Regarding this snippet of review on Amazon:
><<uneven collection . . . thrives on a love of
hyperbole
>and maudlin sentiment, both of which are perhaps best
confined
>to country songs - PW>>
Mario wrote:
>Not to make or invite hatchet-job confessions from
the
>distinguished membership, but anonymous reviews do
tend to
>be a lot more truthful, or at least a lot less
fawning, do
>they not?
I dunno. A lot of the anonymous (or even signed) reviews on
Amazon seem pretty shaky to me. There's definitely the stench
of axes being ground, hovering over many of those anonymous
reviews. I mean, big names get routinely trashed (it's a
favourite sport there) and people nobody's heard of get
praised to the moon and fawned over plenty. All those
opinions may be honest and valid, but if they don't even sign
your name, why should we trust them?
And of course, then there's Amazon's" Number One Reviewer"
who does sign her name, but I don't trust her either. So
maybe it's just me.
Anyway, PW is, I assume, PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, so that's not
quite the same thing as a totally anonymous review, in that
ultimately PW's critical rep (whoever actually wrote it) is
on the line.
As for the actual snippet in question, to me it reveals as
much of the writer's prejudices about country music as any
commentary on Steve Earle. To dismiss Earle as a "country"
singer is to miss the point. His music has ranged from pure
bluegrass to some of the most harrowing stuff this side of
EXILE ON MAIN STREET. He's actually much closer to a sort of
at story-telling folk tradition that could conceivably
include Stephen Foster, Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash, the
Clancy Brothers, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Stan Rogers,
Billy Bragg, the Carter Family, Leadbelly, The Clash and a
zillion others. So, in these days of multi-media
cross-pollinization, Earle writing a book of short stories
makes a perfect sort of sense.
And that comment, "Thrives on a love of hyperbole and maudlin
sentiment"? Sounds a bit like half the post-Chandler books we
discuss on this list.
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