The ‘C’ Word
Part 1
Criticism shouldn’t be a dirty word. Both readers and writers should embrace it—or literature itself may be in danger.
‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’
-Ernest Hemingway
Being a writer is hard.
It takes a great deal of courage, ingenuity and self-discipline to sit alone for hours, day after day, staring at a blank screen, or sheet of paper, in the seemingly impossible pursuit of wilful creation. Between soul destroying jobs, persistent writer’s block, and the constant (in)convenience of modern day distractions, it’s a miracle that the average writer manages to break through and put any words on the page at all. Self doubt is often overwhelming to the point of total imaginative paralysis, and most days the writer’s efforts feel hopeless, and futile. Embarrassing, even.
The truth is, writing takes grit.
So when writers do somehow manage to find the time to write, they can feel justifiably proud of themselves. They have succeeded in pulling ideas out from their heads, kicking and screaming into the real, communicable world. The writer may suspect, on some secret level they dare not admit to themselves, that their work might even be good—and why shouldn’t it be? They’ve worked hard enough on it, haven’t they?
It is therefore only natural that they will want to show off their labours of love and sacrifice, in the pursuit of positive encouragement. Most writers however, are a lonely, solitary breed, and often there is nobody suitable close to hand to seek an opinion from. So they turn instead to the nearest and greatest audience immediately available to them: strangers on the internet. The work is posted on the writer’s site of choice, and all that’s left is to wait for the fawning praise to come rolling in.
The page is refreshed several times, and eventually the feedback does come—but it isn’t the feedback the writer expected. It isn’t positive, or even negative. It is scathing.
Sadly, such public humiliation is often enough to knock a beginning writer’s confidence so badly that his creativity seizes up entirely—because something vulnerable inside him has been attacked and critically damaged, and it feels to him like it may not be healable.
This is what happened to me, pretty much word for word, when I was starting out as a writer just over a year ago. My own critic was pretty cruel, and took noticeable pleasure in making an example of me. There was no dialogue, and no constructive elements to his feedback on the poem I had submitted. It didn’t help that he was also recently designated as a site moderator, and I suspect, riding an ego-trip. He went as far as to deny that my work even qualified as poetry, and that it had to be removed from the site on a point of artistic principle. It was ridiculous.
But my reaction to his vitriolic condescension was the wrong one: instead of facing my critic, considering his objections, and then defending myself, I slunk out the back door and moved on to peddle my wares elsewhere, tail set firmly between my legs. The incident was ugly—and I never went back to that website again.
This was however an incredibly important event for me as a beginning writer; with several aspects that I feel could hold important lessons for both artist and critic. Because I believe that the relationship between the two groups is frequently misunderstood—it should be a relationship that is used to benefit everyone. In fact, I believe that if we as readers and writers don’t do more to ensure the continued health and balance of this relationship, that the quality and importance of literature itself could be seriously endangered.
Everyone’s a Critic
The word ‘criticism’ is inherently associated with negative connotations. Similarly negative are our default societal associations with people we have deemed as critics.
We are conditioned to label the critic as a contentious negative force which strives to suppress or extinguish all of our artistic and creative endeavours; he is a moustache twirling, closed minded villain who delights in nothing less than the total annihilation of the artist’s expressive capabilities, and is often idiosyncratically barren of the ability to conceive any art or creative inspiration of his own (which is a fallacy—he is in truth the other side of the same creative coin).
This is not to say that all critics are objectively fair, or justified in their appraisals of work, however. There are many who do in fact delight in hurting the feelings of others, and who make a point of being particularly vicious and cruel when doing so. But they do not represent critics and criticism as a whole, and if we allow those people to define the role and nature of criticism in the creative fields, then we only serve to hurt our own progress, and to validate the ‘bad’ critic’s methods and conclusions.
Human beings don’t tend to enjoy being told negative things about themselves, or anything that they are involved in. But by shying away from criticism, people in general miss out on an invaluable opportunity to explore vast areas of self-improvement in an objective, introspective setting. The value of their work, and the value of their character, could potentially suffer. We could also be permitting and normalising a sort of mass allodoxaphobia to establish, for which there is no greater agitator than the critic.
Critic, Criticism, Critique
So who is the critic by definition, and what is the difference between criticism and critique?
Firstly, it is important that we distinguish the difference between criticism of person, and criticism of work. The Cambridge Dictionary defines ‘ Criticism’ as:
“The act of saying that something or someone is bad.”
To criticise a person is generally accepted as meaning to negatively assess some aspect of their character or behaviour. Although this was not always so, the negative application of criticism when it comes to people and behaviour, has widely stuck. But the same dictionary also defines criticism as:
That criticism is made up of these dual definitions will be news to no-one, of course. But it should be noted that these two definitions are for the majority negative— with one definition neutral, or indifferent; therefore the word’s overall perception is more susceptible to lean towards its definitively negative counterpart.
The ‘Critic’ is defined by the same dictionary as:
“Someone who says that they do not approve of someone or something.”
And:
“Someone whose job is to give their opinion about something, especially films, books, music, etc.”
Interestingly, ‘Critique’ is defined as:
Again, this will come as no shock to those with a good grasp of the English language, but I feel it warrants highlighting, if only to demonstrate how easily the perception of critics, and criticism, can stray erringly into negative territory. The second definitions of both ‘criticism’ and ‘critic’ say nothing about disapproving of anything—only providing opinion. Opinion is a matter of individual interpretation, and context; it is neither a positive or negative influence on the nature of the work itself.
The definition of ‘critique’ muddies the waters further—it does not conclusively label critique as negative, though it does allude strongly to that pervading negativity. But critique is also clearly an elaboration of opinion—and it is opinion that grants all artistic works life.
Everyone’s Entitled to Their Opinion
Commenting on the subject of literary criticism, opinion and interpretation, John Sutherland, author and professor of Modern English Literature at UCL said:
“The hardest lit-crit is that which asks the simplest questions. What’s the difference between a ‘story’ by Ian McEwan and a ‘story’ on the front page of the Guardian? What precisely, is ‘lost’ in translation? Literature ‘means’ something. But is that meaning located in the author’s mind, on the page, or in the reader’s mind? Why does literature (unlike, say, the discourses of law or science) cultivate ‘ambiguity’—saying many things at the same time?”
This exploration of the relationship between the writer and the reader exposes a complex interplay and collaboration that isn’t often considered by either party.
In his story ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,’ Jorge Luis Borges proposes that the reader is just as responsible for creating the work that he is reading as the writer.
Because whenever a piece of literature is read by different people, of different dispositions, and at different times, the piece’s contexts are framed by the circumstances of the reader—and only the reader. The reader creates as they read. Their interpretations of that work can be entirely unknown by the writer. In short, what I read may not be what you read—even if the words we are reading are identical.
The story recounts the ambitious attempts by a poet and novelist to compose, not merely copy, Don Quixote, word for word, and line for line. This paradoxical idea is demonstrated brilliantly when the fictional narrator of the story, himself a literary critic, compares two excerpts from the seemingly identical texts to extract entirely different meanings, each from the other;
“It is a revelation to compare the Don Quixote of Pierre Menard with that of Miguel De Cervantes. Cervantes, for example, wrote the following (Part I, Chapter IX):
‘…truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and advisor to the present, and the future’s counsellor.’
This catalog of attributes, written in the seventeenth century, and written by the “ingenious layman” Miguel De Cervantes, is mere rhetorical praise of history. Menard, on the other hand, writes:
‘…truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and advisor to the present, and the future’s counsellor.’
History, the mother of truth!—the idea is staggering. Menard, a contemporary of William James, defines history not as a delving into reality as the very fount of reality. Historical truth, for Menard, is not “what happened”; it is what we believe happened. The final phrases—exemplar and advisor to the present, and the future’s counselor—are brazenly pragmatic.”
‘Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote’ encourages the reader to reconsider his relationship to the text, not merely as mute spectator, but as an essential collaborating element in what brings the art to life.
So we see that interpretation is itself a form of creation. If it were not, our literature would be stillborn and hollow. It would be incapable of conveying truth, because the reader must attribute his own truths to its allusions, thereby granting it life within himself. His imaginations and perceptions are the vital spark which sets in motion the words on the page—even if those words are not his own, and even if his interpretation differs wildly from the author’s.
But what does this have to do with Criticism?
It is a question of artistic infallibility, and of ownership. Once a work is published, it is no longer in the possession of its creator, but in that of its consumers. It is the reader’s perceptions and opinions that govern whether or not a piece is successful—not the artist’s intentions. The artist must recognise that their part in that work, no matter how essential, has run its course, and that by disputing other’s interpretations, they are in fact trespassing into the creative space of others—that is, unless they engage in meaningful, democratic discussion with their public, and recognise that creative collaboration.
Such discussions can gain artists new insight into their work, and perhaps help them get deeper down to the roots of what works, and what does not. And it is in this manner that the critic, criticism, and critique come to fulfil their truest purpose, and show themselves not to be necessary evils, or unpleasant experiences to be avoided; but as vital components in the cycle of creation, and the development of meaningful art. For amateur and beginning writers such as myself, this is essential in our rounded development as artists.
In Part 2 of ‘The C Word’, I will continue to explore the role of Criticism, primarily in the modern context of the Self Publishing industry, and continue to make the case for why it has never been more endangered, and more essential, than ever before.
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