A new study published last month in the academic journal Nature found that reviews on websites such as Amazon and Yelp have a "positivity problem", whereby the majority of reviewers award four or five-star ratings despite leaving more detailed negative commentaries underneath the ratings. As an antidote to the hype, the researchers recommend that people pay more attention to the specifics within the commentaries rather than the ratings themselves.
Who better than the American author John Green to discuss the fault in our stars? In the introduction to his new book The Anthropocene Reviewed, Green says that the five-star scale is largely a product of technological advances; the written word "review" can prove difficult for artificial intelligences, whereas star ratings are ideal. He goes on to talk about "the sudden everywhereness" of the five-star reviewing scale on the internet which led him to the idea of applying the scale to a random selection of topics for a podcast, the critically acclaimed The Anthropocene Reviewed on which this book is based.
For each of the 44 reviews within the book – topics range from Canada geese to teddy bears, CNN to Super Mario Kart – Green gives a written commentary, veering off topic frequently and spectacularly, in a style that recalls the late great journalist AA Gill, but always concluding with a star rating that summarises his views. Sometimes the rating is delivered in earnest, elsewhere there is an archness of tone, heightened by the repetitive format of each chapter. Green understands the one-dimensional quality of the rating system, but he knows how to use it to his advantage.
Throughout the book, the scale works to give cohesion and suspense, as the reader anticipates the result at the end of the written commentary. It is a cleverly interactive device. At times I found myself nodding in agreement with ratings for things I’ve never experienced (the Academic Decathlon, the movie Harvey, viral meningitis). Elsewhere, having been wholly convinced by Green’s paean to Diet Dr Pepper – “an exceptionally minor vice, and for whatever reason, I’ve always felt like I need a vice” – I was moderately aggrieved that in the end, it only received a four-star rating.
Green is the bestselling novelist of books such as Paper Towns, The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down. He has twice been a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and is also well known for his many online video projects, including Vlogbrothers and the educational channel Crash Course. He lives with his family in Indianapolis (which gets a four-star rating in a lovely ode to community spirit in middle America).
Green’s skills as a novelist and communicator are put to good use in The Anthropocene Reviewed, his first non-fiction book. He blends the personal and political with ease. Many of the reviews work as jumping off points for memoiristic writing that deals sensitively and viscerally with topics that range from bullying to depression to obsessive compulsive behaviour. The result is a moving, entertaining and mind-expanding collection that looks at the role of the individual in the world at large.
The Anthropocene is defined as the current geological age in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. This is despite the fact that the planet is 4.5 billion years old and humankind a mere 250,000. To give the reader a sense of scale, Green uses the memorable analogy of a calendar year, where “the first life on Earth emerges around February 25 … [and] homo sapiens aren’t part of the story until December 31 at 11:48 pm”. Basically, our species is like the drunk guest who arrives late to the party and commandeers the music. Over the course of his reviews, Green makes clear the damage done by human beings, and so often in the name of progress.
Whether focused on small or profound matters, the reviews are connected by the author's infectious curiosity and the unique worldview he applies to his topics.
Green has a Gladwell-esque ability to explain complex phenomena to the masses. The broad and seemingly random scope of his book also bears comparison to the writings of Bill Bryson. Green's sense of humour and eye for life's absurdities bring lightness to difficult and sometimes harrowing topics.
On the delights and difficulties of fatherhood (particularly as someone with mental health issues), he says, “I am extremely happy that my children are no longer three, and yet to look at their little hands from those early artworks is to be inundated with a strange, soul-splitting joy”.
Unique worldview
On the gruelling, relentless bullying he experienced as a child: “There’s a certain way I talk about the things I don’t talk about. Maybe that’s true for all of us. We have ways of closing off the conversation so that we don’t ever get directly asked what we can’t bear to answer.”
Whether focused on small or profound matters, the reviews are connected by the author’s infectious curiosity and the unique worldview he applies to his topics. It is a book packed with knowledge and information – air-conditioning usage is expected to triple over the next 30 years, a popular football anthem comes from musical theatre, the Canada goose has “a song like a dying balloon and a penchant for attacking humans”. There is a treasure trove of trivia within the covers, mixed with deeper and more troubling insights on everything from the human urge to win, the author’s growing ambivalence to the internet, to his view that, “everything ends, or at least everything humans have thus far observed ends”.
The book is further bolstered by Green's love of language and reading, with quotes from Sarah Dessen, Susan Sontag and Wordsworth among others. Though the intertextual references often hark to times past – Wordsworth's poem that begins, "The world is too much with us; late and soon" – the backdrop is the pandemic and the anxiety it produced in Green. The Anthropocene Reviewed is very much a book of the moment, which is to say timely and compelling. I suspect I won't be the only critic to end the review the following way. Nevertheless, I give The Anthropocene Reviewed five stars.
