In this piece about a new book on the Death of the [literary] Critic, Salon’s sub-editor is doing what sub-editors do, I guess, posing questions which are more loaded than the ones its writers choose to answer:
In the age of blogging, great critics appear to be on life support. Salon’s book reviewers discuss snobbery, how to make criticism fun and the need for cultural gatekeepers.
Has the role of the professional critic become obsolete in an age of book clubs, celebrity endorsements and blogs?
And Salon’s own critics - Louis Bayard and Laura Miller - dispose of the blogosphere question in quick order:
The problem with arguing for cultural gatekeepers is that, if you’re a professional critic, you inevitably look self-serving — “Hey, that’s my job!” — and yes, elitist — “Don’t try this at home, guys.” I myself don’t have any particular training or qualifications to be a reviewer, other than my own experience as a reader and writer, so I feel silly arguing that someone else isn’t qualified to deliver an opinion. And believe it or not, I’ve learned things from Amazon reviews, from letters pages, from literary blogs, from all sorts of non-traditional outlets. The quality of writing is certainly variable, but then so is the quality of traditional journalism.
Speaking personally, I’ve really enjoyed the recent book threads on LP, and I don’t think anyone writing them or on them thinks we’re trying to usurp the professional skills of criticism or trying to act as “cultural gatekeepers”.
The rest of the discussion is really interesting, and I’d rather you read it than I summarised it, but I do have a couple of observations about transposing these discussions to the Australian scene, and a suggestion.
(1) I’m not sure that literary criticism in Australia - that is, literary criticism in popular media (including “broadsheet” journalism and public broadcasting) has ever really had that clhose a relationship to the academy. Similarly, my layperson’s impression is that there’s not a huge meshing between academia and the culture of literary festivals or even publishing. Obviously there are linkages and influences, but I think for a whole range of reasons the academy generally has had less interface with the public sphere than in America.
(2) The biggest threat to lit-crit in Australia seems to me to be the commercialisation of newsprint space in the media - even so-called “high brow” papers being much more inclined to cut column inches devoted to books unless they have marketing tie-ins or advertising space justifying them.
Hence, the suggestion. If there are similar concerns in Australia among the community of professional reviewers and academics (and I don’t know if there are), wouldn’t it be a neat idea to take the ethos of Australian Book Review into a new space - a much deeper online presence? I’m sure it would be possible to design a business model to make that work, and expand its readership, and no lack of web 2.0 folks willing and able to lend a hand in doing so!
Elsewhere: There’s a very interesting riff off this thread (intertwined with discussion of the Henson brouhaha) from Jason Wilson at gatewatching.
From the article:
Well yes. That’s not an argument, that’s just firing up a browser and using your eyes.
Agreed about the limited role of the academy in Australian public reviewing. Seems to me that in the context of reviewing in the twentieth century in Australia the university system functioned, parallel to the system of apprenticeships in journalism and publishing, as a transmitter of manners and norms of authorly/editorial behaviour. Now, that’s good, but as anyone who’s read an eminent writer make baby-steps into the quicker, crueller blogosphere, the critical difference isn’t skill, or quality, or content, but tone. Interacting with readers and writers on the internet demands a level of intimacy that also requires thicker skin on the part of reviewer and author, not to mention the drive-by commenter.
[cough] Remember the Sophie Masson affair. [cough]
The interesting thing that I find about the publications who’ve so far tried to go down the internet route without trying to change the manners of their print-schooled writers—I’m thinking of New Matilda in particular—have so far failed to produce intelligent audience response just because of the unwillingness of most of the reviewers and writers to engage with commenters.
That’s spot on, I think, Liam. The other problem NM has in that regard is that those writers like me who are used to comments threads would prefer to do the commnents thread thing at our own joints - the culture of commenting not really having been developed at NM. It’s also a matter of having to respond on more than one site! I think that people contemplating going down this route should give as much serious thought to the community aspects of web 2.0 publishing as well as the quality of the writers/writing, and in fact understand that the two are entwined, as you say. Developing and fostering interaction on the web is a skill and an art and work! It doesn’t just happen when you enable comments - far from it.
I do love these articles, how they never get people who seem to, you know, get the fantabulous new intertubes thingy. I read it about a weeek ago, so forgive me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t one of the critics say something to the effect of, “But I don’t really read blogs and what not, certainly not literary ones.”
Pffft. Something that’s wrong with both blogs and the internet: an op-ed by someone who doesn’t really know anything about the topic they’re writing.
Alas, I think, typical Salon and also typical establishment to a degree. God forbid, they should ask a ,i>reader, someone with an investment in both forms, for an opinion. Better to venerate (or the opposite) literary critics/the smart set or bloggers - as if they can’t or don’t (or shouldn’t overlap). And they only ever want to hear from people who promote that view.
This whole debate seems to be framed around a somewhat plaintive cry of “it’s not fair”, that people should be reading, that reading criticism - like cod liver oil - is good for us, and that a paper is both a measure of prestige and importance - so it’s good to get our medicine in a silver goblet.
I - avid reader though I am - disagree with all of that. Reading, and criticism, can be good, sure. But not by default. The place of something in the paper is no indicator of anything really - Family Circus and astrology are in the paper. Hardly prestigious, important or in the case of the former well-read surely?
People look back at the days of the fifties and their well padded supplements as a hey day - for criticism, maaaaaaybe, but for books no way?
Books were read, sure, but hardly any were published! As a reader, your choice was limited, and in the absence of a well-oiled marketing machine, difficult to find what you’re really after (It’s Wilbur Smith meets D.H Lawrence on a cruise with Greg Egan and Salman Rushdie’s making the fondues!). So you had to work harder to enjoy it anyway, hence the criticism.
Furthermore, all that reading came at the expense not just of variety of books, but also of the great television and wide variety of cinema now at our fingertips.
Finally, I think it means signals the continuing compromise that Modernism is making with its successor. Truthiness is now a quality, in addition (or lieu) of an endpoint.
Sorry, big screed.
I’m not sure whether I disagree or not with you, patrickg, but I certainly find Salon reliably good reading, establishment or not. Likewise—say—the web edition of the NY Review of Books, which has made little if any concession to the internet at all.
I think I’d add to my comment above by saying that I’d want to avoid a primitive Web-good print-bad dichotomy. In the McLuhanite sense, both are exceptionally cool mediums, highly defined by the reader. Making users/readers part of the visiting experience may have a result for business success by ventures, but I’m not convinced that it’s either a good or an evil in itself.
Yes patrickg, Liam, Mark
Readers have always swapped opinions and books. The monthly “book clubs” (supported by the CAE) were running strongly in Melbourne from the 1950’s; when Australian publishing was soooo different from today. Public libraries have always flourished.
Schoolkids read novels at school and many become lifelong readers.
The concept I don’t accept is “the cultural gatekeepers”. They may guard the gate, but the whole fence the gate is built into was torn down years ago, and the herds are stampeding through. Watch a new generation of Jane Austen readers spring up like grass after heavy rain - “What? from a Television Show you say? Heaven forfend! But these people simply haven’t read the basic critical literature, my dear!! It would Never Have Happened in My Day.”
Well, keep guarding the gate, next to the ivory tower and the publisher’s suite. If it makes you feel better, I’ll send you some photos of the check-point at the Brandenburg Gate, and that good, sturdy Berlin Wall that the German cultural commissars had the good sense to construct circa 1961. You just keep guarding that gate, OK? Everything’s going simply superbly.
alles gut!!
ganz gut!!
patrickg, I wonder if you’d care to elucidate what you mean by “truthiness” in this context. Curious!
Liam, I’m normally reluctant to make value judgements about the social uses of technologies (and it’s worth remembering that the book is a technology), but here I’ll make an exception to the rule - I think there are all sorts of goodness for both readers and writers in blurring the distinctions between the two.
I would never forget, Mark.
Yes, I think there’s a definite good in sociality, and as you know, I’m definitely a fan of good-humoured internet carry-on between commenters in forums and fields. No argument with you there, or with Kim’s post.
I think the argument that this topic inevitably produces—as Ambigulous has done ambiguously and incoherently—is that the presence of internet sociality somehow makes for superior criticism and writing. People see the neologism “Web 2.0″ and somehow, suddenly, the masses are breaking down the ivory towers’ walls to get at the files of the literary Stasi? I disagree; some opinions simply are worth normatively more than others. Quality and sociality are both public goods, but they’re entirely separate public goodsd.
A Jane Austen scholar does appreciate Austen on more levels than the average non-scholar, no matter what is said by lay Austen enthusiasts. Roy Masters does know more about journalism and sport than the average illiterate chauvinist sports-forum poster, despite their superior embrace of bulletin board technology.
That the internet is liberating for ignorant, mouthy, banally sarcastic commenters does not change the quality of our cultural productions.
Agreed Liam about the viability of both. I find Salon reliably thought provoking, but often because the articles I read (and I don’t read it religiously, so this could very well be more of a comment about the articles that get linked to) often tend to buy into these somewhat false dichotomy type arguments, where readers are left to thrash it out.
Something I really *do* like about Salon is the starred comments, and the simple comment layout (shits all over Slate. Wtf is up with the fray?!).
When I said Truthiness Mark, I was reffering to Stephen Colbert’s use of the term, but at the same time the grand modernist/New Critical project of finding an endpoint, as it were, to the text; one superior interpretation.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think modernism is playing a good and popular role generally, but I see some more postmodernism, and also negativism with the way we’re thinking about books in particular. Part of this, no doubt, can be laid at the feet of marketing teams now putting out their own discourses about books/authors/genres etc. That are as (or more) persuasive as what many critics write.
Related: Former Observer Lit Editor steps down after 20 years; his thoughts on what’s changed (a little skewed towards latter day stuff imho)
And he directly answers the question, have blogs been good for books?
But here, Liam, we don’t disagree - what I’m suggesting though is that for the expert or the well-informed commentator/writer/critic, sociality and interaction can improve their knowledge base and sharpen their arguments, and for the non-expert, the same can occur. Under ideal conditions, of course, but the reality can approach the ideal type. So it’s not just for “ignorant, banally sarcastic commenters”! I think we also agree that it takes a certain disposition and form of manners for authors to benefit - including a recognition that others may know more than they - and that’s where I think the Sophie Masson thing became such a train wreck.
I’m always suspicious of people who profess theoretically to want discussion of their work and bemoan its lack (and you hear that from a lot of academics) but then who react very badly indeed when actual as opposed to imagined discussants make an appearance on stage!
Word.
Thanks patrickg, and we crossed (and you were temporarily spaminated!)… I wonder if Colbert wasn’t thinking a little about Barthes. Wouldn’t surprise me. Anyway, I’d best depart and get back to my very solitary project of thesis writing - which is designed for just four readers (one supervisor, three examiners) - more’s the pity.
But the comments Mark, the quality of the comments!
It’s a very Barthes kind of feeling, isn’t it? Ironically, I think Barthes was also a guy who used a fair degree of truthiness in regard to some of his own arguments (and I mean that in a complimentary way).
In general, I think you only have to look at the Bill Henson posts, or the sci-fi posts to see what commenting can add, one piece of criticism can effectively become hundreds, or one, giant, piece. I love it, when it works. All those horizons swarming about expanding and contracting like an animated fractal.
Yep to all of that, patrickg!
That’s why we at LP always tried from the start to stimulate and shape comments and commenting cultures rather than focusing just on posts. Anyway, thesis beckons…
Word, Patrick.
A single reviewer can’t possibly conjure up as comprehensive a picture, because firstly they (should) have a single overarching theme to hold their piece together. No such limitations in a comments thread, where everyone can happily fixate, more or less briefly, on whatever minor points they like, while major drifts and eddies and undertows and tsunamis carry on apace.
It’s certainly more of an investment in reading time, but both fun and rewarding.
I’ve recently been reading about some of the smaller literary and film magazines that thrived in Australia - as well as the small presses for translations, cultural criticism - and it seems that a lot of that died a long time before the internet was in the ascendant. A certain kind of intellectual ferment in the 70s and 80s (and I’m relying on those who were there, whose opinions may be skewed by nostalgia, although the paper trail is certainly still there in places like Gould’s on King St) that was the real ‘ground’ for MSM criticism, it cultivated enthusiasm and also potential critics. I think that there are some internet fora that are taking on this role.
I guess what I’m saying is that the particular tension created by internet criticism may not be new at all, especially in Australia, and that changes in the media landscape and the tertiary sector have made critics and academics a little forgetful as a group of how much internet interaction may resemble earlier forms, while perhaps casting a wider net.
Indeed Klaus. I’ve also heard complaints that video killed the radio star.
I think ‘giving an opinion’ is probably the single least interesting thing about reviewing. (She said, giving her opinion.) Interpretation, factual information, analysis and context all have more weight and cultural interest to them than evaluation, and are all much less a matter of personal taste. Saying loftily ‘J.K. Rowling/Solzhenitsyn/Tolkien/Whoever writes bad prose’ but being unable to give an example or explain exactly what you mean by ‘bad prose’ is something that nobody wants to read in the paper; as someone has pointed out above, there’s quite enough crap in the paper as it is.
I was once required during an Adelaide Festival to write theatre reviews giving stars out of five, and it drove me bonkers; apart from anything else I thought this kind of reductive stuff was an insult to the companies putting on the shows. Ditto the ABC’s David and Margaret — and it appalls me how much clout their star ratings have with people. (Not that that is their fault, and thank God there are two of them — the difference between their responses highlights how much it is a matter of personal taste and not some edict from on high in stone.)
The book review in particular, like the sonnet, is a genre with its own set of quite specific and detailed conventions. One of the things I love about blogging about books is that I’m not required/expected/paid to stay within those conventions. That said, reader expectation dies hard: I began a recent blog post on Helen Garner’s The Spare Room by saying ‘This is not a review, it is a blog post’, and one of the comments there begins ‘This is only the third review of this book that I’ve read …’
Kim, you’re spot-on about the Australian literary community and the academy: generally speaking that relationship has always been tense and distant. You’re also right about the commercialisation of space, and that has always been true — if anything it’s better than it used to be. Regarding Australian Book Review, I get the feeling that the online energies may have fallen behind a bit there; it’s probably something as simple as their star geek moving on. It’s only a small outfit. But I could find out.
Thanks, Dr Cat, we’re from Queensland and we’re here to help ABR, as it were!
And interesting comments, folks, thanks!
Hi Liam.
suddenly, the masses are breaking down the ivory towers’ walls to get at the files of the literary Stasi?
Sorry, that’s not what I meant. Baddly expressed, I meant that ordinary folk read and enjoy books enormously, and that anyone who thinks his/her function is as a “gatekeeper”, is having a lend of themselves. They guard gates only against the timid.
Yes, some people DO know more about Austen than others; of course they do.
There’s a whole lot of reading going on, browsing of reviews. Always has been, always will be. I don’t think the internet has really had a major effect on reading habits yet, except perhaps allowing Amazon to flourish?
Of course I could be mistaken.
And finally there’s this: “That the internet is liberating for ignorant, mouthy, banally sarcastic commenters does not change the quality of our cultural productions.” Is that me? OK, fair points neatly made. And I would never wish to affect the quality. Cheers.
Sorry Ambi, an allusion to one of my pseudonymphs. No offence intended there.
No offence taken, Hussein.
Personally I prefer nymphs to pseudonymphs. Each to his own. And let’s hope Nabs doesn’t hear of this otherwise nymphe***s will get another run.
How have you spotted my ignorance? Let me count the ways. My ignorances are multitudinous; LP helps to sort out a few, but sadly only a small number.
cheers, Ambi
And in related news, Lee Siegel.
Hahahahahahaha!!
thanks Helen!
Kim, I would absolutely love to see ABR just as it is in an online, subcription-based incarnation, including a complete archive. It is a contemporaneous national conversation about books and a national treasure, and it is a national disgrace that it is only selectively archived in the Informit database (accessible through most public libraries for free, however no extra content at all is available commercially to anyone, as far as I know. Which means a helluva lot of it is not archived digitally AT ALL.)
It could be kinda expensive to have it online for free, even if a very stripped down model like the open access journal type of thing used at JASAL and AHR was adopted. I made a rather enthusiastic recommendation for this in an article I wrote for Cordite poetry mag last year, before I was fully aware of the kinds of licensing issues involved. However it’s a very valuable publication, and the digital preservation issue deserves the Government’s immediate attention.
If newspapers do drop the bundle on reviewing it will be a goddamned shame, because there is a whole subgroup of readers out there who come to a certain kind of readership simply because one day they picked up the paper, and read a review about a book. I wrote a half-baked article about this and have shelved it because I can’t make up my mind whether online reviews are a good idea or not. They don’t bridge the digital divide, when all’s said and done. There will always be a need for some hard copy reviewing, at least until people stop reading papers ( and having two daughters who have left home and stopped buying the paper has made me realise that day will come). But I would hate to think something I wrote supporting online content helped the MSM to pull the plug on their book sections. That would be a nasty thing to live with.
I’d also like to see more online content, including reviews, from all the journals because they rock. And papers should link to ‘em. Do it for the country, guys.
PC - How does interpretation differ from opinion for the purposes of literary criticism? It seems to me all criticism is subjective, inextricably linked with personal taste. One does expect the critic to be exceptionally cultivated in this regard but in the end it boils down to Beavis and Butt-head’s Critique of the Judgement of Taste: I like things that don’t suck and I don’t like things that suck.
>
I can’t see how the blogging is possibly the death of literary or other kinds of criticism. In fact I’d argue it’s potentially the saviour of it. When I was a film critic there was a fair amount of inferred pressure to essentially be an extension of the PR process. I wonder how the film critic for The Face magazine would fare these days. His reviews were the most ascerbic I’ve read, but not mindless canning. He really understood cinema. He was just highly critical and liked almost nothing. It’s a bit disconcerting to be sure to read a review that makes you feel like a moron for liking a movie but… it makes you reflect on your own taste.
>
That said I’ve read any number of inane reviews by myopic twits who were in the john the day they handed out understanding anything that wasn’t absolutely literal. Eyes Wide Shut wins the prize for the film to precipitate the largest deluge of fuzz-brained twaddle.
>
If anything blogging allows more people to get in a look see. Certainly this willl lead to a lot more numbskullery but it must also certainly give a voice to persons who have the capacity to write good or even outstanding criticism but who lack the attributes or the volition to navigate their way in the Industry.
OPINION: This book is crap.
INTERPRETATION: This book’s badly-researched setting in the darkest days of the Second World War has the unfortunate effect of X. The ill-conceived interaction of the characters suggests Y, or possibly Z. The author has no control over her narrative point of view, which means that the A is incoherent and the B cannot be fathomed. Etc., possibly ad infinitum. Opinion is about the reviewer/blogger; interpretation is about the work.
Does it? I don’t think it does. Again, that is a statement about Beavis and/or Butthead, not about the work of art.
Adrien, I should add that I agree with you that in the end all criticism is subjective. But on the one hand there is well-informed, prepared-to-argue-its-case subjectivity (by no means always shown by professional critics, and often shown by bloggers; look at Laura’s terrific post on Bill Henson, to which there is a link on the Henson thread) … and then there is Beavis-and-Butthead subjectivity, of the kind shown by my sister when she insists that her gut is telling her something or other, and I remind her what her gut is full of.
PC - My Beavis and Butt-head riff is merely a way of reducing taste to what it is essentially. You illustration of the difference between opinion and interpretation is simply: my opinion says this is crap, my interpretation tells you why.
>
There is to be sure a difference between the cultivated and those not so much. Ironically one’s own learning can impede enjoyment as well as augment. At the end of the day it really does boil down to Beavis and Butt-head’s formula. I like all sorts of stuff, esoteric and vulgar, haute couture and pret a porter. There’s no intellectual justification for most of it, and I don’t see the reason to justify it that way in any event.
Adrien, hardly any criticism outside the capsule review is evaluative - it’s almost all descriptive
” I agree with you that in the end all criticism is subjective” - those of us raised to bow to the authority of Dame Leonie would find this an alarming statement!
Er, yes. You asked what I thought the difference was, and that is indeed what I said. Most of the ‘why’ is descriptive, as Laura has pointed out.
Sorry about the feral blockquotes there!
Not only feral, I think they may be nesting.
I’ve written a fairly harsh criticism of this article, focusing on how the participants in the discussion misrepresent James Wood…deals with credibility of bloggers versus ‘capital C’ critics…
http://nigelbeale.com/?p=891 if you care to read it.
From Nigel’s linked essay.
“What kind of ignoramus admires criticism solely for the way in which it is written? Even if William Shakespeare himself were to criticize War and Peace, if his arguments are What kind of ignoramus admires criticism solely for the way in which it is written? Even if William Shakespeare himself were to criticize War and Peace, if his arguments are fallacious, I’m in no way going to stop reading Tolstoy., I’m in no way going to stop reading Tolstoy.”
But on the other hand, even if Bill W’s arguments were by your lights fallacious, would that still stop you from reading, podulating on and quite possibly enjoying his critique, even if you disagreed with its sentiments and findings?
Just because most literary criticism is customarily an and/or exercise, it shouldn’t stop you from an ‘either/bit of both but not all of it’ response when reviewing reviews.
And I reckon criticism wise, Bill W. could have torn Leo T. a new outlet given half a chance. Pointing out that while the players in War and Peace and Anna K. were pitilessly and brilliantly lit from the outside, their inner lighting never quite illuminated those around them the way Bill could do - even with minor characters stabbed in the arras.
But hey, whaddya I know about pencrazy 19th century Russian aristocrats - or émigré lepodopterists for that matter?
Though I would pay good money to some upmarket time travel company to join Pushkin and Dostoevsky on a binge weekend in Vegas.
emigre lepidopterists indeed: what a marvel he was and is, PC. Humbert was a blundering moth caught in the net and the spotlight. Can you give me a tip on some good critical work on Vlad the Impaler Nabakov? I still think “LOL” is first rate, though the NSW Police would have had no trouble at all locking up the author. What a strange and wonderful book. Into the mind of the predator, who seems blinded by his lust and outdone by an even more devious but almost silent interlocutor. What a road trip!
Horrid subject matter. And yet a hymn to innocence. The early 60’s film (incl Peter Sellers!!) was a pretty fair adaptation I thought.
I agree that good criticism lays out how the author has operated, and where weaknesses or strengths lie; it may even lead the audience across to a related work if an interestying comparison or contrast is mentioned.
onya PC!
I know you were addressing PC, Ambigulous, but if you’d asked me for some good Nabokov-related criticism I’d point first to Nabokov’s own book _Lectures on Literature_, reconstructed from N’s notes for a lecture course he gave at Cornell in the 1940s. It’s not criticism of VN, obviously, but it’s very good as an insight into what he valued about literautre and how he understood it. OOP of course, but used copies are around. Edited by Fredson Bowers.
Not out of print, I don’t think: you can buy it new on Amazon, from Harvest books.
I spent the first part of the year reading Nabokov. I’ve struggled to find any critical treatment of his work that really brought anything fundamentally new out of it for me, though with the complex later work - like ‘Ada’ - annotated versions reveal a great deal if you don’t happen to be as well read as Mr Nabokov was himself.
Thanks Laura!
I don’t mind if you listen in on my chatting…. thanks again. I have a copy of his “Lectures on Russian Literature”. Thanks Klaus, too. Laura, and Klaus: what’s your assessment of VN?
cheerio
Having now read most of the novels written in English, I am very enthusiastic about VN. It is the attention to detail and the beautifully constructed sentences that I most admire at the level of craft. A lot of writers are very verbal, but Nabokov is attentive to visual detail, and also to the importance of sounds. His scenes are punctuated perfectly by sounds: one of the best examples is the motel sounds in Lolita - flushing toilets, barely audible conversation.
He also creates gloriously unsympathetic characters (although Pnin is somewhat sympathetic), and here also the detail and nuance is where they become captivating, and through what is withheld from us. I read a lot of writing, especially recent writing, where the characters are not convincing because there is a sense that the author knows only as much as we do. Nabokov writes as though he knows everything, every detail: he is good at creating the impression of complexity, even in characters whose dominant traits are all too obvious and unlikable.
Of course I mean “most of the novels first written by VN in English”!
I haven’t read the early work.
PC: “Saying loftily ‘J.K. Rowling/Solzhenitsyn/Tolkien/Whoever writes bad prose’ but being unable to give an example or explain exactly what you mean by ‘bad prose’ is something that nobody wants to read in the paper;”
A fair enough claim, and if I ever catch someone putting such claptrap in the paper, by Great Herriman’s Ghost I’ll give him what-for. But I certainly didn’t put it in the paper. This is a conversation; or else, if it turns out actually to be a newspaper after all (and how would I ever find out?), I suppose I’ll be pretty durn embarrassed.
As it’s a lovely temperate night, and excellent weather for sitting up talking into the wee hours about this and that, coffee, brandy and cigars will be taken on the patio. Newspaper reviews and scholarly dissertations on the other hand, will be written and/or defended as far, far away from me, as is possible.
This world being already so caked with gunk that it’s rather a poor use of living to dwell any further upon precise definitions of bad prose, I’ll just leave yez with a little taste of what I consider to be good writing instead. (though in fairness it isn’t prose. But if more prose writers read poetry… but I digress.) This came to mind a propos of a part of this comment that I have since edited out, so it may seem like a non sequitur, for which I apologize. But then again, the celebrated Mister Jim requires no real apologies… Ahem, from memory (forgive an error or two)… and five six seven eight–
“So much to see,
and yet all I really see
is that owl, its bulk
troubling the twilight.
I’ll soon
forget it;
what is there
I have not forgot?
Or one day will forget:
this garden,
the breeze in stillness,
even the words,
Korean Mums.”
– James Schuyler, “Korean mums”
Laura -
Sorry? “Capsule review”?
.
PC -
If in pursuing a deep cultivation in order to better appreciate some form you become jaded it’s ironic. You intended to increase your pleasure and by endeavouring to do so ended up getting less. I had this experience post-graduation where, having a head stuffed with various theorems as you do, I found it hard to ‘just watch a movie’ or ‘just read a book’ without subjecting it first to extensive critical evaluation. It took me a while to get to the stage where I could just read, or watch, or listen for pleasure.
>
Hence my Beavis and Butthead riff: in the end it is (or in my view should be) about what gives you pleasure. To be sure it isn’t entirely the case in articulated canons of taste. Many of us edit our tastes according to the perceived views of others. The first time this happened to me was in my first band - a No Wave punk type effort. Liking stuff like Talking Heads was out - too commercial. Contrawise any band that was essentially unlistenable was cool because not commercial. There’s of course the mainstream retort to this that says any artists that doesn’t make piles of cash is crap.
>
Many distinctive artists are the ones who ignore conventional notions of good taste: think Quentin Tarantino. His ouevre is essentially pastiche collages of high art (eg la nouvelle vague) and trash (blaxploitation, ‘b’ pictures etc).
Thanks Klaus.
j_p_z, yer writes a loverly prose yerself, Mister ‘iggins. Ya thought it were a chat and it turned into a school detention with an acerbic teacher? That’s the thing about this ‘ere newspaper, it can change just as quick as you might reach fer yer cigar, matey. Turn the page and yer’s in the sports pages only they’re blood sports and you’re the quarry.
watch out, some geezer’s creepin’ up behind yer!
A very interesting riff off this thread (intertwined with discussion of the Henson controversy) from Jason Wilson:
http://gatewatching.org/2008/05/28/criticism-matters-critics-dont-apologies-to-r-greenslade/
Nice. Elegant, in fact. Point taken.
What, so feeling pleasure is the criterion for cultural judgement? You hedonist, you.
Ambigulous, if you thought that was acerbic you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. (Or, if I may borrow a formation from JPZ’s national idiom for a moment, you don’t know from acerbic.)
LooniesPeople don’t call me Miss Hathaway for nothing.Could someone in charge please cross out the word ‘Loonies’ up there for me, which I have clearly failed to do properly myself? Serves me right for trying to make an HTML joke.
Done!
I think there was a strong correlation during the 1950s and ’60s, when the academy was sought as an authority. Patrick White might have been marketed as an “Aussie writer”, but it was Leonie Kramer who put the case for taking him seriously - in the academy and in the media. During that time Peter Coleman and Donald Horne played very important roles across both spheres.
touche, Miss Hathaway!
ah wuzz jest joshin’ wid j_p_z, nevah meant ter cased no dispersions or nuttin’; shucks
Guilty.
.
>
Cheers for the complement, appreciated.
reading for pleasure? it’ll never catch on
“If in pursuing a deep cultivation in order to better appreciate some form you become jaded it’s ironic.”
Indeed, Heh, etc, etc, (spot the reference)
On the other hand, acquiring some critical understanding of the work and/or genre can add extra flavouring to your appreciation.
Eg: that bloke that Klaus K just mentioned (who’s name escapes me for the moment) is a marvelous and evocative writer that anyone can just pick up and get into if they get into it. But some knowledge of European and then US literature, and the place and contribution of both the emigré and critic within their evolving canons, is like a dash of Tabasco sauce on your omelette.
Or like how knowing something of Funkadelic’s back catalogue helps you cope with getting infested by witty little Bernie Worrell self-parodying earworms.
And while you may come to such an understanding yourself, a good critic can make a good jungle guide here.
But as always when it comes to art, one size does not all fit all. Sometimes you need to get a bigger head yourself, other times the work could do with some shrinkage before you try it on. The worst critics bring out the tape measure, the best get you thinking about how to frame the the difference between a mirror and a window.
It’s a paradox. Ooh, it must be Chesterton quote time then!
“To set a measure to praise and blame, and to support the classics against the fashions”
Ah, but what if the classics are the fashions?
*Consults ABC TV timetable for latest round of Jane Austen adaptations*
“…but what if the classics are the fashions?”
‘zactly. Chesterton knew what he was doing when he floated that apparently limpid observation. The drunken old bugger was as cunning as a fox when it came to leaving sticky notes for posterity.