JAC Volume 13 Issue 2

Recently, Stephen North examined book reviewing as it is currently practiced in rhetoric and composition journals. In trying to create a sense of importance for a topic North believes many readers will probably find uninteresting, he points out that, though reviews are practically useful, they are also typically "unremarkable." To North book reviews appear to be unmemorable because they are rarely cited as references in a book or article. Additionally, he notes the irony of the fact that, since the review is a discursive practice in a field which studies discursive practices, critical articles dealing with the function and rhetoric of the book review are difficult to find.¹

North focuses on the monologic character and coerciveness of reviews, and he argues that these negative qualities are not any particular individual's fault but are due rather to current reviewing practices (354). Because reviews are typically single-authored and appear in journals isolated from any other competing views or subsequent commentary (although multiple reviews by more than one person do occur occasionally), "they tend to acquire the weight, the textual momentum, of pronouncements" (356). North fears that this "monologic" tendency in reviewing practices precludes the sort of "memorable exchange" that would be the "print equivalent . . . of the salon and/or the street corner," exchanges that would be "current and accessible" and where "the evaluative criteria reviewers invoke" can be "the subject of ongoing negotiations" (349, 358). He recommends that journals devote more print space to a variety of responses, and, among other suggestions, he proposes that a new journal devoted solely to reviews be created.

With his proposal North hopes to counter current practices, which concentrate this gatekeeping power in the hands of the few, by restructuring the distribution method to ensure that this same power be accessible to many more, or at least more than the few who presently review. Yet, his proposed changes would not necessarily alter the inevitable regulative disciplinary function of the review. Multiplying reviewers or juxtaposing different reviews of the same book or even varying the type of responses will not diminish the centripetal force of a given review as it attempts to fit the new book into some acceptable disciplinary frame.² More reviewers may multiply the frames we have to choose from, yet this won't change the fact that any given review is simultaneously a reading of the field; and, depending on the authority of the reviewer, the perceived importance of the work, and the status of the journal in which the review appears, such a reading can have significant consequences. My argument, then, is that the book review partakes of a general ecology of critical reading practices that help constitute composition and rhetoric as a discipline. Moreover, I argue that the review is itself a form of inquiry into criteria for sound scholarship, research, and practice (Sudol 34), and, as such, it is ethical because the review attempts to adjudicate better means toward achieving valued disciplinary ends.

North's text, in the manner in which he both poses the problem of reviewing as well as its solution, can itself be read as a trope illustrating the wider problem of reading and evaluating texts in general. There are parallels, for instance, with reading a student text. In this scene, I am conscious of how interested and subjective my reading is, and I'm likewise aware that I am both representing and mediating the interests of an institution, a discipline, and a culture, all interests that influence how the student perceives him or herself as a writer. Faced with this situation, I can follow North's advice and increase the number of readers, drawing on the help of other students in the class as well as upon the help of my colleagues. The proliferation of readings will certainly help to counter the coercive nature of my sole reading, with the resulting diversity and conflict of readings becoming itself a source for further investigation. Yet, as this student learns that interpretations of his or her text are subjective, from what basis can the student discriminate the relevant from the irrelevant, the important from the trivial criticisms? The student's dilemma represents the ambiguity of pluralism which Lisa Ede identifies in her response to the Clifford Geertz interview in JAC. Ede writes that there are really two kinds of pluralism: theres the pluralism that "can encourage healthy diversity and conflict," resulting in an "atmosphere of debate" and making for "a vital and alive field." But then there is also the pluralism that can be "a dodge" and that can "leave important questions not just unanswered but unasked" (209).

North's advice that we increase the number and forms of reviews ignores a fundamental question that I posed to the editor of this journal. Reacting like any student who has an essay rejected as less than a quality performance, I questioned the assumptions of a reviewer who had read an earlier version of my article and I asked, "Well, how do you determine what is a good review and what isn't?" After a long pause he replied, "It's difficult to say, but you can just tell." Conversation stopped because at the time I did not know how to respond. But I continued to think about the editor's statement, and North's article has served to help me refocus that question again. This present draft is therefore an attempt to venture a response, a response that attempts to mediate between a healthy pluralism that promotes diversity and productive debate and a pluralism that dodges the responsibility of deciding the value of a colleague's work. Diversity in itself will not ensure memorable reviews nor completely efface the gatekeeping function of the genre, but by conceptualizing the review as an interpretive critical practice sharing affinities with other reading practices within composition and rhetoric, I hope to provide some character to an otherwise amorphous diversity, while at the same time I hope to minimize the monologic, coercive effects ensuing from this gatekeeping function.

A Web of Critical Practices

Marilyn Cooper's proposed model of an "ecology of writing" helps us see the dynamic, interconnected network (or "web") of social relations constituted by and constituting individual writers. These "interlocking systems" comprising textual forms, ideas, purposes, interpersonal interactions, and cultural norms are concrete and allow writers to carry out their individual work. Cooper's model, however, is not monologic. Writers are not determined by these systems, but become efficacious agents themselves in that through their work utilizing these systems from within, the configuration of the web is slightly altered (369). Cooper attempts to provide some specificity for her general outline of this ecological model by applying it to the concept of audience, and though her application is brief, dealing more with a review of the literature on audience, the strength of her model is its heuristic suggestiveness for further research into the actual practices of readers and writers. When considering book reviews, then, as critical practices participating in a larger ecology of critical practices, the image of the individual reviewer pronouncing judgment on an isolated text is no longer tenable.

Barbara Tomlinson further elaborates the concreteness of audience in describing with humor and insight experiences with real audiences. She identifies three types: our "intimates" with whom we share drafts of our evolving texts; the "expert gatekeepers," those reviewers for journals and presses; and "the non-expert gatekeeper communities," or those various academic communities who sit in judgment on our individual work, who set rules and procedures for working together, who conduct research, create and discontinue courses, hire and fire, and who, finally, reproduce themselves by constantly creating new committees.

Implicit in Tomlinson's description, and the point I want to foreground, is that each of her types of "audiences" is engaging in critical practices of some kind. In other words, Tomlinson describes an ecology of criticism as it is typically carried out and experienced to various degrees by anyone working in rhetoric and composition at a given university. It is not only the fact that each of us can be the recipient of criticism for our work, but also that we too are continually playing the role of critic in a variety of situations. For example, I can indicate various situations in which I played the critic/evaluator just in the last few weeks. The most obvious instances involve student texts: I was judging a variety of texts from my basic writing classes and from my graduate seminar, texts running the gamut from final projects to exams to portfolios to journals. I was also involved in determining criteria for the portfolio assessment for our basic writing program and subsequently evaluating the portfolio session as a whole. During that time I also reviewed a proposal for a masters thesis, sat on committees where we reviewed a proposal for changes in our first-year composition course, and another where we evaluated the suitability of prospective candidates for our TA positions. I also participated in peer review, agreed to review a draft of an essay anthology being considered for publication, and, lastly, just as the semester concluded, I hurriedly (but carefully) reviewed proposals for next years CCCC convention.

While others, of course, can add to or substitute for items on this list, what I want to emphasize is the pervasiveness of the critical practices we regularly engage in throughout the sequence of activities typical of academic work.³ The book reviewer publishing reviews in any one of the several journals in rhetoric and composition is thus engaging in one more type of critical and evaluative practice. The reviewer's judgments are in resonance with ongoing discussions in the wider field, discussions conducted in professional publications, at conferences, and at our respective institutional sites. These discussions which address themes, issues, controversies, practices, and modes of presentation are integral to the discipline and help form that interconnected network of ideas yoking the concrete pedagogies we enact in our individual classrooms with the theoretical concerns that are the subjects of research and scholarship. Reviewers, then, become translators of new work by enacting a dialogue between a colleague's contributions and ongoing concerns in the field as the reviewer sees them.

So far I have been talking as if all of these critical practices are similar, lumping together the gatekeeper, the evaluator, and the critic. While these practices do have parallels at different levels—that is, the classroom, the department, the institution, the discipline, even the culture—there are important differences. One chief difference is that most of our crtical responses to student texts as well as to other types are formative, and formative responses possess an ethical dimension in that they are governed by our concerns to help the student writer develop further his or her reflectiveness about and skill in the use of language. Book reviews, on the other hand, possess the character of summative judgments (Sommers). The published book is usually conceived of as an isolated text, a finished product, upon which the reviewer pronounces judgment. Since there will be no more revisions of that particular text, the reviewer judges it to be fit or not according to the criteria the reviewer brings to the task at hand. This summative judgment is analogous to an instructor's grading student work.

Yet, when considered within an ecological frame, the reviewer becomes an important participant in ongoing disciplinary projects. Hence, summative judgments as pronouncements can become themselves formative in that the reviewer can help shape the way a new work is interpreted and through criticisms possibly influence a given author's future work as well as influence the kind of work other scholars and researchers pursue. In this sense, the review is not simply an evaluation based on criteria, whether implicit or explicit, but an inquiry into those criteria themselves concerning "good" work being done now and in the future. Certainly, the "unremarkableness" of most reviews that North finds belies the significance I am promoting. But if that "unremarkableness" is an accurate description of the current situation (I don't completely agree that it is, but I'll return to this point later), then this indicates that the book review is underconceptualized and failing to realize its potential as an interpretive and critical genre capable of participating more consciously in the interpretive practices that are the heart of the discipline.

Besides considering the review and the affinities it shares with critical practices in general, consider, too, the several roles a reviewer must play, roles similar to those we play to various degrees when reading student texts. Alan Purves describes the teacher-readers multiple roles. Included along with the critic, reviewer, and gatekeeper roles, he adds the proofreader, editor, common reader, and diagnostician/therapist. I am particularly interested in the distinctions Purves draws among the critic, reviewer, and gatekeeper functions because, though he separates them, in practice, especially in book reviews, the three functions blend together.

Purves claims that though reviewer and gatekeeper roles are similar, the main difference is that reviewers render "verdictive" judgments compared to the "effective" judgments of the gatekeeper. Reviewers serve as "surrogates for the common reader and say whether the text is worth reading or not," with criteria often remaining unexpressed. Gatekeepers, on the other hand, Purves says, apparently are limited to academic circles and are charged with deciding "admission, selection, and placement of individuals." Purves notes that this gatekeeping function need not be limited solely to academia, however. "Verdictive" judgments are those determining "certain facts" about texts; these facts themselves are determined by the institution or community to which the reviewer belongs. "Effective" judgments, while also based on shared assumptions and conventions, usually make criteria "more public." A further distinction is that the gatekeeper's "effective" judgment possesses the illocutionary force of taking a particular action regarding a student's fate—for example, whether or not the student passes, what group or class the student will be placed in, and so on. Giving a grade, then, would qualify as a gatekeeper function. The critic's role, though, is distinguished more by a focus of interest than by a purpose of reading. The critic attempts to relate the text to a context, whether that context be the writer him or herself or the writer's culture (262). In other words, the text can be used to say something about the writer or the writer's situation. The critic's judgment is "constative," making "assertions about the composition, perhaps predictions and suggestions as well," although such statements may not necessarily be conventional or partake of the same value system (263).

Even though these roles appear separate and distinct, a teacher or reviewer can play several during any single reading of a text. Purves demonstrates this with his own example. He reproduces the letter he received from the "gatekeepers at College English" containing reviewers' and editors' comments on a previous draft of his published essay. Purves identifies "the general tenor of the letter as that of the gatekeeper or reviewer." He also finds elements of the common reader (presumably the "common reader" of College English) engaging in dialogue, and evidence of the editor and critic as well (264). The journal's editor and reviewers speak as one voice in this letter, and, after explaining their reactions, they propose several questions to which they hope Purves will respond if he chooses to revise and resubmit his manuscript. The letter is the representative voice of the journal College English, a letter that presumes to speak for the entire readership of that journal. The editor concludes by saying that if Purves would try to answer some of the questions raised by adding "a couple more paragraphs," it will make Purves' essay "much more useful and right for CE" (264).

Book reviewers, even more so than reviewers of manuscripts and drafts, are inevitably cast into the three prominent roles of critic, reviewer, and gatekeeper. They must play all of these roles because they represent not only a particular journal's readership, but also a readership from a much larger heterogeneous community called rhetoric and composition. This is, of course, an impossible task: no one can represent a journal's entire readership, let alone a discipline's. Nevertheless, the review genre requires that one member speak for a host of others. Thus, consider the difficulty of such a task: given the fact that this discipline is composed of several sub-communities, reviewers cannot assume that their readers share the same criteria for evaluation. Nor can reviewers assume that readers are familiar with specific topics of inquiry or with particular research methodologies and scholarly approaches. Also, readers may not share similar background knowledge pertaining to previous treatments of the same topic under review, nor can they be expected to recognize specific sources referenced and drawn upon in a given new book.

Hence, reviewers must construct a disciplinary context to frame a new work, and they therefore face a rhetorical task more formidable than reviews written in well established and stable disciplines where networks of common theories are generally shared by most members and serve to channel new work along fairly consistent and coherent paths (see Bazerman, especially chapter 6). Book reviewers must proceed through a sequence of questions described in stasis theory (Fahnestock and Secor; Fulkerson). As a critic, the reviewer grapples with constitutive and interpretive questions: What sort of text is this new work? How are readers supposed to understand and place the particular issues and topics the text treats? What does the text mean? A reviewer also evaluates the text (Is it any good?) according to criteria (often tacit) readers might accept. Finally, the gatekeeper decides the new work's fate (What should be done?) by suggesting further directions for inquiry, research, or practice and might conclude the review by recommending whether or not the book is worth reading.

It seems to me that given the complexity of this rhetorical task and considering, too, the various roles a reviewer would have to play to some degree, it is no wonder that reviewers write "safe" reviews, as North points out (although he claims this is only because reviewers lack real readers themselves). Because reviews stand on their own without accompanying commentary, and because the review will probably have more readers than the actual book, most reviewers, North says, when "forced to renounce" will "chart a cautious course." In describing "this edging toward safety," North quotes a reviewer of his article. It is this "faltering kindliness that makes so many reviews sound like they were written by members of a non-judgmental encounter group" ("On Book" 358).

Yet, balancing the isolated review with commentary/review by others will not necessarily change the way a review is written. Qualitative changes will occur in reviewing practices only when reviewers see that their judgments themselves arise from interpretive/critical practices ongoing within the discipline, practices shared with colleagues who also participate within this ecology. Consequently, they might then see that these judgments are motivated by an ethic to help the field understand its own disciplinary projects a little more clearly. In other words, book reviews can become reflexive and interpretive, themselves inquiries into the very ways of conducting research, scholarship, and practice.

When North evokes the image of the salon, he hopes to substitute casual conversation about new texts for the current monologic system. I would agree that this would add texture and maybe excitement to the reviews section. Perhaps, reviewers would dare to be more critical, knowing that they do not have the first and last word. Such changes might help us overcome what the reviewer of an earlier draft of my essay labeled "nervousness about criticism." On the other hand, qualitative changes will not occur, especially if reviewers simply accept the inevitability of their own partiality and interest, remaining content to articulate their positions vis-à-vis the author's or other reviewers' claims. Instead of using reviews as occasions to inquire into some of the rhetorical and conceptual issues germane to the field, reviewers can get sidetracked into using the review as an occasion to argue one side in a controversy.

Our rhetoric is inescapably territorial to various degrees, and the book review where one colleague must judge the work of another is particularly vulnerable to becoming a contest for disciplinary territory. Nevin Laib explicates this territoriality as

Reviews as Inquiries

North's essay and Bartholomae's reply appearing in Pre\Text is the first public record culminating a series of exchanges begun after Bartholomae reviewed The Making of Knowledge in Composition in 1988. It's also an example of the sort of commentary about books I presume North desires, although I'm not sure he would want the exchanges to be so nasty and full of indignation. The focal issue ostensibly concerns the authority of the critic, specifically the legitimacy of North's criticisms and their relation to the ethos North projects in his book. But the intensity of the attack from both sides (and these are "attacks") suggests that both parties are also engaging in a territorial dispute over control of disciplinary territory.

North argues that his "ethos" as critic is not the main issue and wonders why Bartholomae refuses to discuss his ideas (the "what" of his book rather than the "who" [109]). Bartholomae, on the other hand, insists that this "who" is more important than the "what" in North's book because it is the figure of the writer created in the text that authorizes North, the critic, to stand back and survey the entire field. North invokes "common sense" as a sort of universal criterion for conducting rational discussion, while Bartholomae insists that any parties to a debate come from interested positions. "Common sense" for Bartholomae is not free standing but is itself a cultural construct implicated in a tradition characterized by specific discursive practices.

I am assuming that one of the reasons North wrote his article on book reviewing was to change reviewing practices so that reviews like Bartholomae's might be countered by others in the same journal. But if this exchange between the two is evidence of something better, it is not clear to me how it is. Certainly, Bartholomae raises a legitimate issue both in his review and in his reply about the authority of the critic. But the problem Bartholomae's review raises and never examines is precisely what North would like him to address. In that review, Bartholomae acknowledges North's "sharp critical sensibility" and "often brilliant . . . reading of individual cases" ("Review" 226), but then he uses most of his five-page review to undermine North's critical expertise. What, then, are readers to make of the validity of North's critiques? Are they on the one hand "brilliant" but nevertheless ineligible for serious consideration? How can that be possible? Bartholomae assumes that since "there is no divine office to validate composition research, we are forced to work with the sense that our work is contingent—that is, it succeeds by virtue of persuasion rather than demonstration" ("Review" 228). Evidently North is persuasive as a "brilliant" critic but not when considered as a legitimate one. On the other side, while Bartholomae sidesteps this contradiction, North seems more interested in defending his "ethos" than in confronting the contradiction Bartholomae points out in North's book. For if North believes that knowledge is socially constructed, how can he then stand outside any system of knowledge and claim that his criticisms are based simply on "common sense" (North's version anyway) (Bartholomae, "Reply" 129)?

Again, if this is an example of the "vital, visible, memorable exchanges" characteristic of the salon North advocates as a model for reforming reviewing practices, I fail to see how it gets us any further in understanding the legitimacy of criticism within rhetoric and composition. The exchange is memorable because it is marked by anger and sarcasm with both parties managing to talk past one another. Either each has a different conception of what legitimately follows from believing that knowledge is socially constructed, or each is actually operating from incommensurable philosophical assumptions concerning the source and validity of the critic's authority. Or both. In his book, does North speak for the "common reader" of composition research? Or does he speak for the special interests of a select group of readers? Practitioners, for instance? Or does he speak only for himself?

Bartholomae's review is by no means a "bad" review (although North may see it differently), and it certainly is not "safe" in the way North describes safe reviews. Bartholomae raises a legitimate and significant issue; in fact, it is the review Bartholomae felt he needed to write in order to resist the consequences of North's position ("Reply" 129). Rather, Bartholomae's review delivers less than it promises because further inquiry into the questions he raises concerning the status of the critic's claims is obscured in favor of position-taking and the undercutting of those claims in order to neutralize North's power. In their Pre/Text essays, both North and Bartholomae exchange volleys, and the stand-off remains without readers gaining any further understanding of the main issues.

There were several other reviews of The Making of Knowledge, since the book was generally perceived as "controversial," and North indicates that these reviews were "helpful" ("On Book" 353). But the ones I found memorable were those that helped me understand how, in following North's own definition of the critic, it's possible to see the limits of his claims in addition to their validity. Cherry, for instance, provides a thoughtful discussion of North's method, illuminating what North could legitimately say as an outsider if he acknowledged "the hypothetical (or fictional) status of the communities North identifies." Thus, "North's pseudo-ethnographic description of the communities" comprising composition could serve heuristic functions in describing how knowledge develops in these various communities (22). I would presume, then, that with this shift in status, North's claims about the knowledge produced in these communities would be descriptive statements only and not claims about their ultimate "truth" or "falsity." Similarly, Irmscher, though to a lesser degree, examines North's account as hermeneutical and not ethnographic at all.⁴

Let me emphasize that it is not that Bartholomae is wrong; it is instead that the object of his review conflicts with its rhetoric. The illegitimacy of the critic, North, becomes the dominant theme and moves to the center of the review, while the "brilliant" readings of individual cases is marginalized and a claim to their validity never reconciled. Cherry, however, remains open to North's project and takes pains to point out how it could be better. His review strikes me as an inquiry into the truth of the matter at hand rather than a denunciation and counterargument. Nevertheless, I also admire Bartholomae's review because it is not safe, and in trying to steer a course between a productive pluralism and one that dodges important questions, I do not mean to suggest that Bartholomae believes one position is as good as the next—he clearly does not ("Review" 228; "Reply" 129)—or that he is intentionally dodging an important issue. But in trying to show how better reviews are themselves written as inquiries into writing practices, I use Bartholomae's review and his and North's exchanges to demonstrate how the inquiry gets sidetracked into protecting ones turf. The indignation Bartholomae directs at North in the subsequent exchange is understandable, though, since North had gone public with one of Bartholomae's letters without his permission.

So I want to be clear here when considering the quality of reviews that I am talking about degrees and that categories of "good," "bad," or "safe" are always necessarily fuzzy. Certainly, our reading is always interested and partial. Yet, just as in reading student texts, we can be conscious of how our readings enable students to resee their work, drawing out alternative possibilities from what is already written; or, conversely, how those readings might preclude such alternatives because the force of our rhetoric says to them, "Nothing you say here has any validity." Bartholomae is aware of the object of a reviewer's interested reading. He points out that the object of North's review of Louise Wetherbee Phelps', Composition as a Human Science is not Phelps' book at all but the production of the figure of "Stephen North" ("Reply" 126).

To me this North-Bartholomae exchange (debate? skirmish?) is also evidence that a tacitly understood and widely accepted norm governs our judgments. It is a norm that directs our inquiries toward a deeper, fuller understanding of writing—what it is, how we practice it, how we can study it, and how we can talk about all of these things to one another. I believe our debates are productive when we are conscious of this norm guiding our work. To quote Cherry, when

Bartholomae practices this "humility" in his scholarship, and so perhaps it is the arrogance he perceives in North's work that stirs his anger. Yet, the fact that he is angry at North for "a ruthless critical spirit" ("Review" 226) is further evidence of an ethics of criticism at work that says something like, "There must be explicit and justified reasons for any criticism, for criticism itself is an ethical practice in that it seeks a better way." Bartholomae in his review can find no justification for North's criticism other than "to demonstrate its power to order the field (cast under the guise of fairness or objectivity)" (226). We are critics, I imagine Bartholomae to be saying, because we seek a change for the better. In our field we often use criticism of other texts as it is used in literature—that is, in order to resist injustice and to expose unequal distributions of power (see Siebers, especially chapter 1). Thus, whether it is understanding that phenomenon called "writing," exposing falsity and misrepresentation, or resisting oppression, criticism is our path to the better way. It is integral to who we are and to what we do.

Communities of Inquiry

I might offer several other examples demonstrating how better reviews are themselves forms of inquiry, but at this point I would merely be providing more of my interpretations, while the point I want to insist on is that our reading, though interested, is likewise driven by ethical choices. And individuals make these choices. Since I am not the editor of this journal, I cannot decide which reviews are good for it and which are not. The editor claims he can, and I believe him: I'm just trying to figure out how he does it.

I have belabored the North-Bartholomae exchanges because both are highly visible in the field: both have status and power. I believe many in the field consider seriously what they have to say. I know I do. This draft you are now reading actually began about three years ago. It was an indignant response to a review of a practitioner-scholar's book, an author who had been one of my professors in graduate school. I thought the review was mean-spirited and most of it irrelevant to the author's project. My response was never printed. In hindsight it's a good thing it wasn't printed; it would have served no purpose other than to let some reviewer know some reader did not care for his review. That response, however, eventually became a draft of a long article examining the territoriality of book reviews—except that under the guise of objectivity I was being territorial myself. One of the manuscript reader's comments indicated to me that, among other things, I was still trying to defend that former professor's work. It is, after all, tough to be objective! So I want readers to recognize that I am not trying to be objective here. I am interested in how in a review one colleague can render judgments about the quality of another's work, and I am interested in why we grant authority to some judgments and not to others. I see these judgments as structurally and ethically similar to those we make about student texts. I am trying to understand how we can do that, except now it would serve no further purpose to provide more of my interpretations of reviews. The reason why is apparent from another comment a reviewer made about my earlier draft, a comment that also echoes the editor's judgment:

The sentiments expressed here echo a belief in a healthy pluralism, one where no one is told what to do, and from the editor's comments I hear the entailing assumption that pluralism is valuable because it leads to productive debates. I subscribe to both a healthy pluralism and to productive debates. Yet I'm struggling to understand how we can ensure the former and safeguard the latter. All we have are the practices that each of us engages in as teachers, as researchers, as scholars, as writers, as colleagues. If readers want some examples of what I consider reviews that are effective and judicious inquiries into criteria for sound scholarship and research, inquiries that are also explicitly oriented toward seeking what is valuable for the field as a whole, I would suggest reading Phelps' review of Bazerman, and Bazerman's review of Flower, et al.—both reviews published recently in this journal.

I have no doubts that other readers can find further examples. They can also probably find examples of bad reviews, but I do not think there are too many really. Most are positive, and if negative, guardedly so, as negative criticisms are carefully qualified. This sort of review is what I think North has in mind and would call "safe" ("On Book" 358-59). The reviews that some consider "bad" can be identified most readily when authors or other readers publish responses. These responses might be complaints that a reviewer has been arbitrary and/or has engaged in personal denunciations (see Rose's comment and Stotsky's reply); has provided a too narrow reading (see Smith's response and Schilb's reply); or has misrepresented an author's views due to an idiosyncratic reading (Bloom). I think readers will find that these responses are not only about appropriate criteria, but, more importantly, they also imply that the sort of criteria we use are important for the ways we understand the field and determine where it is going and how to get there.⁶

For me reviews are consequently an integral part of an ecology of critical practices. Reviewing is not an isolated, marginal activity: as a form of reading it is continuous with what we do in the classroom because the values, the beliefs, the controversies, the desires each of us enacts in our daily practices are dramatized in their own way in reviews. But to see reviews in this light means that we also have to recognize a force driving the actions of readers and writers participating in this ecology. It is a force (although I am still unhappy with the term "force") that is both a continuing process and an ideal goal. In fact, it is the essential defining ingredient of any community—whether a community that for a time occurs in the writing class or within the university or within a discipline. That force is inquiry (see Tinder).⁷ It is inquiry as serious talk seeking after truth. By "truth" I do not mean absolute and universal, but the truth about what it is we do as a discipline, what it is we do in a writing class, inquiry about what it is we would like our students to understand and practice as language users. It is inquiry that I imagine reviewers engage in when evaluating a colleague's work, for this is not only inquiry about another's work, but inquiry into a discipline's identity. To me, these sorts of inquiries make for the better reviews.