayed, and the
             book’s page on Amazon was an obvious outlet for their anger. Dozens of highly
             critical reviews were submitted—only to vanish a few days later.

             Books on certain subjects, such as creationism, conspiracy theories and new-age
             archaeology, spawn torrents of argumentative comments. When “Monica’s Story”
             was published in March, the reviews soon degenerated into a discussion of the
             Clinton presidency. Similarly, Bill Gates’s book, “Business at the Speed of
             Thought”, inspired a debate about Microsoft’s business practices.

             As far as Amazon is concerned, the fact that so many people are prepared to invest
             so much time reading and writing reviews is simply good for business. Lizzie Allen
             of Amazon says the reader reviews are supposed to be “a forum to talk about a
             book” rather than a chat room. A particularly close eye is kept on bestselling books,
             she says, to ensure that all reviews play by the rules.

             This means that the best place to post a silly review is on a page devoted to a less
             well-known book. “The Story about Ping”, a classic children’s work that tells the
             story of a duck called Ping, has been the inspiration for much geek humour, because
             “ping” also happens to be the name of a software utility used to measure the degree
             of congestion on the Internet. One lengthy review constructs an elaborate analogy
             between the book’s plot and the architecture of the Internet, and concludes that the
             book provides a “good high-level overview” of basic networking concepts.
             Similarly, much effort has gone into elaborate postmodernist deconstructions of
             cartoonist Bill Keane’s “Family Circle” books.

             Such silliness is, however, the exception rather than the rule. The striking thing about
             the vast majority of reader reviews at Amazon.com is how seriously their
             contributors take them. Like the Zagat restaurant guides, which are compiled using
             readers’ contributions, the reviews collectively provide a remarkably accurate
             indication of whether or not a particular set of goods is worth buying. George
             Orwell once complained that reviewing too many books involved “constantly
             inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feelings
             whatever.” All the more reason, then, to regard the democratisation of the process as
             a good thing.