Image: Takanori Hayashi, Flickr (PD)
Confession time, guys. Here goes.
I never meant to be a critic.
I know. I know. It just happened. Guess I figured it was part of the job.
To be honest, I don’t even see myself as one.
During a recent Sydney Writers Festival interview with Catriona Menzies-Pike, editor of the Sydney Review of Books, I was asked whether, post-COVID, critics should be more willing to praise books. Why? I wondered. To help our arts industries battle a disinterested public (and actively uninterested government?). Menzies-Pike mentioned the pressure she and other publishers had apparently been facing from marketing and publicity departments. A pressure to smile and say only nice things, to keep both the sales and saintliness of their authors afloat.
I know I am not the first to have to pick their jaw up off the ground, hearing these suggestions. Their crass cynicism, their myopia, is an endurance test none of us knew we had signed up for. What gives publishers and publicists—sometimes just plain onlookers—the right to endlessly canvass how publicity and criticism might enjoy a little more synergy?
False praise kills book sales. In this it enjoys an efficiency that rigorous, forthright cultures of review can only dream of (to say nothing of the seriousness with which criticism can expect to be treated).
Well-executed reviews (that hatchet!) sell books regardless of whether their appraisal is positive or negative. If nothing else, they ‘sell’ the idea of literature actually mattering. The expertly crafted hatchet job or negative critique encourages the reader to go and read the book. It achieves this more than any positive boilerplate could. Prurient curiosity is a powerful thing: we feel compelled to see if the body matches its autopsy report.
The expertly crafted hatchet job encourages the reader to go and read the book. We feel compelled to see if the body matches its autopsy report.
Putting the onus on critics to help the industry during COVID, as Menzies-Pike was advised—or to alleviate any other number of calamities confronting the arts—is going after the wrong guy. Look at Parliament’s benchwarmers: wholly devoid of vision or backbone, it would be overly flattering to even fantasise that they can comprehend the scale of their impotence, its degree and dishearteningly familiar depths. Still, inadequacy loves company, and in this they are ably assisted by a benighted Australia Council, whose funding for literature (that ghost at the feast) has plummeted 44 per cent in the past six years. The figure of $13,000 is often quoted as the average annual earnings of an Australian writer. Today it is probably more like $4000.
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You’re a writer. So you write.
Yeah. That was me. Thinking critique was just another KPI. A dot-point in the position description. Must be able to analyse and critique the work of his peers and elders.
To this day, I still feel vaguely surprised upon meeting any writer—poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, whatever—who is not also an author of criticism. Criticism, after all, is really just a public (and publicised) version of what all writers do anyway (or at least, what we might hope they all do): read.
Internally, every reader is a secret sharer—a surrogate, a ghost writer, furiously scribbling and annotating. They register their disagreement (Pfft! She didn’t do that; Oh no he did not). They evaluate. They edit.
When we read, we are always engaged in the act of writing. We consider the writer’s goals and intentions. We formulate and appraise. And then, with each paragraph, we reformulate.
The degree to which we all do this varies, but everyone, in theory, can do it.
As a reader, I love to see what the writers I admire think of other artists, other books, other writers. In my head a game of fantasy football plays rent-free, seven days a week, all high-def and Fox Sports-contoured:
Gooood afternoon folks! Let’s cross live now to Zadie Smith, who’s on the ground at Edinburgh International Book Festival, to hear what she thinks of New Order’s latest album.
Yes Tom, hard to believe that’s Alexis Wright’s opinion of Helen Garner, but did you catch Tim Winton’s latest piece on Trent Dalton?…
Come on. Who would want to opt out of that mailing list?
The love of robust critique is always one of care and concern for those who have the privilege, the disposable income, to actually go out and buy books.
It is for this reason that I feel considered reviews come from a place of love (yes, even the negative ones). The critic’s greatest concern is for the reader of the book, the review. They are the audience. They are you, our audience.
You, twelve years old, earnest and alive and wondering where to place your hard-earned allowance, having swept and vacuumed the WHOLE KITCHEN. You, at twenty, contemplating exactly how to piss-up the pay cheque you’ve earned. You, at thirty or forty or fifty, unsure how to add a few more volumes without your bookshelves collapsing and your beautiful partner walking out on you and your impecuniousness.
The love of robust critique is always one of care and concern for those who have the privilege, the disposable income, to actually go out and buy books. To access libraries.
It is, in essence, solicitous.
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The author’s childhood kitchen and (barely) adult bookshelf. Images: Supplied
Ultimately, then, critique is about having a sense that there is something—anything—at risk or play in what we do. Some sense of involvement. Implication. A belief—however grossly misguided—that it isn’t all a total waste of time.
Critics who are reflexively and haphazardly generous about bestowing praise tarnish its more real, heartfelt iterations. Reviews which are frank about a book’s shortcomings, measured about its brilliances, should ideally represent one among many voices in an engaged and healthy culture. Reviews and commentary don’t need to form a consensus. Negativity has many shades. It is more ball-up than line dance. Often, critics are negative because someone we like—perhaps even love—proved disappointing. Sometimes we are negative because we feel our investment was squandered, our time wasted.
And so the reader, who looks to this esoteric artefact, the book, for entertainment, or instruction, or something altogether more inalienable and difficult to categorise, but who comes away with nothing save a few more hours with a few less chances to do whatever might have brought them joy, or perhaps just more time with loved ones (cue karaoke montage, the sepia-toned reel surveying life’s rich pageant), is owed an incalculable debt.
And who owes them?
The disingenuous reviewer. The hack. That expert in endless—and endlessly positive—spin and soporifics.
Then again, there are days when I catch myself thinking: wouldn’t it be nice, in talking about criticism—if not more helpful—to do away with the simplistic binaries of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ entirely?
If we must use one, ‘Poorly executed review/Well executed review’ seems wiser. Or, better yet: blood in the veins.
That’s what you’re looking for, in the reading, in the writing.
If one thing doesn’t matter, nothing does.
Stories of punters bailing up critics on the street, demanding their money back over a misleading review (‘You said it was a rollicking good read! You said it was unputdownable! Well, guess what? I PUT IT DOWN!’) feel to me like the greatest honour a critic could possibly hope to receive: proof, at last, that someone actually gives a fuck.
So: let there be something at stake. All or nothing at all, Billie Holiday sang. Reviewers can’t always manufacture positive feelings (sometimes any feelings). False praise often becomes self-replicating, making genuine engagement more difficult. It spawns and it mutates. Unlike actors, say (and there are resemblances between the two professions—all the late nights, the furious desire to please your audience), reviewers shouldn’t be expected to fake emotion or simulate enthusiasm.
I have lost count of the number of times a glowing review has appeared—only to learn, in conversation with the review’s author behind closed doors, how much they in fact hated the book. We do a disservice to readers every time we disingenuously hype new work. Publishing shouldn’t be treated as if it were some shimmering cottage industry. As if we all deserve vigorous affirmation and a big pat on the head for mucking in. Every critic begins life as a reader—so why do we want to disappoint them so much? Why hurry to let ourselves down, when our past, starry-eyed self—perhaps now a distant memory, perhaps barely there to begin—silently vowed to remain faithful to reading’s vertiginous joy, its alchemy, its mysterious, crowded pleasure?
We do a disservice to readers every time we disingenuously hype new work. Every critic begins life as a reader—so why do we want to disappoint them so much?
Here is the reality:
Writing is a privilege.
Being read is a privilege.
Being written about is an astronomical privilege.
You don’t get prizes just for showing up. Your grandma might have a book in her—but perhaps that is where it should stay.
This is not to assert that publishing’s barriers to entry are okay yeah fine whatever. That only a select coterie or chosen few should write and publish. The fantastically privileged can afford to give everyone a gold star and sit back for the rest of the afternoon; the rest of us have to earn our way.
My point is that publishing is fundamentally unfair—and critics should not participate in making it more so.
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The question should always be this: do we feel that a book has succeeded, or do we feel that it has failed? The terms of our litmus test may vary. Different critics use different tests, arriving at different opinions (or similar opinions, or whatever opinions, depending on their individual weights, valences, emphases). Some avoid thumbs up/thumbs down measurements that can be aggregated by sites like Literary Hub’s Book Marks. This is a potentially wise way of working (albeit one that is always at risk of becoming a little precious: the critic who fails to assess, to judge, to weigh, isn’t really a critic at all; the task of evaluation ought never to be so subtle or mealy-mouthed that it disappears from view entirely).
Some reviewers might approach a work through stylistic critique, or through formal objections, or contextualisation.
Some might simply put off giving an opinion at all.
Worse, perhaps, are those who provide an opinion but cannot back it up: superlatives incanted sans-papiers, as apparently self-evident as the cat hair on Peter Craven’s sweater. Perhaps this is so that the remaining word count can be let loose upon tedious plot synopses or iterations of the personal essay form (I, too, knew what it felt like to be an orphan and yearned with every page to reach out and tell Pip about my experience…).
The problem with this practice—aside from tending toward an unusually virulent self-absorption—is that it avoids the work of actually critiquing the book (and justifying that critique). Whether the critic ultimately awards the work five stars or zero is beside the point.
Every day, all over the planet, swathes of books, many of excellent quality, vanish into the ether. No reviews. Little coverage. Poof! Off they go into obscurity. Just think: a life-changing poetry collection appears; but when was the last time a newspaper or Instagrammer devoted serious words (and word counts) to poetry? Meanwhile, another mediocrity is celebrated, despite having produced work many privately complain is terrible. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Off the critics run to emptily praise it—or at least keep our mouths shut, lest we offend their publisher (or anyone else who might blackball us).
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In an age when encomia and superlatives are thrown about like confetti, few, if any, complain; but say something negative, even with corroborating exhibits (Honourable members of the jury!) and a minor catalogue of justification, and you’re liable to be seen as having broken some grave taboo (or at least having to go and take advice from Dave Eggers).
All critics, perhaps, secretly wish that all authors were like Saul Bellow—who, when asked what The Adventures of Augie March was about, said that it was about 200 pages too long (to say nothing of his talent for penning generous letters to harsh reviewers thanking them for their insights, taking time out of his day to agree with them).
Less secretly many authors—and certainly most publishers—might wish that critics would allocate some time in their day to considering Matthew Arnold’s example, praising Shakespeare.
There are authors who care for and who advocate engaged criticism; practitioners and practitioner-critics willing to cast aside their ego for the good of the greater culture.
But, some days, it feels like we could do with more—even if it means admitting that maybe Augie marched on a few too many miles.
Oh, me? Ah. Well. Of course. I dread the day I receive a bad review (especially—gulp—for my debut).
Yet, like King Claudius doling out consolations in Hamlet, I understand that it is inevitable. Death and taxes and all that.
And I’m glad.
There is no one as loving—no one as critical—as an engaged reader.
A forever reader.
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This piece was commissioned and edited by Jasmin McGaughey, KYD’s 2020 First Nations Editor-in-Residence, in partnership with State Library of Queensland’s black&write! Indigenous Writing and Editing project.
Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writers can submit pitches to 2021 First Nations Editor-in Residence Allanah Hunt here.
