Why can’t we be kind? (A Pollyanna’s case for the nice review.)

Every so often here in the Bookverse, someone hitches up their britches and pronounces criticism “dead.” They lament a media ecosystem driven by publicists, and actual or perceived reader scarcity. They yearn for the good old days, when your Normans and your Marys and your Paulines were unafraid to lance the Goliaths of culture. Why can’t we be enemies again, these critics’ critics cry, before launching into a diatribe on authenticity.

I can usually see where they’re coming from, the quibblers. Or at least I see where they start. In his latest newsletter, the author Ross Barkan blamed institutional forces for an ever-gentler critical machine that trades in dishonesty. In Barkan’s view—though he is certainly not alone—we occupy the age of the over-hyped debut, a “demented state of affairs” that can be chalked up to the facts that 1) arts coverage is underfunded, um, everywhere, and 2) most (freelance) critics are aspiring authors themselves, and thus extra-precariously positioned to pick fights. After all, are you really gonna wrestle the bear you need a blurb from?

He goes on, waxing rosy:

Once, critics would bitterly battle one another over the merits of certain literature, and even the laureled had to beware… Friends didn’t even spare friends…If they were ultimately wrong—as plenty of contemporary critical coverage can be—the barrage still spoke to a willingness to challenge the consensus. I don’t miss much from the 1950s, but I miss that.

A few odd points here. (Is it beside the point if a critic is “ultimately wrong“? And who else remembers the 50s as big for consensus-challengers?) Barkan doesn’t frame the reactionary forces that account for much of what’s broadly praised as “venomous” in his letter. Yet longing for a purer past is a reactionary position, anyway you slice it.

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Some of the critics’ critics miss the old days because they conflate harshness with honesty. This logic assumes that most nice reviews are written by compromised liars. For starters, I think that’s pretty condescending. But more interesting to me is the drama baked into this line of argument. Consider now the dire language Barkan employs—venomous, spared, challenge, battle. Yet we’re talking of novels, not war.

It behooves us to consider the real stakes when we lament the state of criticism. What’s the worst that can happen when a praise-heavy piece enters the record? Someone—and importantly, someone from that presumably ever-dwindling cadre of Serious Readers—goes out and buys a book? Now we might debate the point that, as Barkan suggests, overhyping is bad for the culture. But what does that mean, anyway? Have we not already debunked the idea of an objective mono-culture? Because, internet?

The “healthy culture” defense also irks because somehow, it always seems to favor the contrarian. In another diagnostic on the state of criticism in a 2018 Harper’s, the terrific critic Christian Lorentzen claimed the reviewer was duty-bound to skepticism. But I question this mode of engagement, which so often assumes that popular things are bad. Again it’s worth noting the terms. Is skepticism tantamount to honesty? And is a willingness to be harsh necessarily related to either?

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Meanwhile—she said, ascending her high horse—I reject the premise! (Barkan’s, anyway.) From my window, I see plenty of heirs apparent to the New Crit meanies of yore. My colleague Dan Sheehan is as we speak publishing a round-up of the year’s most withering pans. I feel fortunate to live in a world where Andrea Long Chu gets several thousand words to consider the relative Goliath Rachel Cusk. But though harsh for harsh’s sake may feel bracing, being mean in a review is not the same as being thoughtful in one.

I’ve read pans this year—some from critics I respect—that convey little more than “not for me.” And if you agree that a critic’s job is to meet a piece of art where it is, and assess it in the context of its own intentions, artistic lineage or tradition, and intended audience, then you probably also rolled your eyes at several of 2024’s clickbaitiest takedowns. Takedowns plenty were quick to praise for their honesty. For all their bad faith.

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I once read that the television critic Emily Nussbaum stopped writing theatre reviews because she didn’t like feeling she could close a show with her opinion. It’s rare to see anyone in Bookverse consider the cost of a pan so frankly. For when we long for this ill-defined “honesty,” what is it we really want? Is it righteous to keep a mediocre book from would-be readers? Or to deprive a promising author a second chance at publication?

Which is not to suggest that we should be out here with constant cookies, simply because writing a book is hard. (Though I hear it is.) But it seems to this reader that the worst thing you can do to a mediocre but symbolically precarious object is…ignore it.

Another obvious fix for the plight of puffy criticism is addition. A 500 word review lends itself to formula. (In Lorentzen’s description,”prolix yet cursory summary…yielding to polite and generic adjectives of praise.”) Given more space, which of course means higher pay and page count, one can think deeper. Pith can follow thought, instead of replacing it.

I agree with Barkan that Substacks may hold a key here, in terms of freeing reviewers from a masthead’s nominal fees and consumer-driven values. But I wonder at his calling such writers “insurgents.” Last I checked, Substackers are also out here hustling for your subscription dollars. And in all probability, your blurbs.

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And as for the uses of the Goliath whack? It’s thrilling, sure, to see a big one stumble. But it’s only really satisfying when the critic has done her job well.

In 1979, Mary McCarthy—of the acid pen incarnate—went on Dick Cavett and lanced her long-time literary nemesis, Lillian Hellman. I happen to think McCarthy was wrong when she claimed Hellman had never written an honest word in her life. But I remembered this bit of literary trivia at least as well as I remember The Group. Or The Children’s Hour.

Maybe not such a shame for the culture, but seems a miss for me.