Weinstock did not confine his negativity to works in translation. Where the publisher's reader works behind a cloak of anonymity, the newspaper reviewer's lapses in judgment are all the more alarming for being so publicly displayed. There are any number of ways to bark up the wrong tree. But sometimes it's only the 'soaring eagle' who has the perspective to place original new work in its proper perspective, and the courage to defend his or her vision against the usual literary critical rodents who, from a variety of motives, refuse to acknowledge a genuinely significant new voice. Inevitably, in the literary history of any time, our own included, these glitches in critical response get forgotten or, worse, laid at the contemporary reviewer's door like so much roadkill.
Professional reviewers get a bad press.
To F. Scott Fitzgerald, they were 'light men who bubble at the mouth with enthusiasm because they see other bubbles floating around'. What's neglected are those occasions when an honest book reviewer who has kept his or her 'nose to the ground' has got it right and made a real difference to a writer's career. After that, it's over to the Romans.