A friend, a nonwriter, retired after a distinguished career,
asked me to read his screenplay because I am a published author.
It was terrible: poorly written with no plot. Worse, it was
clearly autobiographical, abounding in self-aggrandizement and
intimate sexual details. To be kind, I told him merely that it
was too personal. Recently he met a literary agent. I fear he
will share this document with the agent and be humiliated. Must I
now tell him my full opinion? -- Name Withheld, Arizona
If we rejected every work of fiction marred by vanity or
cringe-worthy self-exposure, miles of shelf space would be left
vacant at Barnes & Noble. And as a commercial matter, it is
curious to discourage your friend from writing about himself in
an era when memoirs proliferate like kudzu, which had sex with
some other kudzu, to which it was not married. But it is in
neither your literary judgment nor your commercial savvy that you
most failed your friend -- and fail him you did -- but in your
lack of candor. If he requested your honest opinion (and not just
praise, another possibility), you should have provided it, as
gently as possible. To be misleading is not to be kind.
It's no picnic telling a friend that you don't think much of
his work, but you agreed to give him your professional
assessment, and that's what you should have done. With tact and
insight, you can strive to make your critique impersonal --
comment on the writing, not the writer -- and useful, so he can
return to his desk with a sense of how to begin revising.
It is not too late to offer your friend a more thorough
appraisal, although you need not do so for the reason you put
forth. Agents are used to reading drivel and responding without
sadism. (If only to minimize the weeping and the punching.) Your
friend may be disappointed by the encounter, but if the agent is
a skilled practitioner, your friend will not be humiliated.
I was on a university search committee when a former student
of mine applied for a job. She got a quite negative reference
letter from a professor known in his country (but not here) for
churlish behavior. I told the student not to use him as a
reference again. She told him that she knew his letter was
negative. He then complained to my university about a breach of
confidentiality. But I did not divulge the content of the letter,
only cautioned my student. Isn't that OK? -- Name Withheld,
Berkeley, Calif.