Enough with the 'forgotten' writers

Can we please stop using this tired, contrived hook?

19th century sketch of a woman reading.
(Image credit: Historical image collection by Bildagentur-online / Alamy Stock Photo)

It's hard out there for a book critic. If your author of choice has little social purpose, how can you convince a reader to even read a review, let alone pick up one of their books? Luxuriating in the uselessness of literature isn't an option, and reviewers don't have the luxury of believing their subject to be a pop art form, so populist appeal is out too. You could always take the memoir route: "How a book saved/changed my life." But if you don't want to do that, there's another compelling hook: Claim the author is forgotten. If he or more likely she is little-known, "read little, if at all," and so on, then the purpose of a review is self-evident. You're rescuing an author from the dead, isn't that enough?

Whatever the bar is for being forgotten, it's safe to say that it's not very high. Authors can present themselves as champions of forgotten writers because just about everything can be cast as obscure. You're not going to buy Adorno at an airport bookstore, so the Frankfurt School is forgotten. David Foster Wallace didn't talk about Henry James, so Henry James is forgotten. But the label "forgotten" tends, in my experience at least, to be applied most liberally to women writers, particularly the kind put into print by feminist publishing outfits such as Virago, Persephone Books, or the Dorothy Project.

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B.D. McClay

B.D. McClay is a senior editor at the Hedgehog Review.