A friend put a book by Marie Corelli into my hands the other day, and it's provided me with a passage that seems to me the absolute template example of why you shouldn't try to answer your critics.


Marie Corelli (a pen name intended to imply a family connection between her and the composer Arcangelo Corelli) was an extremely successful and profoundly eccentric author of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, whose improving works met with popular acclaim and critical contempt. It's hard to blame the critics, as she was a genuine crank, convinced she was a genius comparable to Shakespeare and a moral examplar second to none; among other things, she wrote a book that attempted to rewrite the gospels and prove Judas Iscariot had a sister called Judith, and ended her days sailing about Stratford-upon-Avon in a gondola setting herself up as a Shakespearian authority/successor. She was also prone to using fiction to proselytise her opinons as to such evils as the library system, feminism and modern thought, with its 'lax morals and prurient literature'. She did tell a good story, if you can swallow her views. However, it is not of her books but of her reaction to reviews that I wish to speak today.

After several pannings, she decided to take matters into her own hands. Refusing to allow critics to get review copies unless they paid for them, she wrote a novel called The Sorrows of Satan, in which Lucio (the Devil) is condemned to be exiled from heaven until all human beings can resist him. Well, obviously nobody can, except for Jesus, and one other person: a writer called (note the intials) Mavis Claire.

Mavis Claire is a genius whose novels are given cruel and nasty reviews by critics who are generally failed writers motivated by profound envy of her talent. Our narrator is a reviewer, and says as much himself; as Corelli remarks: 'Common sense points out the fact that the novelist "reader" who has a place to maintain for himself in literature would naturally rather encourage work that is likely to prove ephemeral, than that which might possibly take a higher footing than his own.' (The idea of both reading and writing because you love the higher good that is literature, and wish to serve it and better your understanding by daily contact with it, does not seem to have occurred to her. But unpleasant people often assume others are motivated by the same malice as themselves.)

These reviews obviously don't trouble Mavis. Of course they don't. She really doesn't care; she laughs. Merrily. In fact, they trouble her so little that she makes a positive fetish of them. I'm about to quote a pretty long passage (but still slightly abbreviated, as I realise your patience may not be infinite), to stand as an out-of-copyright, author-too-dead-to-mind-I'm-using-her-as-an-example demonstration of a basic rule of writing:


If you don't like your reviews, keep it zipped. You'll only make yourself look bad trying to get the last word.

(I should possibly say, in case anyone is wondering, that I'm not posting this piece in response to any particular reviews of my own; Bareback came out last year and hasn't had any professional reviews in a while. Also because I'm still sick and this is a piece I copy-typed a while ago. But in the interests of full disclosure, because I'm an honest little toaster: yes, it had reviews; most of them were positive, a couple were negative, which is never enjoyable but I'm a big girl and reviewers have a right to their own opinions. This is the normal position of most writers.) The reason why it's worth reading Corelli's piece is that it's one of the best examples I've ever seen of how an attempt to get the last word with reviewers can have, let's say, a different effect from the one you were intending. Lucio and our narrator are shown by the graceful Mavis into her garden:





Passing under an arching grove of budding syringas, we presently came to an open courtyard paved with blue and white tiles, having in its centre a picturesque dovecote built in the form of a Chinese pagoda. Here pausing, Mavis clapped her hands. A cloud of doves, white, grey, brown, and opalescent answered the summons, circling round and round her head, and flying down in excited groups at her feet.


'Here are my reviewers!' she said laughing - 'Are they not pretty creatures? The ones I know best are named after their respective journals - there are plenty of anonymous ones of course, who flock in with the rest. Here, for instance, is the "Saturday Review"' - and she picked up a strutting bird with coral-tinted feet, who seemed to rather like the attention shown to him - 'He fights with all his companions and drives them away from the food whenever he can. He is a quarrelsome creature!' - and here she stroked the bird's head - 'You never know how to please him - he takes offence at corn sometimes and will only eat peas, or vice versa. He quite deserves his name - go away, old boy!' and she flung the pigeon up in the air and watching it soaring up and down - 'He is such a comical old grumbler! There is the "Speaker"' - and she pointed to a fat fussy fantail - 'he struts very well, and fancies he's important, you know, but he isn't ... Whenever I get a bad review I name a pigeon - it amuses me. That draggle-tailed one there with the muddy feet is the "Sketch" - he is not at all a well-bred bird I must tell you! - that smart-looking dove with the purple breast is the "Graphic", and that bland old grey thing is the "ILN", short for "Illustrated London News". Those three white ones are respectively "Daily Telegraph", "Morning Post", and "Standard". Now see them all!' and taking a covered basket from a corner she began to scatter corn and peas and various grains in lavish quantities all over the court. For a moment we could scarcely see the sky, so thickly the birds flocked together, struggling, fighting, swooping downwards, and soaring upwards - but the winged confusion soon gave place to something like order when they were all on the ground and busy, selecting their favourite foods from the different sorts provided for their choice.


'You are indeed a sweet-natured philosopher' - said Lucio smiling, 'if you can symbolize your adverse reviewers by a flock of doves!'


She laughed merrily.


'Well, it is a remedy against all irritation' - she returned; 'I used to worry a good deal over my work, and wonder why it was that the press people were so unnecessarily hard upon me, when they showed so much leniency and encouragement to far worse writers - but after a little serious consideration, finding that critical opinion carried no sort of conviction whatever to the public, I determined to trouble no more about it - except in the way of doves!'


'In the way of doves, you feed your reviewers' - I observed.


'Exactly! And I suppose I help to feed them even as women and men' she said - 'They get something from their editors for "slashing" my work - and they probably make a little more out of selling their "review copies". So you see the dove-emblem holds good throughout. But you have not seen the "Athenaeum" - oh, you must see him!'


With laughter still lurking in her blue eyes, she took us out of the pigeon-court, and led the way round to a sequestered and shady corner of the garden, where, in a large aviary cage fitted up for its special convenience, sat a solemn white owl. The instant it perceived us, it became angry, and ruffling up its downy feathers, rolled its glistening yellow eyes vindictively and opened its beak. Two smaller owls sat in the background, pressed close together - one grey, the other brown.'


'Cross old boy!' said Mavis, addressing the spiteful-looking creature in the sweetest of accents - 'Haven't you found any mice to kill today? Oh, what wicked eyes! - what a snappy mouth!' Then turning to us, she went on - 'Isn't he a lovely owl? Doesn't he look wise? - but as a matter of fact, he's just as stupid as ever can be. That is why I call him the "Athanaeum"! He looks so profound, you'd fancy he knows everything, but he really thinks of nothing but killing mice all the time, - which limits his intelligence considerably!'


Lucio laughed heartily, and so did I - she looked so mischievous and merry....


[She shows them into the house and they examine her charming workroom for a while.]


'Miss Clare', I said, now speaking with unaffected sincerity - 'I assure you, on my honour, I am very sorry I wrote that article against you. If I had only known you as you are -'

'Oh, that should make no difference to a critic!' she answered merrily.


'It would have made a great difference to me' - I declared; 'You are so unlike the objectionable "literary woman"'...

'I am very pleased to hear that,' she said simply - 'I am always glad when I succeed in winning somebody's approval and liking.'


'Does not everyone approve and admire you?' asked Lucio.


'Oh no! By no means! The "Saturday" says I only win the applause of shop-girls!' and she laughed - 'Poor old "Saturday"! - the writers on its staff are so jealous of any successful author. I told the Prince of Wales what it said the other day, and he was very much amused.'


'You know the Prince?' I asked, in a little surprise.


'Well, it would be more correct to say that he knows me,' she replied - 'He has been very amiable in taking some little interest in my books. He knows a good deal about literature too - much more than people give him credit for. He has been here more than once - and has seen me feed my reviewers - the pigeons, you know! He rather enjoyed the fun I think!'

And this was all the result of the 'slating' the press gave to Mavis Clare! Simply that she named her doves after her critics, and fed them in the presence of whatever royal or distinguished visitors she might have (and I afterwards learned that she had many) amid, no doubt, much laughter from those who saw the 'Spectator'-pigeon fighting for grains of corn, or the 'Saturday Review'-pigeon quarrelling over peas! Evidently no reviewer, spiteful or otherwise, could affect the vivacious nature of such a mischievous elf as she was.







Well, you get the idea. Corelli's piece shows something that she didn't intend: by the very act of announcing you don't care about your reviews, you show that you do. Otherwise, why bother to memorialise them and tell every passing visitor just how little you care? Clearly it's novelist's logic, arguing by analogy: saying that the bird named after a paper is stupid (and a fictional bird at that) proves absolutely nothing about the actual paper, but by such devices you can suggest a magic link - which is pretty dishonest. But aside from the dishonesty, there's also something quite disturbing there: while Mavis laughs gaily and flaunts her charitable forgiveness, it's actually a profoundly spiteful thing to do. Somebody writes you a bad review. (Possibly because they genuinely didn't like your book and felt they had a moral duty to tell the truth, but Corelli doesn't consider this option.) So what do you do? Name a bird after them, show that bird to all your visitors and dwell at great length on how unimportant the bird is. Which is to say, you take the opportunity to insult them in effigy, daily, for years, as long as the bird lives - and quite possibly you replace that bird when it dies so you can carry on insulting them, who knows? Leaving aside the cuteness of the doves and the apparently magical way they take after the papers as Corelli sees them, it's no different from making dummies of the reviewers and putting them all in dunce caps.


There are certain things one shouldn't do in public: sneer at the people who give you bad reviews, try to get a clever last word over them and flaunt just how incredibly little you care about their opinions. Mary Sue threatens, for one thing (Corelli apparently denied that Mavis Clare was a self-portrait, but I'm not sure who she thought she was kidding); your own prejudices and blind spots show through when you try to guess why other people act as they do. And joking when upset is like joking when drunk: you're never as funny as you think you are.

Most importantly, it's dishonourable. Fiction is a sacred trust: it's one of the most intimate ways one mind can speak to another, sometimes speaking down centuries of time, across language barriers and culture clashes, always speaking to the best of our ability of what it is to be human. That is incredibly important. We all have our limitations of talent and wisdom, but if we're going to presume to write, we have to be as honest as we can, otherwise we're misusing something that's essential to our sense of humanity. Fiction is for telling the truth, not for telling yourself gratifying lies, and right at the bottom of the list of things you should do is using fiction to settle scores. It's using a beautiful painting to break your neighbour's windows.


If you ever feel the urge to send up negative reviewers, don't. Just don't. They will not be the ones who end up looking bad.