Being a Kindly *Book* Reviewer -- An author's Material Conditions?

So, returning back to James Gifford's blog (click here  for my previous thankful post on his comments about blind peer reviewers). This time, he's discussing book reviewers, which, needless to say, as a reviews editor , I found highly interesting.

Overall, Gifford offers some pretty standard, but good, commentary, but I was particularly intrigued by his remarks that book reviewers should always keep in mind an author's material conditions -- that is, the job and tenure pressures that affect the overall strength of a monograph. I quote:

. . . . fast research during the most pressure-filled years of an academic career . . .  written amidst new course preps and the potentially prickly entrance to the profession. . . . .

This is to say, the reviewer really cannot and should not overlook the nature and needs of the book. Books that fulfill career requirements simply cannot be read the same way as those that come after tenure and therefore without the same material demands on the author.

Alas, I'll have to disagree vehemently (if respectfully) with this view point. In the life of the mind, the focus should always be the ideas themselves. In my freshman writing courses, it's okay to emphasize process over product. People are learning; they need a learning curve. But intellectual discourse is the big leagues, and it strikes me as a profound disservice to the field to give grown-up academics an "A" for effort.

Because, why? Who does it help, really, in the end? Although one should always remember that books are written by real live human beings, people you might someday meet at a conference, being less than honest with a book's quality (in due deference to "material conditions") wastes the time of those other academics with limited time allotments for reading secondary literature, which is vaster than empires and more slow. If a book is worthless or deeply flawed, there are diplomatic ways to phrase that, but reviewers absolutely need to tell us. We need to know.

In other words,  judge the words on the page -- not what the book might or could have been. Because pulling punches just doesn't accomplish anything.

Anyway, there's no telling that a book would have been better had better material conditions applied. This is the same fallacy beginning creative writers often fall into. They wait for inspiration or "ideal circumstances" that may never come, or that, if they do come, don't actually improve the prose or the narrative. Writers write . . . so you better damn well get writing. If you're bad, get good. If you're good, get better. Get over one's hurdles and self-pity (and we're all susceptible, no exceptions), but just do it.