Beyond Peer Reviews

As some of you have articles and books reviewed or served as reviewers, the following - a compiled version of the essay titled “On Criticism (*) - maybe of help.

- - -

"I want to talk about the ways in which an author who is also a reviewer may improve himself as a critic by reading the reviews and criticism of his own work. But I must narrow my subject a little further. It used to be supposed that one of the functions of a reviewer was to help authors to write better. His praise and censure were supposed to show them where and how they had succeeded or failed, so that next time, having profited by the diagnosis, they might cure their faults and increase their virtues. In that way the author-reviewer might no doubt profit, as a critic, by reviews of his critical work. - - -

There is of course another sense in which the author of a paper or a book is of all men least qualified to judge the reviews of it. Obviously he cannot judge their evaluation of it, because he is not impartial. And whether this leads him, naively, to hail all laudatory criticism as good and damn all unfavorable criticism as bad, or whether it leads him, in the effort against that obvious bias, to lean over backwards till he under-rates all who praise and admires all who censure him, it is equally a disturbing factor. Hence, if by criticism, you mean solely valuation, no man can judge critiques of his own work. - - - Now in so far as his reviewers do that, I contend that the author can see the defects and merits of their work better than anyone else. And if he is also a critic I think he can learn from them to avoid the one and emulate the other.

I hope it will now be clear that in talking about what I think I have learned from my own critics I am not in any sense attempting what might be called an 'answer to critics'. That would, indeed, be quite incompatible with what I am actually doing. Some of the reviews I find most guilty of the critical vices I am going to mention were wholly favorable; one of the severest I ever had appeared to me wholly free from them. I expect every author has had the same experience. Authors no doubt suffer from self-love, but it need not always be voracious to the degree that abolishes all discrimination. I think fatuous praise from a manifest fool may hurt more than any depreciation.

One critical fault I must get out of the way at once because it forms no part of my real theme: I mean dishonesty. Strict honesty is not, so far as I can see, even envisaged as an ideal in the modern literary world. When I was a young, unknown writer on the eve of my first publication, a kind friend said to me, 'Will you have any difficulty about reviews? I could mention you to a few people. . . .' It is almost as if one said to an under-graduate on the eve of the finals, 'Do you know any of the examiners? I could put in a word for you.' Years later another man who had reviewed me with modest favor wrote to me (though a stranger) a letter in which he said that he had really thought much more highly of my book than the review showed: `but of course,' he said, 'if I'd praised it any more the So and So would not have printed me at all.' Another time someone had attacked me in a paper called X. Then he wrote a book himself. The editor of X immediately offered it to me, of all people, to review. Probably he only wanted to set us both by the ears for the amusement of the public and the increase of his sales. But even if we take the more favorable possibility—if we assume that this editor had a sort of rough idea of what they call sportsmanship: 'A has gone for B, it's only fair to let B have a go at A'—it is only too plain that he has no idea of honesty towards the public out of whom he makes his living. They are entitled, at the very least, to honest, that is, to impartial, unbiased criticism: and he cannot have thought that I was the most likely person to judge this book impartially. What is even more distressing is that whenever I tell this story someone replies with the question, 'And did you?' This seems to me insulting, because I cannot see how an honest man could do anything but what I did: refuse the editor's highly improper proposal. Of course they didn't mean it as an insult. That is just the trouble. When a man assumes my disonesty with the intention of insulting me, it may not matter much. He may only be angry. It is when he assumes it without the slightest notion that anyone could be offended, when he reveals thus lightly his ignorance that there ever were any standards by which it could be insulting, that a chasm seems to open at one's feet.

If I exclude this matter of honesty from my main subject it is not because I think it unimportant. I think it very important indeed. If there should ever come a time when honesty in reviewers is taken for granted, I think men will look back on the present state of affairs as we now look on countries or periods in which judges or examiners commonly take bribes. My reason for dismissing the matter briefly is that I want to talk about the things I hope I have learned from my own reviewers, and this is not one of them. I had been told long before I became an author that one mustn't tell lies and that we mustn't take money for doing a thing and then secretly do something quite different. I may add before leaving the point that one mustn't judge these corrupt reviewers too harshly. Much is to be forgiven to a man in a corrupt profession at a corrupt period. The judge who takes bribes in a time or place where all take bribes may, no doubt, be blamed: but not so much as a judge who had done so in a healthier civilization.

I now turn to my main subject.

The first thing I have learned from my reviewers is, not the necessity but the extreme rarity of conscientiousness in that preliminary work which all criticism should presuppose. I mean, of course, a careful reading of what one criticizes. This may seem too obvious to dwell on. I put it first precisely because it is so obvious and also because I hope it will illustrate my thesis that in certain ways the author is not the worst, but the best, judge of his critics. Ignorant as he may be of his paper or book's value, he is at least an expert on its content. Unless you have been often reviewed you will hardly believe how few reviewers have really done their homework. And not only hostile reviewers. For them one has some sympathy. To have to read an author who affects one like a bad smell or, a toothache is hard work. Who can wonder if a busy man skimps this disagreeable task in order to get on as soon as possible to the far more agreeable exercise of insult and denigration. Yet we reviewers do wade through the dullest, most loathsome, most illegible answers before we give a mark; not because we like it, not even because we think the answer is worth it, but because this is the thing we have accepted to do. In fact, however, laudatory critics often show an equal ignorance of the text. They too had rather write than read. Sometimes, in both sorts of review, the ignorance is not due to idleness. A great many people start by thinking they know what you will say, and honestly believe they have read what they expected to read."

TO BE CONTINUED

Cheers,

Paulo

(*) C.S. Lewis

On Reviewing Papers

"There is, of course, another lesson in it. Let no one try to make a living by becoming a reviewer [or to do too many peer reviews). The fatal ignorance of the text is not always the fruit of laziness or malice. It may be mere defeat by an intolerable burden. To live night and day with that hopeless mountain of new papers and books (mostly uncongenial) piling up on your desk (or computer), to be compelled to say something where you have nothing to say — indeed much is to be excused to one so enslaved. But of course to say that a thing is excusable is to confess that it needs excuse." CSL

Family Newsletter 2010

Technical Meeting in Paris - Always a Beautiful View

Zero Carbon Transportation

On our way back it was snowing - but no problems

Our first trip from Eindhoven to Apeldoorn by Bike and Train

at 30 degrees Farenheigt

Initial Images of our Time in The NL

Outside of the Eindhoven Railway Station

Walk to the University - TU/e - Dommel River

From the train - Utrecht

TU/e Student Cafeteria - What Special Music Instrument Can You See?

Outside our Apartment Building

TU/e Main Building - Adminstration

Electrical Engineering - What Makes This World Run :-)

Arriving at Schiphol

Advice on Reading Books

During this upcoming festive season we will all be getting into lots of reading – good, and perhaps not so good books. So, I have just compiled a series of quotes / comments from my favorite author (*) on how to fully enjoy the reading experience - - - and hope it may be helpful for you too.

1 – Do not classify / select books according to age-groups - - -
“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which in not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.” "When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty [seven] I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

2 – Take it easy - - - use moderation - - -
“The man who gobbles down one story [or book] after another at a sitting has no more right to complain if the result is disastrous than the man who swills liqueurs as if they were beer.”

3 – Do not despise popular literature - - -
“A person ought not to be ashamed of reading a good book because it is simple and popular, and he ought not to condone the faults of a bad book because it is simple and popular.”

4 – Read it again, and again - - -
"An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Shakespeare's Sonnets: but what can you do with a man who says he 'has read' them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks this settles the matter?"

5 – Read for your own enjoyment - - -
"... And you ought to rely more on yourself than on anyone else in matters of books - that is if you are out for enjoyment and not for improvement or any nonsense of that sort..."

6 – Develop your own taste - be spontaneous - - - don't be unliterary - - -
“They will have no conception [of original taste], because they had no experience, of spontaneous delight in excellence. Their “good” taste will have been acquired by the sweat of their brows, its acquisition will often (and legitimately) have coincided with advancement in the social, [academic] and economic scale, and they will hold it with uneasy intensity. As they will be contemptuous of popular books, so they will be naively tolerant of dullness and difficulty in any quack who comes before them with lofty
pretensions - - - ”

7 – Be ready to be changed - - -
“The first reading of some literary work is often, to the literary, an experience so momentous that only experiences of love, religion, or bereavement can furnish a standard of comparison. Their whole consciousness is changed. They have become what they were not before. But there is no sign of anything like this among the other sort of readers. When they have finished the story or the novel, nothing much, or nothing at all, seems to have happened to them.”

8 - Other Characteristics of the Unliterary
"They never read anything that is not narrative. I do not mean they all read fiction. The most unliterary reader sticks to the news; The have no ears. They read exclusively by the eye; They are either quite unconscious of style, or even prefer books which we should think badly written; They enjoy narratives in which the verbal element is reduced to a minimum – strip stories told in pictures, or films with the least possible dialog; They demand swift-moving narrative. Something must always be happening."
Let us be clear that the unliterary are unliterary not because they enjoy stories in these ways., but because they enjoy them in no other way. Not what they have but what they lack cuts them off from the fullness of the literary experience.

9 – Be Ready For a Transcending Experience - - -
“Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege. But in reading great literature I become a thousand men yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad of eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never myself then when I do.”

10 – Finally, do not be proud of your refined taste: “the moment good taste knows itself, some of its goodness is lost.”

Happy festive season’s readings.

Cheers,

Paulo

(*) CS Lewis

Reflections from Copacabana

To celebrate our 32nd anniversary we decided to spend a couple of days in Rio de Janeiro / Copacabana beach. Rio is one of the most beautiful places in the world - the contrasts of nature are hard to describe – mountains mixing with tropical-warm-clear-water- sunny beaches make one wonder whether one has reached paradise.

But the contrasts and beauty of nature are challenged by a very different and sad reality: the social inequality visibly displayed on the beach.

Copacabana is the place for the rich and fortunate of Brazil and for the not-necessarily rich and famous from Europe or America. While you will not be able to get a hotel room in the Avenida Atlantica for less than $300 a day, the multitude of vendors selling ice cream, drinks, sun blockers, and bikinis on the beach may not make much more than $10 a day.

I felt a little depressed for a short while, but suddenly recovered from it when I thought that from those sun-burnt men and women there maybe the hope for this beautiful country. While the politics of this great South American nation is infested by corruption these little people were enacting part of the moral law built in our hearts: they were doing a day’s work for (less than) a day’s pay – they were not taking bribes, neither making up facts like many of the countries politicians and administrators. They were even ready to give us the right change for the few items we bought.

I suddenly felt also proud of them - Many of the vendors come from one of the poorest regions of Brazil: the northeast. How do I know that? By their accent, their darker skin, their easy smile, their tendency to too quickly engage the customers in conversations, their politically-incorrect-humorous remarks, and finally by the fact that many of them look just like me – that is the same region where I came from and long to return to with my beautiful blonde Dutch wife, who could have been born there if the Dutch had not left the Northeast of Brazil in 1654.

By the way, we also had the opportunity to share the gospel with someone who
after some conversation revealed a little of the family difficulties he was going through. He was very open to the hope he could find in Jesus. We prayed with him and referred him to a local pastor friend of ours.

Afterwards we thanked the Lord for the blessing of our married life and the opportunity to share it with others.

Thanksgiving and Christmas can be celebrated together.

Merry Christmas to you all.

Paulo and Adriana

Are you tempted by Charientocracy?

Do you suffer from Charientocracy? I do. Let me explain.

Every time I travel and go around different places and give lectures and presentations I approach students, colleagues, and friends with a sense of mission (and concealed superiority). After all I am a university professor with several degrees and an IEEE Fellow - - - and sometimes forget that thinking too highly of oneself is a fatal vice.

This last trip to South America I took a more relaxed approach. I still lectured, but took a different outlook. At the end of my visit I had (I believe) a more profitable and enjoyable time.

On my way back, from 33,000 feet, I kept thinking about a term introduced by a British professor (*): Charientocracy - and from which I borrow much of the following ramblings).

The professor starts by rightly affirming that Theocracy is the worst corrupted form of leadership - then he observes that we are not in any danger of it (unless from the desire of some religious radicals). The real danger, he says, comes from something that would be only a little less intolerable, but intolerable in almost the same way. And that is what he calls Charientocracy: not the rule of the "saints" but the rule of the Cultured, the Educated, the Academic, the Manager - - - -

He goes on to comment that as the old social classes broke down two new ones have developed. On the one hand we have people building themselves into groups within which they can feel superior to the masses; the self-appointed aristocracies. On the other hand we have a new ruling class: the Managerial Class. The combinations of these two groups bring us Charientocracy. And the two groups are already combining, because university education is the main mean of access to the Managerial Class, and rightly so since we do not want our rulers to be stupid people.

With regard to the students the professor mentions that they are now far more defenseless in the hands of the professors as they come from suburban areas in which there are fewer opportunities for spontaneous learning. The educational machine seizes them very early and organizes their life, to the exclusion of all unsuperintended solitude or leisure. In short, the modern student is the ideal patient for those masters who, not content with teaching a subject would create a synthetic character.

The independent minded students will not get good marks unless they produce the kind of responses which commend themselves to their teacher. This means that they are trained in the (not very difficult) art of simulating the orthodox responses. For nearly all students are good mimics. - - -

But the new system wants to control the outcome by presenting every student with an ultimatum: "Read the books and do these simulations, etc, whom we, the educated, approve, and say the sort of things we say about them, or else.” And this shows how Charientocracy can deal with the minority of students who have tastes of their own: They get low marks, are kicked off the educational ladder and disappear into the proletariat.

Having explained why Charientocracy is probable the professor goes on to explain why it is undesirable: culture is a bad qualification for a ruling class because it does not qualify men to rule. The things we really need in our rulers are mercy, financial integrity, practical intelligence, hard work, and these are no more likely to be found in educated persons than in anyone else.

The old professor then affirms that culture is a bad qualification in the same way as sanctity. Both are hard to diagnose and easy to fake. Of course not every charientocrat will be a cultural hypocrite nor every theocrat a person who hypocritically pretends to be deeply pious. But both systems encourage hypocrisy.

But hypocrisy is not the only evil they encourage, he says. In the one we have the docile youth who has neither revolted against nor risen above the routine pietisms and respectabilities of his/her home. Their conformity has won the approval of the parents, the influential neighbors, and their own conscience. They do not know that they have missed anything and are content. In the other, we have the adaptable youth to whom learning has always been something "set" for "evaluation.” Success in this exercises have given them pleasure and let them into the ruling class. They do not know what they have missed and are content.

Both types are much to be pitied - both can sometimes be very nasty. Both may exhibit spiritual pride, but each in its proper form, since the one has succeeded by acquiescence and repression, but the other by repeated victory in competitive performances. One tends to be raw, truculent, eager to give pain, insatiable in its demands for submission, resentful and suspicious of disagreement. Where the soft slinks and sidles and sometimes scratches like a cat, the cultured gobbles like an enraged turkey. And perhaps both types are less curable than the hypocrite proper. A hypocrite might repent and mend and rendered innocuous. But who could bring to repentance those who were attempting no deception?

Finally, the prof points to the fact the why Theocracy and Charientocracy are almost identical. The higher the pretensions of our rulers, administrators and academicians are, the more interfering and impertinent their rule is likely to be and the more the thing in whose name they rule will be defiled. The highest things have the most precarious foothold in our nature.

Reflecting on this writings helped me to tune up again for the semester – in which I hope to fight the temptations of Charientocracy; to foster independence, creativity and even rebellion. I will do my best to not require students to regurgitate what the textbook authors say, much less my rendering of their content. I hope to excite their natural modes of resonance, to encourage spontaneous learning and creative-imaginative responses; to map out boundaries for analysis and development, all constrained by ethical principles.

I then remembered that I learned a great deal from a blind uneducated fisherman (in the northeast coast of Brazil) - - - and who contributed to my college education more than some of my own engineering professors.

Thus, perhaps the lesson for all of us: be appreciative of the good education received (even from unconventional sources) and never to boast in it.

I feel a little lighter now - - - as the plane prepares for landing.

Cheers

Paulo

(*) CS Lewis

Developing a Christian Mind (Intellect, Feelings, Will and Heart) CS Lewis: Integrating Reason, Imagination and Faith

Dinner at the Ribeiros with our DCM Lewis Class

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http://www.calvin.edu/~pribeiro/Calvin%20College%20-%20DCM%20Blogs%20-%202010a.html


Paulo and Adriana