Reviews of this Book

March 23, 2007 1:09 PM

Reviews of this Book
posted by juv3nal (20 comments total)

"...Reviews of This Book, is just a fantasy of mine. I would love to see a book consisting of nothing but a collection of reviews of it that appeared (after its publication, of course) in major newspapers and magazines. It sounds paradoxical, but it could be arranged with a lot of planning and hard work. First, a group of major journals would all have to agree to run reviews of the book by the various contributors to the book. Then all the reviewers would begin writing. But they would have to mail off their various drafts to all the other reviewers very regularly so that all the reviews could evolve together, and thus eventually reach a stable state of a kind known in physics as a "Hartree-Fock self-consistent solution". Then the book could be published, after which its reviews would come out in their respective journals, as per arrangement."
posted by juv3nal at 1:10 PM on March 23, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

the redacted review is a particular stroke of genius in that it allows those that follow to attribute to it any argument they like.
posted by juv3nal at 1:12 PM on March 23, 2007

There's a word for this kind of thing.

Is it:

a) Meta
b) Wankery
c) Hartree-Fock Fock Matrix! Fock Operator! Fock You all!

or

d) a concatenation of all the above?
posted by lalochezia at 1:42 PM on March 23, 2007

Italo Calvino is jealous that he didn't think of this first.
posted by drezdn at 1:42 PM on March 23, 2007 [5 favorites has favorites]

Personally, I thought the book sucked, and it hasn't even been written yet.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 1:43 PM on March 23, 2007

Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times raves: "I loved it. It was much better than Cats. I'm going to read it again and again."
posted by Horace Rumpole at 1:43 PM on March 23, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Stanislaw Lem's A perfect vacuum is a collection of reviews of books that don't exist.
posted by Termite at 1:51 PM on March 23, 2007

This book is like pre-emptively calling yourself out in Metatalk for posting reflexive Metatalk posts.
posted by turaho at 2:00 PM on March 23, 2007

Drezdn really nailed that one...
posted by nathancaswell at 2:12 PM on March 23, 2007

lalochezia, a combination of a and b, as in:

"Hark! On yonder wind I hear the faps of meta-wankery."

Gradually, but with increasing frequency and volume: "FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP."
posted by nathancaswell at 2:53 PM on March 23, 2007

I scrolled through the first five or so, skimming, and it looked like it completeley ignored the original concept of a self-consistent solution (which was at least a unique idea, though not a promise of compelling reading) and was basically a bunch of book-reviewer characters sniping at each other. Zero stars out of five.
posted by rikschell at 3:05 PM on March 23, 2007

I read it. I was expecting something pretty outstanding but sadly it did not live up to the reviews.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:49 PM on March 23, 2007

Yes, disappointing so far. And it may not be fixable as the self-referential nature of the evolving content is heavily determined by what's already there.

Choosing the reviewers carefully and discouraging them beforehand from certain less-rewarding paths would have been well-advised.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:02 PM on March 23, 2007

Speaking of Douglas Hofstadter, his I Am a Strange Loop is due out in 3 or 4 days.
posted by Bort at 4:22 PM on March 23, 2007

A+++++ WOULD REVIEW AGAIN
posted by RokkitNite at 4:45 PM on March 23, 2007

This is a stupid comment. Don't even bother reading it.
posted by Citizen Premier at 5:03 PM on March 23, 2007

... and Afroblanco wins the thread.
posted by Afroblanco at 5:29 PM on March 23, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

Well, it's an interesting idea at least. But I would be more interested in something closer to Hofstadter's original idea. That is, an actual book with actual reviews in actual publications. But I'm not sure that could ever be pulled off (try selling that to a publisher).
posted by timelord at 6:22 PM on March 23, 2007

Kierkegaard deserves a brief mention for publishing a book consisting entirely of prefaces...
posted by uosuaq at 6:30 PM on March 23, 2007

Jejune. Jejuly. Jeaugust. Jeseptember.
posted by hexatron at 7:01 PM on March 23, 2007