Book Reviewer Released

Book Reviewer Released

I am a recovering book reviewer. I used to do it all the time; now not so much, if at all. It started when I was twenty-two in Manchester, England, when I wrote a couple of reviews for the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology at the request of Wolfe Mays, the editor, who was my teacher (one on Sartre, the other on materialism). It then went on for forty years non-stop. I wouldn’t say I was an addict, but I found it hard to decline an invitation, for a variety of reasons. I don’t know exactly how many book reviews I have written; I estimate about eighty. I have a whole book devoted to a subset of my reviews (forty of them), Minds and Bodies. I can’t think of another philosopher who has written as many, except perhaps Tom Nagel. Here is a list of the publications I have written for: Philosophical Review, Journal of Philosophy, Mind, Nous, Philosophia, Nature, New Scientist, New Republic, New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Times Higher Education Supplement, New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Slate, Guardian. It felt like a full-time job; imagine all the original philosophy I could have produced had I not frittered my life away book reviewing! It made me a lot of enemies and not many friends (people hate being criticized—I could tell you stories).

But it all came to an end twelve years ago save for a couple of reviews I did for the WSJ (on the octopus and Oliver Sacks) and a few for the NY Review of Books (under Robert Silvers). I don’t lament it. It was a liberation. Also, a transformation: no longer was I preoccupied with the torture of reviewing philosophy books—the reading and re-reading, the deadlines, the imperative to be fair, the need to be critical, the inevitable backlash, the necessity to enter into another person’s intellectual space (this was the worst). I spent so much time inside other people’s heads! Now I dwell contentedly in my own head, think my own thoughts, criticize only myself (what a relief). It is as if I never lived that previous life. The thing is, I know it had value, or else I would never have done it; I contributed more this way than in other ways simply because of the breadth of readership. It also honed my skills. But I am glad to be out of it, at least for part of my life. I recommend reading my reviews, but I don’t miss writing them—not at all. I kind of hated it. It is just so difficult. As to the reasons for my liberation, perhaps the less said the better; it doesn’t reflect well on my liberators. I am glad I put in that work because some of my best writing comes in the shape of reviews, and it’s a valuable form in its own right; but it wasn’t fun (except sometimes). Not many people can do it well, though many would benefit from trying. I did what had to be done.