Re: What Amazon doesn't want you to know.

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:54:57 +0000, Margaret Shiels
<margaret_nospamplzshiels@xxxxxx> wrote:

>Gentle uk.rec.engines.stationary reader,
>
>First, my apology for cross-posting to this NG. Be assured that this is
>a one-off. It will never happen again.
>
>My sole purpose is to draw your attention to what I believe are dubious
>practices by Amazon.co.uk. I also believe that at stake here is freedom
>of expression.
>
>Amazon have rejected my reader review of a novel by John McGahern. In
>the UK and Ireland it was published under the title, "That They May
>Face The Rising Sun". In the USA and elsewhere it's entitled simply
>"The Lake".
>
>You may have read it. You may even have thoroughly enjoyed it.
>
>That is not the issue. The issue is that Amazon refuse to publish my
>review. First, they ignored it. When it failed to appear, they fed me
>the excuse of their moderators being too busy to read it. Next they
>insisted (three times) that it did not comply with their review
>guidelines.
>
>I copied their guidelines to my Amazon correspondent and asked her to
>specify the guidelines with which my review did not comply. She replied
>that she could not be specific.
>
>When I threatened to expose Amazon on the net, they relented, and said
>that my review broke two of their rules. (It did not.) But I amended
>it, and you can read it below. You'll see that, although it's critical,
>there are other reviews on Amazon.co.uk that are far more critical than
>mine.
>
>So what's going on? Have they done a deal with McGahern's publisher? It
>would not surprise me; the book trade has became increasingly corrupt.
>Why do you think that only a small number of books get reviewed in the
>papers ? and that they're the same books in each paper? Because they're
>the best books at that moment? Think again.
>
>Read the actual READER reviews on Amazon and see how they compare with
>the newspaper reviews. You will read lines like: "I bought this book
>because I believed all the hype. I was very disappointed."
>
>We are being conned.
>
>Anyhow, I dutifully submitted the amended review, with the assurance
>that it would appear within 5 days. It did not.
>
>The astute reader will understand that this could continue ad nauseam,
>with Amazon trying to wear me down so much that I would give up and
>forget it.
>
>I won't. Free speech and free expression are at issue here. Amazon now
>control something like 80% of book sales worldwide. They have killed
>the small bookseller. Soon the medium-sized book store will follow, and
>Amazon will have a monopoly.
>
>At that point they can do anything they please. Try posting a very
>critical book review then!
>
>Sincerely, and my apologies again for the cross-posting!
>
>Margaret Shiels
>
>--------------------
>
>[The review Amazon didn't want you to see:]
>
>When MIGHT is right.
>
>In his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, the apostle Paul wrote of
>"those who are being lost, because they didn't receive the love of the
>truth, that they might be saved. (2:10)"
>
>What a shame that John McGahern didn't read his Scripture with a little
>more diligence; had he done so, he might not have botched the grammar
>in the very title of his book, and might instead have called it: "That
>They MIGHT Face the Rising Sun". If the poor English had ended there
>then all might have been well. As it is, when one gets past the title
>page, it's all downhill.
>
>The novel provides clear evidence that, once a writer's book is
>denounced by the Catholic Church, all subsequent work will be praised
>as literature. We need only think of the frightful Edna O'Brien....
>
>And literature is what this book clearly is not, at least not when it's
>read objectively, without the baggage of the encomia that have attached
>themselves to McGahern over the years, like limpets on a whale's
>buttocks.
>
>It's terrible. I could not get beyond page 36. I tried; I genuinely
>did. The lacklustre prose is indistinguishable from that of Alice
>Taylor ? in fact Taylor's outdoes McGahern's quite often. There is a
>myth, no doubt put about by McGahern himself, that he overwrites
>excessively, then prunes remorselessly. If that's the case, then the
>out-takes of "TTMFTRS" must have been excruciatingly bad.
>
>He has no style, plain and simple ? indeed I'd have preferred "plain
>and simple" rather than McGahern's weak and often cringe-making
>attempts at style. The English language seems foreign to him. It's
>English for Beginners, the vocabulary of the semi-educated. And one
>would think, to read McGahern, that Peter Mark Roget had never drawn
>breath. "Sure why use synonyms," he must reason, "when the one verb can
>be made to serve every situation?" Everybody "walks" for example; no
>sauntering, hastening, loping, striding or what have you. Clichés
>proliferate, and inept ones at that: a bird drops "like a stone" (the
>only time I ever saw a bird dropping like a stone was when my husband
>let fall a frozen chicken in the supermarket).
>
>All the characters speak with the same, dull, interchangeable voice.
>Nor does the dialogue always ring true; at one point, for example, a
>country person speaks the line, "None of us believes and we go", a
>usage I've never encountered in rural Leitrim.
>
>McGahern cannot write characters that engage me. Because all speak with
>the same voice, it was difficult to choose between them, and as a
>result, no one character held my attention.
>
>His narrative is even worse than his dialogue: "His eyes glittered on
>the pot as he waited, willing them to a boil." Classic Alice Taylor,
>that. I flipped through the pages and chose passages at random. There
>were no fine words or interesting turns of phrase that merited a
>mention. In fact, all I found was mediocre writing, hardly better than
>anything a schoolchild could write. And the syntax! Even that infamous
>torturer of English syntax Anita Desai could do no worse than: "The
>Shah rolled round the lake with the sheepdog in the front seat of the
>car every Sunday and stayed until he was given his tea at six."
>
>The dust jacket quotes the Observer; evidently it hailed McGahern as
>"Ireland's greatest living novelist". Whoever wrote that should hang
>his/her head in shame, and apologize at once to ... well, to everybody
>really; such poor writing as this does Ireland no favours.
>
>If I am wrong, and there truly is a great novel lurking between the
>covers of this book, then why on earth bury it beneath such dreadful
>prose? I honestly tried to allow this novel to grip me, but it failed
>dismally. Should I have persevered simply because it was written by
>"the finest Irish writer now working in prose"? The hell I should! Two
>out of ten, and that's being generous.

You have obviously not read a modern Haynes manual then where it says
at the start of every chapter.
Consult main dealer

--
Regards,

John Stevenson
Nottingham, England.

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