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Usually these conversations spiral around for a while before arriving at the absurd, self-important, and offensive Hitler/Holocaust metaphor. By simply starting there, Alan Kaufman has saved us all a great deal of time!

Does Godwin's Law apply outside the internet?

O, snap!

Love it!

Word

Well, he's the editor of "Outlaw Bible," so you'd expect a Howling Jeremiad, no? It's a style thing.

And, Jews being "people of the book" (not "people of the e-book") -- I dunno -- I think he's doing a good job of getting a rise from his audience. Jeremiads are all about getting your people riled up. (Anyway, Roger, it is no fun to agree with you.)

Ah Roger, I would have thought this a comment from my son the rock-and-roller not elegant you. Nevertheless, I howled! GTFOY indeed.

And Anonymous 1--spot on!

Jane

what is GODWIN's law? and who is Godwin?

Wikipedia has a good explanation of Godwin's Law (and who Godwin is); roughly it means that people who need to invoke the Nazis in order to win an argument have already lost. I'm petitioning the Department of Rhetorical Standards to pass Roger's Law, which bans from public discourse any proponent of gay marriage who compares himself to Rosa Parks.

many thanks for the explanation of G"s Law (very useful to know!) and for RS's law, which has wonderful alternate applications when one substitutes new names and causes

just checked wikipedia - what a surprise! all this time I'd been thinking it had something to do with Mary Shelley's father and couldn't rationalize it!

There are two types out there, I am realizing: those who, when curious about an unfamiliar phrase, cut, paste, and Google, and those who don't. I'm confused by the latter. I'm not calling the people asking about Godwin's law Nazis (though it's tempting), but I want to ask, if you don't know what something means, why don't you just look it up?

But beware, Anon., lest you be labeled a "Google is your friend"-Nazi. Personally, I don't mind inquiring minds--they often take the conversation someplace good.

Seems to have already disappeared.

What's rude is my PW Daily email stating that Michael Jackson books are languishing and the booksellers cannot make a dime off of his death.

Well, now we know who Roberta Silman is: http://robertasilman.com/

I like that she's married to a guy named Robert. That's love! And she's written a children's book, so she's one of our own.

I'll be looking forward to Hoffman's mea culpa, but I'll be disappointed if she doesn't blame her tweet on booze or the Internet itself.

In the Times she does one of those "I'm sorry if anyone was offended" tap-dances.

That link didn't work-sorry! This should be better...
http://gawker.com/5303534/look-whos-snarking-now-novelist-uses-twitter-to-trash-critic

I often tell students not to put anything on a blog they would be ashamed for their mother to read ...

So who is Alice Hoffman?

I am not adding to the pile-ons all over cyberspace which I find equally offensive as the actions of Alice Hoffman.

I want to say that I find this topic timely to our discussions here. The real kicker would be that her book does well since it got so much off the chart publicity. People might get curious who would not have before and the public does enjoy bad news :)

I view this a major lesson of cyber and professional etiquette. This also includes the pile-ons. I'm sure she is humiliated and if the comment section rumors are true about her divahood, hopefully this is THE wake up call.

I will be thinking about this (and feeling sad about it) for the rest of this night.

I especially love it when Silman, being interviewed about Hoffman's twittering, said "...she called me a moron, which my children are going to love." Nothing like being dissed on Twitter to destroy your parental authority.

I'm saying straight up that I am a Hoffman fan and want to repeat my comment over on Edward Champion's place...

The point of Hoffman's poorly tweeted message was that Silman divulged too much information in the review (like a book report). I have recently purchased the book and now know that one of the main characters dies and this motivates the plot.

First, there's no place in a review for exposing specific plot UNLESS the reviewer spells out SPOILER AHEAD. Secondly, there is a difference between amateur reviewers (like myself) and professional reviews. Silman's review, whether glowing or critical, was unprofessional.

I think Hoffman made it immaturely personal and the real point was lost. I still like her books and I'll still read it, but I will be more cautious if I ever spot a Silman review again.

Tasses,

I think a lot of people will agree about spoilers, but Hoffman published Silman's phone number online and urged her Twitter followers to call her. That's not just unprofessional; that's harassment.

Just read an interview with Silman in the LA Times. She said she's only gotten nine email messages as a result -- all apologizing for Hoffman's behavior. She hasn't gotten any phone calls because Hoffman got her phone number wrong.

Can't help but picture the person who might own that phone number; depict the colorful character of your choice in your head and then picture them saying to callers, "Alice who? Who gave you this number?" Or something far less repeatable...

Tasses, I'm not buying that argument and I don't think for a second that Hoffman would have advanced it had the review been more laudatory. One person's spoiler is another person's information.

I don't understand people who complain about "spoilers" in professional reviews. It's part of this whole world-must-revolve-around-my-personal-comfort mindset. I would find the words SPOILER ALERT!!!!! in a the midst of a professional review to be incredibly amateurish.

If you are so sensitive that knowing what happens in a book or movie would destroy your enjoyment of it, then don't read the reviews until after you read the book or seen the movie. Don't expect people you don't know to take care of you.

sorry, that should be "after you HAVE read the book..."

As I opined in an earlier thread, the bottom line in the use of spoiler warnings is a display of respect: respect for the material being discussed, respect for the author whose hard work is being frivolously abused by the premature disclosure of carefully planned key elements, and respect for your fellow readers. I am sorry if Anonymous 1:00 finds such respect to be too tiresome to be bothered with. I would be willing to wager that Anon. 1:00 is not a reader of murder mysteries.

Lyle Blake Smythers

Roger, I won't speculate whether Hoffman would have gone as nuts had the review been more positive. I'm simply saying that spoilers have no place in a professional review. It's only information if you are reading a critical analysis. If you are reading a review of a story in order to decide if you want to buy/read said story, spoilers serve only to SPOIL the fun.

I'm certainly not defending Hoffman's ridiculous actions (as I said on my own humble blog). I'm saying that reviewers, especially paid professionals, should be held to a higher standard and Silman's review (which I read BEFORE the novel and which totally spoiled the story for me) wasn't up to my idea of what a professional reviewer should do.

Thanks for the discussion opportunity :-)

Upfront: I love Hoffman's work. Big fan here. I have never met her in person and if I do, I will be careful not to divulge my phone number. Just in case.

Another upfront: All authors would love to write such twitters or tweets or other rebuttals to critics of all persuasions. We don't. And we don't because it makes us look like divas, el stupidos, and can only backfire. As it did

Note: many authors will tell you they don't read reviews, good or bad. Don't believe them. We are professional liars, after all.

Jane

Since I haven't read the book being reviewed (I loved Hoffman's Illumination Night but that's all I've read of her adult books, and I don't think her YAs are very good) I don't know if what the reviewer gave away was a "spoiler." I suspect people have different definitions of that word--for some, it's the revelation of a carefully prepared surprise (there's a good one in Lisa See's new Shanghai Girls,) but for others it can be anything and everything. And what should a mystery reviewer do if the revelation of the villain is lame and unprepared for? Should the review say just say (and only that), thus not providing any evidence for her point, or is the reviewer obliged to explain her reasoning, which might entail giving up some details of the msytery? I'm in the camp that says skip the reviews if you've already decided to read something.

I really don't like the blurring of public and private that seems inevitable with these devices. I recently read a book by a very popular author who outsells me by about a billion to one. I told a friend that I thought the book was awful--everything about it, plot, characterization, writing. It was the very stuff the word "pedestrian" was invented for. Some authors might say they would never criticize another's work that way, and Jane Yolen probably knows they are liars. But we make our childish, petulant, jealous comments Privately. Twitter seems like a terrible conduit to carry all our private thoughts out to the public. I wonder if Hoffman thought she was addressing friends and was as horrified at the way it traveled as I would be if my own friend sat at a table at ALA and retailed my opinion of er, um's, work.

I'm happy to get a review - good or bad. At least someone took the time to read my work. Appreciate it!

wow. and that's not a good 'wow.'

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. I'm from Miami, and yes, emotions run high on this subject. But are inaccurate informational books a protected form of speech? Not sure. The controversy would have been avoided if the school had simply not bought the book in the first place, based upon reviews which stated that it was inaccurate. However, I'm uncertain whether the typical reviewer from the Midwest or New England would have recognized the inaccuracies. This is a bit like Debbie Reese's blog about inaccurate Native American books. Sure, libraries still carry those. But if a community was 50% Native American (as Miami is 50% Cuban), I'd think the library would be less likely to stock such inaccurate books. I notice no one had much of a problem with an inaccurate Jewish book (Angel Girl) being pulled from the shelves a while back. How is this different, other than the fact that AG was portrayed as fiction, while this was portrayed as nonfiction? Never thought I'd be coming down on the side of pulling a book, and I'm not sure I am now, but it's food for thought.

Alex, it depends on what you mean by inaccurate. I don't have the book here, but I remember the main objection had to do with a sentence like "children in Cuba eat, play, and go to school just like you do." Critics maintained that because food is scarce, kids have little time to play, and education is ideologically-driven, saying "just like you do" was inaccurate (despite the fact that kids can go hungry, have little time for play, and go to crap schools right here in the U.S.). I wouldn't call that sentence inaccurate, just poorly written. There was something else that was flat-out inaccurate about Cuba's prehistoric period, which is what the censors fixed on when their initial objection wasn't flying. But it was a minor point, and required a level of fact checking that other books in the library were simply not subjected to. I'm reminded again of my old non-apocryphal tale of a librarian who didn't purchase the graphically illustrated sex-ed book Show Me! because "it didn't have an index." That was the excuse, not the reason.