Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Harriet in Turbo Mode

The Bernie Madoff of Amazon reviewing -- I'm talking of Harriet Klausner of course -- has posted no less than 108 reviews today (the day's not over yet). No, you haven't misread: it is one hundred and eight. Somewhat redundantly, I'm sure, let me add that it was not after a couple of years' silence that she did this: her previous batch is but a couple of days old.

One of the blurbs is titled suburb romantic fantasy (meaning "superb" I think), which gives extra weight to the theory Mr Fleisig proposed a while ago: that Harriet reviews are really dictated on tape and then sent to be transcribed to the Third World somewhere, where the transcribers make these phonetically plausible intepretation errors. The resulting "reviews" are then posted directly, without human oversight (a spell checker would let the "suburb" through since it's a valid word... well, I mean to say, spell-checker would, if Harriet used it, which it is obvious from her usual style that she doesn't.

Anyway, I think a 108-review batch is something of a rarity: I do remember a 98 one, but going over a hundred is an achievement even for such a great reviewer as Harriet Klausner (who, let me remind the reader, herself claims to read only (ahem) two books a day...

3 comments:

STepper said...

Please don't compare Harriet Klausner with Bernie Madoff. As he commits his frauds he looks dapper and stylish. And, apparently he can read and spell.

Shame on you for insulting Bernie Madoff.

Malleus said...

Well, maybe Harriet is dapper and stylish too, how do we know :-) . I'd have to agree with you on writing and spelling though... I do think there's something in common between the two, like, what the hell were they thinking?

MYW said...

It seems chauvinistic to assume that the stenographers of our own country couldn't bungle these reviews just as well as an African or a Chinese.