November 29, 2011
A crisis in literary criticism?
by Ellie Robins
Spain’s El País newspaper has pronounced a state of crisis in worldwide literary criticism. In an article on Saturday, Winston Manrique Sabogal interviewed some of the foremost names in literary journalism, including literary editor of The Guardian Claire Armitstead; essayist, editor and translator Eliot Weinberger; and Marie Arana, the former editor of The Washington Post‘s now-defunct Book World review section. The piece attributes the crisis to the economic crash and to the world’s dual advance: the split between print and digital. Commentators didn’t pull their punches, and revealed some true anxiety about this question. A choice quotation:
Eliot Weinberger
The United States does not have the kinds of literary supplements that are common in Spain and many other countries. It has only one important frequent periodical of criticism-The New York Review of Books. There are no longer powerful American critics, as there were until the 1960s, writing in a prose that was intelligible to anyone, and inserting literature into the political, social, and moral issues of the day. So-called “serious” criticism has largely become the domain of academics, who write in a specialized jargon, under the bizarre belief that complex thought can only be presented in impenetrable sentences… Criticism, in the United States, has been reduced to “recommendations,” which come via reviews, blogs, and Twitter. Prizes have become the standard validation of literary merit- especially among those who are unaware how prizes are chosen. I can’t think of a single American critic to whom one now turns for ideas…
Them’s fighting words. The commentators largely agree that there’s not the budget nor the independence that sustained literary criticism requires. Some—including Claire Armitstead—suggest that there isn’t the public appetite, either. It’s interesting to compare these statements with the sentiments in The Guardian‘s recent article about the state of broadsheet literary journalism, inspired by Melville House‘s Not the Booker Prize event. In that piece, Sam Jordison quotes ReadySteadyBook founder Mark Thwaite as saying that ‘the conclusion of nearly all broadsheet and mainstream reviews was the same: that the book they are examining is “quite good”. Reviewers, the suggestion was, are so careful to say things that are reasonable and fair that they end up saying nothing at all.’ At the end of his article, Winston Manrique Sabogal provides a list of rules for balanced criticism; the ten commandments of writing about writing. They read as follows:
1. Position the author, say who she/he is and what the book represents in relation to her/his work.
2. Situate the book and judge it from the perspective of a long literary tradition.
3. Give reasoned arguments, with examples, so that the reader can understand and evaluate.
4. Inform, educate and entertain.
5. Little synopsis and plot.
6. Be informative about the style, the meaning and the symbolic weight of the book.
7. Say what the author thinks about the theme of the book.
8. Say what the critic thinks about what the author of the book says about the theme of the book.
9. Neither bludgeon nor drool, a considered decision and a measured foundation are more convincing than an outburst.
10. Ban the adjectives of advertising, it’s the reader who should decide.
It’s interesting that that ninth point seems to directly contradict what Thwaite says about the need for bold comment in literary criticism. People seem to agree that something’s lacking in this field, but not to agree on precisely what that is. Any thoughts?
Ellie Robins is an editor at Melville House. Previously, she was managing editor of Hesperus Press.
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19 Comments
It’s a pretty good list, despite the implied contradictions. (I think he means “avoid puffy, blurbable adjectives.”) However, it seems to evidence an unvoiced assumption: That the work under consideration is fiction. There’s nothing in here about assessing the quality of the research (if any) or comparisons to, say, other biographies of the same figure or other histories of the same period. In my (admittedly limited) experience, the reading public is far more interested in reviews of nonfiction than in reviews of fiction, so this seems a strange omission.
I’d like to thank Melville for the
invitation to speak at the hugely enjoyable Not the Booker Prize event, but I’d
also like to clarify what I said/meant…
I may well have said
‘the conclusion of nearly all broadsheet and mainstream reviews was the same: that
the book they are examining is “quite good”’, but I also said – and I think
this is more important – that most broadsheet reviews consisted of “synopsis
plus snide/clever comment” and that that was not, for me, any longer the way I
wished to respond to a book as a reader/writer. Doubtless, space, house-style
and ‘tradition/inertia’ has meant that most ‘broadsheet’ book reviews have
reduced themselves to the “synopsis plus snide/clever comment” format, but this
doesn’t mean that the long-format review itself has entirely died (the TLS has
both short reviews of this type and also long, judicious essays; the LRB is
full of clever stuff; The White Review shows print has an exciting future) nor
that the short-form review itself can’t be insightful (Nicholas Lezard at the
Guardian often writes insightfully in comparatively few words). However, most fiction
reviews are of the “synopsis plus
snide/clever comment” type and I find them … well, utterly uninteresting (mostly
slight, sometimes asinine, rarely penetrating). But this could be my problem.
Perhaps “synopsis plus snide/clever comment” is ok for a review, and what I’m now
more interested in reading (and occasionally writing) is a “response” to what I’ve
read. I suggested that online was the best place for this, but also that many online
“reviewers” had much to do to step up. Unfortunately, there are plenty of blogs
writing “synopsis plus snide/clever comment”-type reviews (I’ve written plenty
such myself, so this is, for sure, a mea culpa) but not nearly enough are doing
what we see Stephen Mitchlemore (This Space), Scott Esposito (Quarterly
Conversation) and Dan Green (The Reading Experience) doing, which is using
their blogs to think hard and long about books, not just write plot abridgment
plus apercu!
Hi Mark,
Moderator editing only to your formatting. Wanted to chime in and agree with you about The White Review. Interestingly there seem to be a lot more start-up print journals of this sort in New York than in London, and for whatever reason (probably the independence that comes with being new and the knowledge that it’ll be a while before they’re financially viable anyway), by and large they offer the more sustained type of lit crit that you favour.
Ellie
Hi Laura,
Interested to hear how your nonfiction list would read…
Ellie
I review in print but post reviews to my BookRambler blog where I can use the same objective critical criteria but self-edit so that I have full control over what I want to say about a book. I don’t go in for happy-clappy chirpy reviews but I think they have their place. It’ll take time for the literati to adjust to digital but that doesn’t make it a bad thing, just new. New is scary; revolution is never tidy. We’ll look back at today’s lack-lustre and scaredy-cat gatekeepers and wonder why it took so long to sweep them away.
Hi Laura,
Interested to hear how your nonfiction list would read…
Ellie
Hi Mark,
Moderator editing only to your formatting. Wanted to chime in and agree with you about The White Review. Interestingly there seem to be a lot more start-up print journals of this sort in New York than in London, and for whatever reason (probably the independence that comes with being new and the knowledge that it’ll be a while before they’re financially viable anyway), by and large they offer the more sustained type of lit crit that you favour.
Ellie
Not a terribly relevant comment, but let’s face it: people who would call their newly created journal the *White* Review have to be just gobsmackingly stupid. Unless it’s a whiteness studies journal, which I suppose indirectly it–like most literary magazines–essentially is.
I just don’t like Sabogal’s moralising. Would be tough to move away from the sad old “synopsis/clever comment” format if reviewers stuck to his smothering list. Do we really need to keep forcing ”symbolic weight” on all books, or insisting authors identify their theme, or insisting that we judge a book from “the perspective of a long line of literary tradition”?
Good critics tell compelling stories about books.
Interesting! This is the debate that will never go away, and thats a good thing.
Mark, what you say about ‘synopsis plus snide/clever comment’ is simply that the review is as much about the reviewer as about the book. Just as much as, though a little more sophisticated than, the review that says, ‘I liked this, it was a great story’. Shiona, I don’t see the ‘commandments’ as having ordered reviewers to find lots of symbolic weight in every book! They ask the reviewer to be informative. That is, the reviewer should be able to perceive layers of meaning, and style, and be able to talk about them. If it is just a bodice-ripper review on Amazon, fair enough – but I do think reviewing works of art does put a responsibility on the reviewer: to be well informed, to know the context, and to be able to pass some of that on to his or her readers.And the author doesn’t need to have SAID what they think about the theme of the book. It’s the critic’s job to be able to interpret the book and to see what’s going on in the text.
I’m spelling all this out because I think people have forgotten the rules of engagement on literary criticism. This is the critical, the crucial, point. In our era of Amazon ‘reviews’ and Facebook recommendations, we’ve come to think a review is some sort of optional point along the journey of consumption. I bought this book, therefore I have as great a right to review it as anyone else. I’m a reader aren’t I.But the other, the older, model is that the reviewer or critic is a guide. The critic is understood to know more about books generally than the general reader, has read the author’s other works and the works that inspired the author, and the other authors who are like that author, and can place the book in its context. To be a really good reviewer takes work, research, knowledge, and discernment (and the frame of reference to know what you’re discerning among). It means leaving your ego at the door, and being professional. I think these ‘commandments’ are pretty broad, actually. Even if we’re talking bodice-rippers, they too have their tradition, and a reader might like to know where a certain book positions itself within that tradition. Every work created stands within its tradition – even your mother’s meat loaf.
Mildly disappointed that this article and its contributors didn’t go into the deeper question of why there is evidently a disintegration of trust in critics, why they’re no longer seen as having an impact on reader choice, which is, I think, to do with the fragmentation of literary values and the shift to the kind of society where the idea of a genuine ‘leading literary figure’ is ever more preposterous.
As to the list, numbers 4, 9 and 10 are the only essential rules, and even 9 has exceptions. think ideally the review has to be somewhere between the pointlessly subjective “I liked this” and the pseudo-authority assumed by some writing styles.
I also note that the crux of Mark’s point might be in the last line, that people are not “using their blogs to think hard and long about books”. It’s the opportunity to think long and hard about books that’s becoming more difficult to come by – the next ten recommendations are on your doorstep before you’ve even finished a first canter through the last novel/poetry collection, let alone begun the thinking process.
And that’s not an indictment of the number of authors around. I really have no time whatsoever for the whining about standards having fallen and literature having gone down the pan. The problem is much more to do with how the structure of literary engagement is changing, such that traditional criticism is going to find it ever harder to get a foothold.
Like Mark, I sometimes find reviews to be synoptic. They’re more advertizements than critical reviews.
“Them’s fighting words. The commentators largely agree that there’s not
the budget nor the independence that sustained literary criticism
requires. Some—including Claire Armitstead—suggest that there isn’t the
public appetite, either.”
Most reviewers get little pay (or none; they get a free book and a writing cred.), and little encouragement or training. (How one becomes a reviewer is, in my experience, accidental.) Bloggers even less so. (One great critical blog is Tales from the Reading Room, written by a cambridge professor who is not at all into jargon.) Sabogal’s list may be a way to reform review writing, but the process and atmosphere also need addressing. I don’t know if professionalism can occur without that.
Jeff Bursey
author of
Verbatim: A Novel
I choose not to participate in any of the sad excuses presently passing for “literary journalism,” “literary criticism,” “book reviewing” and “literary supplements.” These places are dying because they are run by a bunch of bland, selfish, risk-averse, and humorless snobs (including Laura Miller, a bona-fide lightweight more fond of conspiracy theories and attracting traffic on a specious premise than anything even remotely close to thoughtful discourse: and she’s a total fucking tool too, witness how she propped up Lethem in an “interview” timed for release not long after he was facing some legitimate criticism over his James Wood essay) who would be better off dying in the basement of a suburban library recently closed because of budget cuts rather than polluting our newspapers and what remains of our journalistic outlets with the driest and blandest copy seen since before yellow journalism. Fuck Sabogal and his bullshit rules, which don’t hold a candle to Updike’s Rules of Reviewing. And fuck synopses. You want a fucking synopsis? Go read the flap copy, motherfucker.
You people (and that includes you, Melville House Blog, which is no longer the “Moby Lives” that was calling bullshit on the establishment and defending misfits only a few years ago; man, I DUG that Moby Lives a lot, too bad there isn’t a fucking trace of it here anymore) are in it for altogether different reasons. And it isn’t passion or enthusiasm for literature. You want to call the shots rather than listen to alternative viewpoints. You wish to hold onto the remaining small scraps of territory you have left in a losing battle. And you’re waiting for whoever is left doing this to die or give up, because that means more for your greedy and selfish hands — even though the portions left aren’t much. And you would rather be at each other’s throats than put your collective heads together and figure out a way to unite all the people who are left to come up with a LEGITIMATE alternative. A true-blue way to keep literary criticism of varying types alive, to keep it questioning of everything and inclusive — the way it was during the great John Leonard editorial tenure at the New York Times Book Review. (Leonard assigned reviews to the likes of Eudora Welty AND Gilbert Sorrentino. He covered genre and feminist fiction, gave lead reviews to unknowns, the works. It was NEVER about moving units or submitting to the status quo, but about promoting a broad range of discussion that also provided work for struggling writers between novels.) And when a group blog is a BIT successful at this, then the question of money and/or media attention enters the equation, which pits various people against each other and so forth. And the whole cycle repeats itself. And we have this stale conversation about the “death of literary criticism,” et al.
Granted, literary journalism/criticism is in a SLIGHTLY better position than film journalism/criticism, which has been completely overrun by junketeers and opportunists who suck on the studios’ teats for their precious “exclusives” — all pretty much dictated by the conglomerates. But mark my words. Unless we all step up soon, you won’t be able to tell the difference between the whores of the film world and the whores of the book world.
I agree with Mark on the quality of most broadsheet reviews.
I think in general, newspapers review too many mediocre books instead of concentrating on fewer good and thought-provoking ones.
Having writers review other writers can also be problematic and there are times when the whole thing feels like a giant circle jerk.
Also, much as writers and even editors may not think twice about advertisers, the fact is that if fewer books are reviewed, and the reviews themselves become less flattering, the book publishers do have to ask, “Why should we go on paying to place ads in this newspaper that won’t review our books and then keeps panning them?”
On some level, the newspapers do get this.
American critics to whom I turn for ideas: Daniel Mendelsohn, Geoffrey O’Brien, James Wood (does he count?), Janet Malcolm, and, of course, Eliot Weinberger. Wish I could say Tim Parks but alas he is not American.
Strangely absent here is the topic of cruelty, schadenfreude, all the base impulses and wishes that come to the fore when one reads a review. Or writes one! Which is why I think many fiction writers shy away from the form. Not just for political reasons but emotional ones. The cost of expressing dislike, going public with a sense of agfrieved distress. With that in mind: I miss Walter
Kirn’s reviews.
If I had to name the most interesting critic in America I would name…. drum roll… Louis Menand.
Does anyone know what happened to theory in literary criticism? Why is it “out of favor”?
”
9. Neither bludgeon nor drool, a considered decision and a measured foundation are more convincing than an outburst.”
In other words, don’t have a strong opinion. Don’t come down on a side. If something is crap don’t say it’s crap, say “ultimately I was somewhat unsatisfied”.
That, right there, that #9, is a large part of why criticism is in trouble.
Hi Mark,
What Stephen and Scott and Dan are doing is impressive not only because of the thought and time they put into it, but also because of the fact they do it for so little. Passionate interest however, butters only so much bread. If society had more of an appetite for intelligent commentary – if there was a bigger audience for it – perhaps more money would be available to pay good reviewers to think long and hard about books; good minds in order to make good money must, regrettably, employ themselves elsewhere these days – unless of course they wish to be known as Johnsonian blockheads.