Fake Reviews

The mind boggles. Well, not really, it doesn't. A well known author (no I’m not giving links) writes fake reviews of his books and posts them on Amazon. He gets caught. Not to be undone, other authors (again, no links) hire a company to write fake reviews and post them all across the Internet. The New York Times reveals this. The fake reviews are no doubt still available. Still other authors get their friends to write reviews and post them. Most of the reviews gush about how wonderful the book is. In fact, I’ve read one these books recently and in two words, it was not good. And that’s being charitable.

A hotel hires a PR firm to file fake reviews on TripAdvisor (again, no links). Not to be undone, a hotel offers a free drink to any guest who posts a favorable review on TripAdvisor from the hotel. Surprise, surprise, the hotel has many 5 star reviews. None of them says how expensive and awful the food in the restaurant is. Or that the review was paid for. With a drink. I hope the guests enjoyed their “free” drinks.

None of this should by now be surprising. This is business. This is the everyday world of the Internet. Everybody ought by now to know that this goes on. The story is so familiar and disappointing that it cannot even provoke real anger. It’s just some more dishonest, misleading marketing. Just more shilling. Just more commerce.

But it does present a real problem for consumers, for readers. And for writers and those who run vacation businesses.

How do you know that the reviews of my two books, Tulum and The Dream Antilles, are real?

How do you know that the posted guest reviews of our vacation rental, Nah Yaxche in Bahia Soliman near Tulum, Mexico, are real?

I can tell you this: They are real. Nobody got paid anything for writing them. Nobody was solicited to write them. Nobody received anything in exchange for them.

But forget about me. The important question here is this: can you tell that these reviews are real just from reading them? I hope you can. But I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't. After all, the sole intent of the fake reviews was to fool you and make you think they were real. So real reviews and fake ones look surprisingly alike.

A Review Of Tulum

Diane Gee writes in Wild Wild Left:

David Seth Michaels's Tulum is a read that draws you in, grinning to yourself at the sweet honesty of the workings of the author's mind. I found myself reading ever quicker as the story unfolded, not wanting to break the spell, not wanting my own reality to dare interrupt my foray into Tulum's magical hold. Yet, I neared the end, I slowed, savoring, not wanting it to end.

Set in isolated and beautiful Quintana Roo, Mexico's villages, Tulum is a journey of an un-average man in a relatively unspoiled place. It is pure Mexico, from the quirky inhabitants, to the arbitrary rules of the dog-police, to the bribes and communal sharing by its Mayan residents. His seedy past has drawn him to its isolation, a place to dream and write, yet circumstances entwine him, and suddenly his life changes drastically. You learn everything evolves, from the onslaught of touristas, to a "retired" man's new vocation.

The world of Tulum paints beautiful pictures of both the mystical and mundane parts of human existence, through the ever-suprising and imaginative voice of the narrator. Its a journey of utter honesty, from manly desires for a beautiful woman, to the temptation of profits in the seedy underworld of drug traffickers, to a spiritual journey with an unlikely and bemused mentor.

A little bit Hunter S. Thompson, a little reminiscent of Castenada, but entirely unique, Micheal's storytelling found me rapt in his story, and longing for the next installment. The writing was fresh and guileless, totally self-aware to both the glories and follies of the human mind; whether a lizard basking in the sun, or a wizard drinking tequila.

You will be amused. You will be intrigued. Mostly? You will fall in love with Tulum.

Wow!

Gabo's Life

This morning's New York Times gives us Janet Maslin's review of Gerald Martin's biography of of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It's hard to imagine a more favorable review. A brief sample, though the entire review should be read:

This intensive, assured, penetratingly analytical book will be the authoritative English-language study of Mr. García Márquez until Mr. Martin can complete an already 2,000-page, 6,000-footnote version “in a few more years, if life is kind.” He compressed that sprawling magnum opus into 545 pages (plus notes and index), a “brief, relatively compact narrative,” so it could be published “while the subject of this work, now a man past 80, is still alive and in a position to read it.” Both author and subject have been treated for lymphoma, Mr. Martin says.

That kind of bluntness runs throughout “Gabriel García Márquez: A Life,” and it is essential to the book’s success. The last thing this literary lion needed was a fawning, accommodating Boswell. Nor did he need a biographer eager to show off his own flair. When writing about Mr. García Márquez, king of the magical realists, Mr. Martin understands that it is best to stick to the facts and skip the fancy footwork.

Could any biographer have been better suited to this gargantuan undertaking? Absolutely not: Mr. Martin is the ideal man for the job. He has already written studies of 20th-century Latin American fiction; translated the work of another Latin American Nobel laureate, Miguel Ángel Asturias; and written about Latin American history. These are essential prerequisites for unraveling the labyrinthine cultural and political aspects of Mr. García Márquez’s peripatetic life. So are Mr. Martin’s demonstrable patience, wide range of knowledge and keen understanding of his subject’s worldwide literary forebears, from Cervantes to Dostoyevsky to Mark Twain.

Evidently, this is a book not to be missed.