I have no cellphone, no pager, no answering machine and my house is a No-Chip Zone. Joshua Banner Americans, do yourselves a favor. Join a union. The working mom. Fiction writers, novelists and playwrights live and die by the review.
Newspapers are inexpensive and everywhere.
A critic, who may only spend a few minutes forming an opinion on a work that they have spent a nanosecond absorbing, is a very powerful figure in the life of someone who has spent the better part of years creating a work. Critics have the steady job, built on the backs of those who spend much more time trying to create something new. It may take a writer a life to produce a work, only to be artistically and financially undone by some asswipe who is paid, merely, to have an opinion. The pen is mightier than the sword. As a longtime freelance book reviewer for Library Journal, I'd like to add my two cents to the furor over negative book reviews.