This month has been an extra-special zenith for authors getting mad over negative reviews and online comments and behaving badly—although Kathleen Hale, who apparently resorted to stalking her online detractor, really takes the book-revenge cake. (Gentle PSA to writers seeking publication: DO NOT DO THAT.) Paul Constant over at our sister paper The Stranger wrote many more words on this topic than I care to (focusing on Hale and Margo Howard), and all aspiring authors should read them before it’s too late:

Howard, who is clearly obsessed with these negative reviewers, ultimately decides that these anonymous reviewers aren’t worth the trouble, since “a Pulitzer winner for biography found [Howard’s] book ‘an excellent companion,’ a MacArthur genius grant award winner compared me to Oscar Wilde in our ‘shared ability to be wise and outrageous at the same time,’ and a longtime Vanity Fair writer said I was today’s Nancy Mitford.” Say what you will about Nancy Mitford and Oscar Wilde, but I’m fairly certain neither of those authors would publish a piece of autofellatio as egregious and unaware of its own pretentiousness as Howard’s.

So, listen. Don’t follow Hale and Howard’s examples. Or if you’ve decided you’re going to go ballistic over a negative review, at least follow the example of Stephan J. Harper, the author of a self-published Venice-set murder mystery starring teddy bears. Harper wrote a review of his own book from the perspective of one of the characters from the book and then taunted the writer of a tepid review for months by quoting his own book in the comment section of the review and demanding that he be acknowledged as a modern-day Fitzgerald and/or Keats. What does Harper have over Hale and Howard? Commitment. Hale and Howard transformed their internal traumas into delusional think-pieces. Harper, at least, dared to display his naked ambition for everyone to see, while the other two tried to couch their unhinged actions in the guise of reasonable actions. If you’re going to ruin your career by whining about the mean kids on the playground, you might as well become the Tommy Wiseau of Literary Self-Defensiveness.

I think this is brilliant advice. Please read all of it here if you are a writer. You may thank me later.

I would add only this one weird caveat: Sometimes, a response to a negative review ends up being an essay about something totally different, a nicely done essay (not an onerous thinkpiece, mind you, because AAAGGGGHHHHH MY EYES) that could exist independently of the negative review that spurred it along. One of these essays is Lauren Slater’s old but wonderful “One Nation Under the Weather,” in which a negative review from the NY Times‘ Janet Maslin serves as the basis for a much broader discussion of the purpose of writing about illness*. Which is to say, Slater isn’t trying to defend herself because that reviewer was So Wrong, but actually uses a reviewer’s slight as an opportunity to answer questions about her work that have zero things to do with Janet Maslin. Slater comes to surprising conclusions about the function of the illness memoir in modern society—and that’s about much more than Janet Maslin or Lauren Slater.

There’s also this, when Slater tries to contact Maslin at the Times before realizing it will do no good:

I hear Janet’s phone ring once, twice. I imagine her desk, with my book on it, the margins marked up. Click click. “You call is being answered by Audex,” I hear, and then a pregnant pause, and then what I know is Ms. Maslin’s voice saying, “Janet Maslin is busy right now.” I am taken aback by Janet’s voice. I am surprised by its sound, soft, tentative in its tone, a voice without the vim and vigor of her muscular writing style. She must be short. I am shocked to think that Janet Maslin might be short, and that she has such a human sound.

Reviewers are (tiny) people too! If you can write an essay like “One Nation Under the Weather,” then go ahead and respond to negative reviews. You’ll be doing us all a favor. But please, lay off the stalking.

*I would like to take this opportunity to give a shout-out to PNW writer Elissa Washuta, who recommended this essay when I interviewed her.