Consider this edition of Mentor Texts a companion to our piece on learning the basics of review writing, except in this one we take on a thorny question: What if you think the thing you’re reviewing is terrible? (Or, at least, not very good?)
Well, as you’ll see when you read the two mentor texts below, you have the same responsibility to the work whether you liked it or not. You still have to take it seriously and consider it fairly, and you have to give the reader an understanding of the piece, its context and your experience. And, of course, you still have to justify your opinions with evidence — even if you’re having fun insulting it along the way.
But, in fact, writing “pans,” as bad reviews are known, can be just as fun as reading them. Here’s how the Times movie critic A.O. Scott puts it in a piece for The Ringer called “The Art of the Pan: What’s the Point of a Bad Review in 2019?”:
A truly vicious pan, a merciless slam, a full-scale ethering is born of a righteous fury that can transmute into pure joy. “The secret of the bad review is that you can get a lot of pleasure out of it,” A.O. Scott tells me, chatting via phone in late December. “It is a kind of a dopamine rush. First of all, editors — especially editors at The New York Times — love it. They love bad reviews. And they’re fun to do because they give you access to a lot of writerly tools that are fun to use. You can be funny. You can be clever. What you’re doing is, you’re demonstrating your superiority to a thing that you’re writing about.”
Which can be intoxicating, and for the sharpest-knived critic, a source of tremendous pride. “The first paragraph of my review of Michael Bay’s ‘Pearl Harbor,’” Scott says with a laugh, “if I can get to blow my own horn, is a classic to be studied in every How to Write a Negative Review class.” But “you can get too hooked on that feeling” of writing slam after slam, he warns. “They’re definitely more fun. But positive reviews — where you can make a case for something that you really feel enthusiastic about, and still write as well as you can — that’s a lot harder, and a lot more valuable.”
But, of course, a Times critic also has to be aware of the impact a negative review can have. Pete Wells recently addressed this in a Times Insider piece where he discusses his negative review of a famous New York City steak house, Peter Lugar.
In a typical week I eat out at least five times but I write only one review. That leaves enough leeway that when I encounter bad restaurants, I can practice a catch-and-release policy and throw almost all of them back. The ones I don’t throw back have to be big enough to be worth keeping.
In other words, I tend to write negative reviews, which can hurt the bottom lines of relatively small businesses, only when readers are at risk of wasting their money on the basis of an established reputation. It could belong to a famous chef, a deep-pocketed restaurant group or an institution whose historical and cultural significance reaches far beyond its neighborhood. The subject of my review this week, Peter Luger Steak House, is in the last category; a 132-year-old holdover from the days when a substantial number of New Yorkers had moved here from Germany, it has become famous around the world as one of the city’s original beef palaces.
Now that you have a little context, take a close look at two examples — one written by a Times critic, and the other by a student-winner of our 2018 contest — and think about what lessons they might have for your own writing.
Before You Read
Take a look at our related Student Opinion question:
What work of art or culture would you warn others to avoid? Why?
What would you answer? Don’t post your thoughts to our site yet — just jot down a response, or turn to a partner and answer the question. After you study the texts below, you’ll have a chance to return to your writing, then post your final draft online.
