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Alan Jacobs on the perils of our information age:
My own view, as someone who has written negative reviews and been on the receiving end of them, is that if you want to put your thoughts before the public and be paid for it, you simply have to accept, as part of the deal, that some people won't like your writing. When your response to a negative review is to shout for all the world to hear that the reviewer is an "idiot," or, worse yet, you tell the reviewer directly that "I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make" -- well, you simply give the impression that you are full to overflowing with preening self-regard.Of course it hurts to have a book you've slaved over slammed or dismissed. And in those cases there's nothing wrong with letting off steam with your family or friends. I think "dismissed" is probably worse than "slammed": among the responses to my books, the one that most bothered me was Adam Gopnik's cursory kiss-off in The New Yorker of my biography of C. S. Lewis, and I may have made the odd unkind comment about Gopnik over pints with my buddies. However, I can honestly say that I do not hate Adam Gopnik and do not want to see his career destroyed. And more important, I didn't share my every uncharitable thought with the whole world. Some websites may be disappearing, but this much is for sure: if you've said anything online that really, really embarrasses you, it'll be available forever.
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