"Criticism is the formal discourse of an amateur. When there is enough love and enough knowledge represented in the discourse, it is a self-sufficient but by no means an isolated art.. The approaches to-or the escapes from-the central work of criticism are as various as the heresies of the Christian church, and like them testify to occasional needs, fanatic emphasis, special interest, or intellectual pride, all flowing from and even the worst of them enlightening the same body of insight. Every critic like every theologian and philosopher is a casuist.. To escape or surmount the discontinuity of knowledge, each resorts to a particular heresy and makes it predominant and even omnivorous.."-R. P. Blackmur,
The Double Agent: Essays in Craft & Elucidation, 1935
In examining the formal discourse of amateurs who regularly contribute to the book pages of newspapers and periodicals, one winces at the lack of love and knowledge so many reviewers and literary journalists positively flaunt (though their captive hearts beat in all the right wrong places). There are those who genuinely believe literature can neither be judged nor valued for what it is unless such judgments and values a fortiori render a corollary assessment concerning its moral utility and social applicability.
There are also those who consider all such discussions post-relevant, primarily because literature and art fell between the cracks during the great coupure (or break) that Frederic Jameson identifies (in Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism). In his view, postmodernism supplanted modernist conceptions of art, the individual, and the universe in the late 1950s or the early 1960s:
"This break is most often related to notions of the waning or extinction of the hundred-year-old modern movement (or to its ideological or aesthetic repudiation). Thus abstract expressionism in painting, existentialism in philosophy, the final forms of representation in the novel, the films of the great auteurs, or the modernist school of poetry.all are now seen as the final extraordinary flowering of a high-modernist impulse which is spent and exhausted with them.. The list might be extended indefinitely; but does it imply any more fundamental change or break than the periodic style and fashion changes determined by an older high-modernist imperative of stylistic innovation?"
Jameson poses a loaded question, one to which readers, writers, and critics would do well to respond (or with which all conscious individuals with a stake in the implications of its tentative solutions ought to wrestle), if only to discover an authentic answer consistent with their informing values, attitudes, and suppositions concerning aesthetics, and with a viable critical context which would anchor all three.
Post-break, Angela McRobbie, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Linda Hutcheon, et al. launched a deadly attack on the enduring value of art, which, until the mid-1990s, virtually dominated literary discourse, for God knows what reason. Throughout these bleak and grim years, critics blathered on about this, that, and the postmodern other, until they turned blue in the face of the insurmountable fact that when anything goes, everything goes to hell, best evidenced in the faulty logic of pronunciamientos featured prominently in Hutcheon's The Politics of Postmodernism (1980):
"What I want to call postmodernism in fiction paradoxically uses and abuses the conventions of both realism and modernism, and does so in order to challenge their transparency, in order to prevent glossing over the contradictions that make the postmodernism what it is: historical and metafictional, contextual and self-reflexive, ever aware of its status as discourse, as a human construct."
In hindsight, it is easy to suggest we were under the influence of a mass-induced hypnotic state. And, in hindsight, it is easy to resurrect the prophetic messengers (McLuhan or Guy Debord, e.g.) most summarily dismissed. The difficulty arises when postmodern theorists do posit sensible notions, often in the midst of their obfuscatory jactitations:
"The `postmodern debate' has spawned little consensus and a great deal of confusion and animosity," writes Henry A. Giroux, in an uncharacteristic moment of clarity plus lucidity. "The themes are, by now, well known: master narratives and traditions of knowledge grounded in first principles are spurned; philosophical principles of canonicity and the notion of the sacred have become suspect; epistemic certainty and the fixed boundaries of academic knowledge have been challenged by a `war on totality' and a disavowal of all-encompassing, single, world-views; rigid distinctions between high and low culture have been rejected by insistence that the products of the so-called mass culture, popular, and folk art forms are proper objects of study.."
Proper objects of study they may well be. But the self-evident speciousness of Giroux's logic invites the all-too-obvious observation that popular products cannot seriously be considered artistic creations, although they adequately reflect the fabricated concerns of the populace. Those who argue that mass cultural artifacts do in fact most adequately imitate the chaos of common life would do well to expend their exhortations elsewhere. Adequate is not enough. Life is chaos-that's why art provides its refuge. Reviewers who endorse popular artifacts or fraudulent texts-that is, failed artistic works-are themselves fraudulent, self-serving, or omnivorous.
Popular critics, often practitioners themselves, tend to assess works within the confines of their areas of specialization. Children's authors, poets, dramatists, et al. critique and review children's authors, poets, dramatists, et al. respectively-who else would bother?-while so-called non-fiction experts in specialized areas assess their peers. Fiction writers, of course, generally review fiction writers. In short, the competition reviews the competition.
Self-regulating constraints usually produce a more or less judicious body of popular critiques. But when, for example, a grande dame of this country's literature specifically requests that she be given the opportunity to review a good buddy's latest, one questions the ethics of the reviewer, the reviewee, and the publication in which the assessment appears.
The said dame is not alone. Editors of journals and periodicals go out of their way to find sympathetic assessors rather than objective analysts. Dr. Thomas Dilworth recounts the story of one prospective reviewer of Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace who averred that s/he could not agree to write a positive review without reading the novel first. Apparently, the omnipotent individual who believed s/he could praise the work sight unseen had additionally been informed that minor quibbles were acceptable (since credibility was also at stake). Another reviewer has publicly admitted they gave The English Patient a good review because it was the best of the crop of Canadian novels that had been published that month, not because they personally considered it a particularly good book. (In this context, whether it is or isn't is beside the point.)
Several of this century's critics' critics-from Blackmur to Allen Tate to Harold Bloom-present airtight arguments for a cogent and coherent literary aesthetic that rejects the extra-literary constraints that social and political fanatics-the School of Demand (in Tate's phrase) or the School of Resentment (in Bloom's)-espouse. The critics' critics all stress the literary value of a given work; literature is neither propaganda nor crying towel. It is an elitist activity-since when did this assume negative currency? "Cultural criticism is another dismal social science," Harold Bloom says in The Western Canon, "but literary criticism, as an art, always was and always will be an elitist phenomenon. It was a mistake to believe that literary criticism could become a basis for democratic education or for societal improvement."
If writers and critics wrote for the mass-fed contemporary anybody (or nobody), anybody (or nobody) might buy the book; but either body might well as easily sell (or trade) it. Once read, most so-called literature is disposable. Nobody re-reads most so-called literature. A work not worth re-reading is, by definition, not a work of literature. That principal understanding of what literature is and does is sorely lacking as a critical component in contemporary assessments. A practised reviewer always asks a series of questions before bringing judgement to bear upon a work:
1. Is it re-readable?
2. How does it shape up in the book of eternity?
3. Is it true to itself?
4. How does it make us feel?
The dearth of good reviewers not only makes for a great deal of distance between so-called arbiters of taste or value and its consumers, it also creates an indifferent and shortsighted readership forced to stick with the popular media but wary of plunking down pennies on untested first-time authors, etc.
"Criticism," writes T. F. Rigelhof, "must never be committed to anything other than the critic's true response. A critic who is not ardent is as much use as a woodcutter in the forest of Arden. The touchstone of criticism is emotion, not reason (although it is a reasoned account of the effect upon sincere and vital emotion that gets to things that science ignores and pseudo-science debases). To be a critic is to be emotionally educated. Critics speak their own responses, not as mere reports of private feelings but as something generally true. And the generality of that truth depends upon the responses of others to what is said.
"It would help things enormously if critics opened books on page one and read to the end before thinking about anything else other than just saying the words slowly inside their fucked-up heads. It's not childish to read like a child and wash yourself in the words. Most critics are trying too hard to be mediaeval scholastics while foregoing the necessary habits. The desire to be a critic begins with the awareness that there is more to be lost than gained in swallowing other people's demons whole. If you can't meditate/pray/imaginatively respond to narrative for eight hours in every twenty-four, you shouldn't be in the business at all.
"That you can't afford to not respond, reflect, and ask yourself exactly how this song, this poem, this book, this film, this picture matters. The asking is the beginning and if the asking is directed towards something with greatness in it, your work is never done because you'll always be in some new relationship towards it: your knowledge may be true-even in some sense, complete-but it will always be modifiable. Art and the criticism of art are not generational. There are no generations apart from biology. There are only categories and crises of temperament and these crisscross and defy and deny chronology. It's a ruthless but necessary position.."
Bloom, too, in The Western Canon, lays it on the line when he reminds readers and writers that literary works, by their very nature, compete with all other works of literature. Writers who suggest otherwise bespeak disingenuous postures or, worse, embarrassing stupidities. Were this not the case, why would awards for excellence exist? (Or, given their fall from grace, why do they exist?) Originality is not a crime; all authors are in competition with all other authors. The so-called death of the author is a patent scam (since I, for one, would argue that I am five feet above ground until six feet under it).
What constitutes a good reviewer? To whom does the reviewer answer? Who in the hell am I to raise such indelicate questions? Why do you care?
A good reviewer ought to engage, entertain, and educate readers with an eye towards aiding them in making informed decisions concerning the purchase of a given work. Authors and publishers consider it a basic courtesy that a reviewer identify a given book's preferred consumer (or target market). Readers consider it de rigueur.
Many reviewers in this country make the mistake of seeking love and approval from the writer of a given book (or its publisher) while ignoring their primary responsibility to readers. Generally, a reader of such reviews comes to recognize the telltale signs of this affliction: the reviewer calls the author Harry, Hal, or Honeykins instead of Bloom; the reviewer casually drops intimate biographical details about the author in an attempt to support and validate the work under examination: "Rio had a C-section baby when the moon was full and that makes these luna-motherhood observations true," or "Borneo's a right-brained queer suffering from ADD; therefore, his half-baked theories sizzle." Or the reviewer doesn't read the book at all, preferring to recycle the press release and other reviews recycling press releases recycling reviews ad nauseam.
Nobody, least of all the recycler, acknowledges the dishonesty in this disservice to literature (that is, the creators and the created) and its readers. One exasperated reviewer, tired of the rip-offs, went to the trouble of pressing a publication's editor on a plagiarism charge only to be told by that editor that the reviewer had probably lifted the material from the press release. When pressed further, the editor agreed to publish an apology if the reviewer would let the issue rest. The apology made no mention of the source of the review (which was recycled in the press release) and the editor blithely continued to give the plagiarist review assignments.
We now face the wilderness of our discontent, the huge, gaping hole gouged out of the heart of civilization-slash upon slash-by what Dilworth calls cultureless utilitarianists. The onslaught of cultureless utilitarianism, in large part accelerated by the so-called postmodernist movement, legitimizes an anything-goes policy where, eventually, everything (or nothing) does. Cultureless utilitarianism will grind the artist into the ground. The commodification of cultural contributions signals the demise of art as we know it and heralds the dawning of the age of nothing special.
Literature comprises a criticism of life-in-progress, not only in terms of its form (or approach and appearance) but also its contents (or particulars of a given culture). In such a context, producers (as opposed to artists) see the aesthetic solution and resolution in the products they generate. A good question too few so-called critics ask: Will this book influentially exist a millennium or so from here and now? (Or, as Bloom puts it, Less than, greater than, or equal to?) A good critic requires courage and conviction in equal parts, balanced by a synthesizing sense of duty (in contradistinction from honour, obligation, etc.).
Still, career critics (and ethically bankrupt editors) praise or dismiss the appropriateness of the tawdry little lives pitched to soap-operatic values, morals, ethics, assumptions, etc., which are on endless display in most of our so-called literature. Frequently the assessment of a work of literature pivots on its author's ability to render the stuff of our diurnal dramas in such a way that it resonates with our chronic paucity of emotion writ large. The question degenerates into something dangerously close to content-geared judgement, Department of Mimesis.
Longing for the other, for the dream of ecological perfection, for the fantasy fuelled by the artificial scarcification of sex among all the lonely people, critics for the most part admire an author's ability to replicate majority-ruling situations: the incidentals that accurately reflect the readers' occupations, perceptions, problems, and anxieties. Thus one critic praises the veracity of the emotional onslaught, while another applauds the depths (or peaks) of an author's perceptions or reflections. Few critics actually focus on rigorous aesthetic or formal achievements-or on the corresponding failures.
Pablum lines the shelves of our mass-market minds. Its contents, themes, situations, and reflections so overwhelm our putative critics that they fail to notice aesthetic merits and demerits, and see only affective value. Reviewers internalize and externalize the role expected of them (and many of same wear the uniform).
All reviews, of course, contain an element of autobiography. So, we project the image, pre-defined in such designations as the worker's voice, the poet of the people, the voice of feminism, the scientific experimentalist, etc. Why has it become fashionable to sub-divide and ghettoize our literature?
The career critic reflects what the context projects; but, just as the glory of the individual shines brightest in a co-operative intermeshing with others-the key to community-so too does the glory of the gift of writing shine most brightly in its practitioners' profound recognition of the inseparability of form and content-its shape-in all its contextual grandeur.
Literature never gives its creators permission to strut their little lives in their little worlds; more and more, critics do precisely that. (Or, to put it plainly, they discuss what's on the page while scrupulously disregarding the way in which it arrived there.)
According to Dilworth, "the major problem is the widespread embracing of values that are social rather than aesthetic. This involves a failure in devotion to art as having an aesthetic purpose. To the extent it is good, art aims for beauty and truth. Beauty is unity, harmony, movement, vitality, and the `radiance' endorsed by Aquinas and Joyce, all these qualities together. The effect is awe. The truth of art must be the reality of human experience in some aspect or dimension. As goals and experiences, beauty and truth are gratuitous, yielding respectively delight and understanding.
"To the degree that our chief values are not beauty and truth, we are false as writers, reviewers, critics. How are we false in Canada? By having primarily social values which are not gratuitous (see above) but psychologically pragmatic. Most important is not art but our group affections and admirations, e.g., for approved authors. We care what others think of us, so we write what we think they will like. Rather than displease a famous, well-respected author, we betray art and our integrity as reviewers.
"This happens elsewhere but the vice is especially tempting in a place as intellectually tiny as Canada. The rest of the country may not appreciate this, but in Toronto the social interconnections are positively incestuous. In Canada we have our sacred cows. Those with prestige are praised, those without may be panned unless well connected-though it is safer to praise everyone. Our values are social rather than aesthetic because we want to seem nice, to be loved, to be safe. Psychologically, we are afraid. So we speak, write, act for approval. Welcome to Postlapsaria. The only losers are readers, and they hardly matter. They'll like what we tell 'em to or else humbly feel that they have failed in appreciation.
"No one is exempt from the temptation to protect the ego at the expense of truth, in so far as we can see the truth, at the expense of love of literature. Some, I suppose, do not know what art should be. But is that even an important question to many reviewers?"
M. Travis Lane defends poetry-and, by extension, literature-that she considers to be "the reality of human feeling and the communion of art against the follies of philosophy". She argues that "the excellence of such writing cannot be `performed' to a naive audience, which prefers `accessible' anecdote or the generalizations of protest.. Too many of us, whether out of fear of being called elitist, or as a result of sociable exigency or, even, out of the desire to avoid the shock of art, praise over-generously every poem that is easily understood and not obviously bad. . But Alice's caucus race, where everybody wins, is no Olympics."
Exactly. It is for this reason a country's literature is only as excellent as its critics' assessment of it; by extension, this country's critics ought to value aesthetic and personal integrity above all, not because it's the right thing to do but because it is the only thing that can and must be done in the service of art, civilization, and the book of eternity.
Funding for this essay-which will appear in Judith Fitzgerald's forthcoming volume, Beyond Survival: A Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century-was generously provided by the Ontario Arts Council's Arts Writers' Grant Programme.
