Prime example: Carrie Gress’ response to a negative review of her book in Word on Fire.

First of all, I find it a bit gauche to respond to negative book reviews, and I say that as an author. People are allowed to not like your book. (But that’s my personal preference; I can totally understand the benefit that might come from an author defending their work in a back-and-forth).

But the real weird part is the way she calls Leah’s article, and multiple other articles, an “attack”. Your book was poorly written and poorly argued: people said so. That’s not an attack. That’s cultural criticism. I thought the right hated cancel culture? I thought they believed in the marketplace of ideas? I thought they were open to debate and interesting thoughts and all that jazz? It was a book review. It was thoughtful, fair, and interesting. You can disagree with it. You can have different tastes. That’s fine! But it was not an attack!