Just when we think we’re out, they pull us back in. Alex Good, who runs the literary website Good Reports, has weighed in on the Bigge/McLaren controversy (see In Other Media passim) with a very well-argued piece.

In reviewing Ryan Bigge’s Toronto Star review of Leah McLaren’s novel The Continuity Girl, Good writes: “the reviewer, who had plenty of time to sharpen his knives, wasn’t up to the task of writing a great bad review. The comic invective was generic. Yes, we were told, the book was terrible, but there was no explanation of exactly what it was that made it so bad. A paragraph of supposedly representative prose was quoted, but nothing was done with it. Meanwhile, the reviewer’s own prose — which was, apparently, already heavily edited –seemed in need of a hand.”

Much as we agree with Good, we’d be reluctant to give this any more pixelspace, except that Good also makes another strong point worth repeating: that reviews should be about books and ideas, not people. And a review certainly shouldn’t be “an artificial attempt to get attention by replacing critical debate with personal confrontation.”

But for a few paragraphs, at least, Good has the last laugh: throughout his essay, not once does he refer to either Bigge or McLaren by name.

Related links:
Click here for Alex Good’s essay on Good Reports