Oct 21, 2019

Who reviews the reviewers?

Who polices the police? Who reviews the reviewers?

I just read the New York Times book review of Thomas Chatterton Williams' Self-Portrait In Black And White. I offer no opinion about the book itself, even though it is popular to have strong opinions about things we actually haven't read.

But really... professional reviewers! I tell ya. Below is a quote from the review. The pot calling the kettle black?

Williams writes beautifully, but his pages include quotations from great men that sometimes seem like scattered proof of his sophistication, a reflection of insecurities he disavows. Some readers will find his rhetoric perfidious and reactionary, with its dismissal of identity politics and the concomitant particulars of the African-American experience.

Well, I had to look up a few vocabulary words reading this article, most easily translating to commonly known phrases. Dare I say, I find the concomitant particulars of this reviewer's rhetoric most perfidious, a reflection of insecurities he disavows.