JAC Volume 14 Issue 2

In March of 1993, I notifiedJAC editor Gary A. Olson that I wanted to retire as the journal’s book review editor after commissioning, editing, and submit­ting the reviews for issue 14.2. As I explained to Gary in that letter, “It’s not so much that I want to retire as that I honestly think I should. As of issue 14.2, I will have been the journal’s review editor for four full years, and the time for somebody else’s preferences and biases will have come.” And then I added, “Being the journal’s review editor has been a really wonderful experience for me. I’ve made valuable contacts and connections, had some lively conversa­tions and correspondences, and learned a great deal about the field and the role that book reviews play in shaping it. I’ve enjoyed the fellowship and good humor that characterize the journal’s staff and, most importantly, I’ve tangibly supported something I believe in. Whomever you select to succeed me will be lucky indeed to have the opportunities this position provides.” I remain committed to the essence of what I said in that letter to Gary well over a year ago: being a review editor for a major scholarly journal in rhetoric and composition is a wonderful and rewarding job, but I don’t think any single person should do it—or, to my thinking, be allowed to do it—for too long.

That’s my first parting comment and concern as I voluntarily retire from my post. And here, in no particular order, are several others that I sincerely believe we all ought to think about more than we do. Many of the complex and interrelated points about book reviewing that I will gloss over in what follows have been discussed at length elsewhere by others. Colleagues who are interested in these issues should certainly take a look at, for example, Ronald A. Sudol’s “Textbook Reviewing and Professional Responsibility” in JAC 5; the editor’s column in he/Text 11; Stephen North’s “On Book Reviews in Rhetoric and Composition” in Rhetoric Review 10; Mark Wiley’s “How to Read a Book: Reflections on the Ethics of Book Reviewing” in JAC 13, Jim Comas’s 1992 CCCC paper “The Book Review as a Critical Genre”; Elenore Long’s 1992 RSA paper “Lusty Puns and Intrepid Reviewers”; and Peter Vandenberg’s 1993 Ph.D. dissertation at Texas Christian on editing theory and practice. Moreover, Steve North’s fledgling proposal for an NCTE-sponsored on-line book review service which might serve as a timely, interactive, less political ancillary to current systems of selective, underval­ued, and often dated in-print reviews is especially worth being the focus of a major discussion in our field.

My number-one comment and concern is this: In general, more books are now being published in composition studies than the field’s scholarly journals can review in a timely manner. Furthermore, most scholars want their own books reviewed, in multiple journals, preferably by big-name colleagues; but many don’t particularly want to do book reviews themselves. And understandably so, because most administrators and peer-reviewers want to see their faculty’s books reviewed in the major scholarly journals, but most aren’t inclined to “count” book reviews published by their faculty.

Second, the sheer numbers are, I think, becoming a real problem that’s getting worse as we speak. An ever-increasing number of excellent books are now competing for an ever-decreasing number of pages allocated to reviews in our journals. Consider the trend at JAC, for example, during my tenure as review editor: in 1990 we published about fifteen reviews per issue; in 1991 we published about twelve per issue; by 1992 we were down to about ten; by 1993 the number was 8; this year we’re publishing about 6 per issue, gravitating more and more toward “review essays” that discuss more than one book. (Editors increasingly seem to prefer these “review essays” because more books can be reviewed in a more timely manner in less page-space, and reviewers seem to prefer them because they believe that ‘‘review essays will be viewed more favorably by administrators than mere “reviews”; but authors, and I think for fairly obvious reasons, don’t seem to prefer this approach at all.)

Third, I fear this may ruffle some friends’ feathers, but the administrative double-standard (the “get reviewed but don’t review” attitude at the top), when combined with the publish-or-perish pressures that we all know have now clearly extended to graduate school, is slowly creating a whole new class of eager book reviewers and yet another troublesome disciplinary double-standard: “Please publish this brilliant book review written by my brilliant graduate student who needs to get something published before going on the job market, but please be sure to assign my own new book to a ‘real’ scholar.” I’ve had these feelings myself, and they make me mighty uncomfortable.

Fourth, what does and doesn’t get reviewed, how quickly and by whom and in what format, is increasingly being determined by, I regret to say, inappropriate forces. For example: is the book a mere textbook, or is it a “real” book? (I really hate that distinction, but I’ve certainly heard it more than once during the past four years.) Has it been “validated” by virtue of having won an award or having been reviewed elsewhere, particularly by someone “important”? (I’ve heard that one a lot, too.) Have other books on resonating topics been published concurrently, so that the book can be dealt with in a “review essay”? Even this: was it published by a cooperative publisher? (This is another potential feather-ruffler, of course, but I think it needs to be noted that some book publishers are extremely helpful about getting review copies to journals and their reviewers, while others are extremely unhelpful.) My point here is that forces such as these really should not affect review decisions, but I regret to say that they do.

Fifth, authors and their sympathetic readers, at least during my tenure (and, again, for fairly obvious reasons), are increasingly asking book review editors like me to allow them to respond to the published reviews of certain books. They want to write reviews of the reviews, if you will. Based on my own experiences during the past four years, I must confess that more than once I was tempted to reserve some of “my” space in the journal for this purpose but simply could not do it without reducing even further the number of books reviewed.

Sixth, here are some miscellaneous surprises during my four years of service in this role. Given the general problem I outlined earlier, I have been quite surprised over the years by the number of busy big-name scholars in the field who have so graciously and instantly agreed to review books for me. I’ve also been surprised by the number (albeit small) who agreed to review a book, and then called me after reading it to say that they must renege because “the book isn’t very good, and I just can’t say that about a friend’s work.” (At worst this is intellectually dishonest; at best it exacerbates delay.) Given the field we’re in, I’ve also been surprised by the number of query letters I’ve received over the years which opened with profound ethos-underminers: ‘ ‘My dear friend X and I were roommates in graduate school, and she’s written this marvelous new book that she’d like me to review for you before she comes up for tenure.” I’ve been surprised not only by the number of letters but also the number of telephone calls I’ve received during the past four years—at all hours, at work and at home—from angry/elated/pushy authors and publish­ers, eager book review groupies, and graduate students desperate to “get something on their vitae.” But mostly I’ve been surprised by how nice people are, by how much I’ve learned, by how many friends I’ve made, and by how much fun I’ve had talking with colleagues about issues in rhetoric and composition. We talk a lot about “dialogue” in our field, and as a book review editor I’ve actually known four grati1~ting years’ worth of it. Everyone should be so lucky.

I am enormously grateful to the seventy-six reviewers with whom I had the pleasure of working, several of them more than once, on the book reviews for JAC: Steve North, Alleen Nilsen, Rich Enos, Art Young, Susan McLeod, Alice Horning, Jeanette Harris, Lynn Bloom, Wendy Bishop, Paul Rea, David Mair, Lynn Sadler, Tim Peoples, Sharon Crowley, Ed Corbett, Walter Beale, Louise Phelps, Virginia Allen, Cy Knoblauch, Carolyn Matalene, Susan Jarratt, Gordon Thomas, Kate Ronald, Kevin Davis, Rick Cypert, Rebecca Burnett, Marcia Halio, Nancy Comley, Frances Johnson, Gary Tate, Richard Marius, Mike Feehan, Stuart Brown, Chris Burnham, Kern Morris, Doug Park, Michael Flanigan, Elizabeth Giddens, Emily Ware, Bob Connors,JasperNeel, Elizabeth Flynn, David Chapman, Sue Carter Simmons, Mike Strickland, Man Lonano, Chuck Bazerman, Mary Ann Merz, Sam Dragga, Chris McAfee, Catherine Peaden, Doug Atkins, Doug Hesse, Bill Rouster, Dick Larson, Fred Gale, Ed Schiappa, Mark Thompson, Sid Dobrin, Robert McDonald, Blake Scott, Nan Johnson, Ellen Quandahl, Cynthia Haynes-Burton, Kristin Woolever, David Coogan, Peter Smagorinsky, Carol Berkenkotter, Joel Nydahl, David Bleich, Tom Miller, David Metzger, Gesa Kirsch, Jay Bolter, Joyce Magnotto, and Edward Jacobs. I hope that my successor, Lynda Haas, is lucky enough to line up such good help, and that my parting comments and concerns prove useful.

Old Dominion University
Norfolk; Virginia