The average reviewer’s idea of literary comment is indistinguishable from a primary school book report: summary flanked by quotation, interspersed with how the book made him feel, as if his feelings have anything at all to do with the artistic success or failure of what he’s read. They do not. … Criticism is personal and passionate, the product of severe erudition, or it is impotent and dull, the product of mere opinion.
Criticism is "personal and passionate," but a reader's feelings "have nothing at all to do with the artistic success or failure of what he's read"? Then what's he supposed to be all passionate and personal about? It's true that a review shouldn't be about the reviewer's, but they surely must figure. And is severe erudition treatable?
The endemic illusion among many reviewers is that talking about imaginative literature is a lot like talking about life. Try not to believe that. To talk about imaginative literature is to talk about art—artifice and architecture, the liturgical and the linguistic—and Epstein writes about books not through the vista of someone who has lived fully, but rather as someone who has read fully. In other words, he doesn’t make the tyro’s error of confusing art for life, even though he understands that art enhances, enriches, enlarges life.I think that Epstein, whose writing I love, also understands that art draws on life, is dependent on it, and cannot really be separated from it.
Why do critics so often deride reviewers? It must have something to do with ego and hubris. In this case, the derision is not even logical.
ReplyDelete'Criticism is personal and passionate, the product of severe erudition, or it is impotent and dull, the product of mere opinion.'
ReplyDeleteFrank, I understand your objection to the way Giraldi has put this, but his unfortunate wording doesn't really obscure his point that erudition, or at least wide and careful reading, needs to accompany the personal and passionate to produce good criticism -- or for that matter, good reviews. Just recently I again read a review in a popular online journal which started off by telling us that reviewer didn't like the narrator of The Sense of an Ending, and then went on to detail how its author could have made the narrator more palatable. Poor Julian Barnes: he obviously missed the lesson at Oxford which taught writers to create likeable characters.
Lee, who determines the erudition qualifier? Whenever the word "erudite" enters the conversation, I become suspicious of anyone who claims that quality for himself or herself. Perhaps "erudition" is the great barrier between reviewers and critics. And I have heard many who claim that the personal ought not be involved in criticism. Bunk!
DeleteRemember that this is William Giraldi, who has been angling for the role of bad boy American critic since writing that mean-spirited Alix Ohlin review (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/books/review/inside-and-signs-and-wonders-by-alix-ohlin.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) which entered similar extremist distinctions and even used almost the same dichotomy. I'm all for the honed takedown, especially when it is predicated upon a corresponding set of virtues, but Giraldi's ideals are risibly insular, not especially willing to step foot outside his rigid domain. When it's this easy to suss out a guy who doesn't read books with generosity or curiosity in mind, he's very easy not to take seriously.
ReplyDeleteEd, I haven't followed any of the Ohlin stuff, so it would be inappropriate for me to condemn a writer as 'someone who doesn't read books with generosity or curiosity in mind' without very good reason indeed.
DeleteRT, I don't see erudition as the barrier between reviewer and critic, however you choose to define the term. The difference seems to be much more one of purpose, and perhaps scope. And obviously there are critic-reviewers, reviewer-critics, and any manner of other possibilities. But I certainly admire erudition, even if you prefer to call it by another name. It's one of those qualities that are a bitch to define but fairly easy to recognise - British SF writer and critic Adam Roberts comes immediately to mind. And I'm quite happy to admit that many of those people I'd call erudite may not like being characterised as such. (Generally, those who are genuinely knowledgeable tend to understand how little they actually know.)
ReplyDeleteEd, I've now had a good look at the Giraldi review you mention. Without having read any Ohlin, I can't judge how fair an assessment Giraldi offers, but to be frank, the examples of her prose that he cites - admittedly out of context - do indeed make me cringe. And while I'm not sure that 'every mind lives or dies by its ideas', I definitely agree that 'every book lives or dies by its language'. Simplistic, yes. Cliched, yes. But sometimes it needs to be said.
ReplyDeleteLee: Well, I have no real stake. Ohlin's work is serviceable and enjoyable on its own terms, but it doesn't really pop for me. But having read both of the books that Giraldi did (and having interviewed Ohlin for Bat Segundo), I really do feel that he misrepresented these books using the old critic's trick of impugning an author for her voice rather than any true solecisms. Is it really a literary crime to have eyes "fluttering" twice in 13 pages? Is it not better to convey how "fluttering" eyes contribute positively or negatively to the advancement of story or character? I'm a pedant for careful language too, and believe odious examples should be called out, but the critic combing the crevices of every page for repeat words is more of a crude vigilante than a sophisticated reader.
ReplyDeleteEd, I tend to think that eyes fluttering even once - unless ironically - is once too many. (Have you ever seen anyone's eyes actually flutter? If I have, I can't remember it.) I don't feel that Giraldi is necessarily acting as a word-count vigilante unless, as you suggest, the clichés Ohlin appears to use, the platitudes, serve the voice of a particular character. Otherwise, is it really necessary to explain what's wrong with such (presumably) limp and careless prose? And yet Giraldi does give us the start of an explanation:
ReplyDelete'A sensibility of that sort — schooled not in Austen but in Susan Lucci — invariably collapses into sentimentality, and no sentimentalist has ever written a potent prose.'
This is a discussion worth having: the relationship between potent prose and potent thought, potent sensibility.
But I too have no real stake, and I agree that Giraldi could have concentrated less on infelicitous word choices and more on other matters. If you say Ohlin's work is (merely) serviceable, I'm likely to read Giraldi's own novel before any books of Ohlin's. There are plenty of serviceable books out there, and not enough really outstanding ones.