An Instant Reaction

The very best evidence that "literary criticism" as practiced by literary journalists has become utterly bankrupt continues to pour forth from the leaking pens of the journalists themselves. Now it's William Skidelsky, who informs us that "while blogs make a great deal of fuss about being where the action is, they contain little decent criticism. It is rare to encounter good critical writing on the internet that didn't start life in print form." He also opines that "blogging is best suited to instant reaction; it thus has an edge when it comes to disseminating gossip and news."

I've always thought that "journalism" involves to at least some minimal degree something called "reporting," which ought, it seems to me, to call for some actual inquiry and research into the subject at hand. If Skidelsky were to, say, click onto a few of the litblogs listed on the right (I'll gladly give him some recommenations if he'd like), he would in fact discover that his assertions are thoroughly without foundation in reality. These days I find much more "decent criticism" at these sites than in print magazines and newspapers (where, as Skidelsky himself admits, "[f]ew reviews buck the critical consensus or challenge long-inflated reputations"), and most of the best new blogs that come along do not offer "gossip and news." These comments are just the same old defensive conventional wisdom that "literary journalists" seem to be passing among themselves with increasingly great dispatch.

Why do people like Skidelsky continue to pronounce in such a tedious drone on a subject about which they quite clearly know nothing? Doesn't some editor, somewhere, ever tell them they should try to find out (by maybe reading some litblogs) whether their imperious declarations can really be supported by the facts?

ADDENDUM And if we needed more evidence that print book reviewing is sinking into a bog of its own making, there's this announcement that Bookforum is now going to "include current events coverage in a move to boost circulation." Which means, of course, that it will now print much less "decent criticism." It will no doubt be yet another once-valuable-now-gone-to-shit print publication I'll have to stop reading.

Thanks (I guess) to Imani for the link.

Comments

[Mark Thwaite]

The Bookforum news is dreadful. I wonder if we all make a fuss the editors/owners might desist from killing the magazine slowly by turning it into a NYRB-lite?

The Skidelsky article is another piece of unresearched gossip about blogs by someone who obviously neither understands nor reads them -- and he doesn't seem to want to understand them either. But he is right to say literary journalism needs to get better. A LOT better.

[William Patrick Wend]

The worst part about the Bookforum announcement for me is that I just sent in my resubscription card a few weeks ago. Very sad.

[Chris]

If BookForum wanted to boost its circulation, ArtForum International would drop the pretense of charging for it and distribute it for free. The magazine has always been heavily subsidized by ArtForum anyway; I have to wonder if the decision to try and make it earn its keep, if not a profit (a virtual impossibility) is merely a prelude to shuttering it altogether.

[Lloyd Mintern]

"print book reviewing is sinking into a bog of its own making"

That's a good one. Blogs and bogs.

[Daniel]

There isn't a whole lot of decent criticism on blogs though. He isn't wrong, he's just making an observation. There isn't a lot of decent criticism in general, anywhere. Decent or good criticism is hard, but the medium doesn't affect it in any way.

Blogs are well-suited to instant reaction by the instantaneous nature of their distribution and manufacture (print is, alternately, not well-suited to that). These are not blow-your-mind comments, they're factual. It doesn't mean there is a limit to blogs, or anything special about print – just a comment on their nature.

Don't blow things out of proportion; it colours your more insightful writing.

[Dan Green]

"There isn't a whole lot of decent criticism on blogs though."

You're wrong. Have a look at some of the blogs on my blogrolls that perhaps you haven't looked at before.

[Steven Augustine]

I sometimes fear, on the other hand, that I can feel the suckage of a copy-and-paste vortex at the center of the Litblog pool, and the vortex has two diametrical currents, call them "Ya" and "Nay", and ideas that aren't simple enough to go in either direction are merely torn apart. Is the vortex growing wider and deeper? Sometimes it sure feels that way. Have I been reading too much Poe, or Jules Verne? Maybe.

Am I growing a wee bit disillusioned by the absence of the bizillion idiosyncratic worldviews this World Wide Web should surely have encouraged by now ?

Yeah.

[brewdog]

There's a Mullahward pull in critiquing, just as there is in lunchroom clique-ing (if you'll pardon my verbifying a noun). I have nothing against litblogging per se, but a kind of clubbiness hits a kind of critical mass and instead of a thousand points of light we're left with a slew of snark and snarkalikes. I'd much rather have the snowflake dream of litblogging, where each is special and unique and kinda melty when left out in the sunlight.

But, as to the post- litblogging is better than print litcrit, excepting the rare instance, and is more direct, more relevant and usually more fun (where fun is a function of incendiary viewpoints). Plus, we get to make allusions to a rock & a hard place (or at least a rock & a whirlpool) in the comment section. I mean, would the NYTBR ever print this letter?

[Steven Augustine]

To synthesize a term, Brewdog: Scyllarybdis... meaning no space between the rock and the whirpool.

"But, as to the post- litblogging is better than print litcrit..."

Is it, though? I'm wondering if the proportion of good-to-silly online criticism doesn't roughly mirror the situation in print, or actually fall short, quality-wise, given the numbers.

Dan keeps his level high, as do, perhaps, four or five others I can think of (out of the dozens I look at every week)... but how many thousands are posting every single day? If print Lit (in general) suffers from the pox of proliferation, the online reality is surely that problem to an exponential power; how many print professionals publish a thousand pieces per year?

Online opinion enjoys the advantage of being (theoretically) free of political constraint; it *should* be a medium that encorages frankness (no Puritan sponsors, or customer sensitivities, or managerial edicts and threats of unemployment to fear). Instead, I see lots of (as you put it) lunchroom clique-ism, herd opinion, wagon-circling, score-settling and arse-waxing... all that plus the gaping wound of often *zero* editorial policy. Low low standards.

One of the most prominent litbloggers in the game indulges in so many malapropisms per week, and writes so poorly, that it's *embarrassing*. How is it possible, for example, that this is never a topic of serious discussion? Well, because so much of this activity is really a *social networking* effort (whether or not the "friendships" made remain forever virtual), with Literature not as the focus but the excuse.

More and more, it strikes me that the slings and arrows hurled blogward by the print romans are hitting their targets amongst us huns. Not that these direct hits will kill the inevitable online advance... but do we really want to "win" as the function of the dumbing-down-ization of everything, as opposed to "winning" because our cause is just and Lit is evolving?

Time for the Apostasy. I just read a bit of n+1, and the utter truth is that it was a solidly high-quality read. Snipe all we want: it's the truth. Point me to almost any purely online Lit Zine: the standards are atrocious; the trash-talking bravado of online self-promotion is a function of simple ignorance.

So. Print Lit: generally poor. Web Lit: generally atrocious.

Do I err in taking the situation (or the lost opportunity, let's put it) too seriously... or seriously at all?

[touchstone sires]

@steve augustine: out of all the people living at the moment, perhaps about 5-8 will produce something that will qualifiy as "writing worth reading." The rest of the writing you will encounter will be utter garbage (this post!).

I would say learn to love the taste of garbage, but since you enjoyed n+1 it seems you have already mastered the skill. I however cant, but soon there will be a pill for my problem and i too will be able to enjoy trash.

If you really want to be exposed to "quality lit" id suggest learning french or german since that is where its going to come from anyways, not america (uk might get lucky and produce something).

[Steven Augustine]

Sorry, Touchstone... I've lived in Berlin for 17 years. My reading German is fluent. I much prefer reading Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Paul Bowles, Thomas Pynchon, Flannery O'Connor, Joan Didion, Harold Brodkey, Milan Kundera (in English), Italo Calvino (ditto), V. Nabokov, old school Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, JOyces, Hughes, Larkin, Whitman, Theroux, Chatwin, Munro, Burgess, ... et al.. to anything in German, though I like Sebald, Mr. Musil and Bernhard well enough.

But, obviously, that wasn't my point.

[Steven Augustine]

PS: Your unreflected, wrestling-fan-style trash-talk remark about n+1 is exactly the kind of value-free nonsense I refer to in the comment preceding yours.

[Daniel]

Uh... I'm not sure we have the same level of standards Dan. Sorry. Most critics and bloggers mean well, and try hard, but good intentions just don't cut it.

[Dan Green]

It would seem, Daniel, that, like Skidelsky, you're quite willing to make sweeping pronouncements without having put in the effort to make sure you know what you're talking about. Have you read any of these blogs, on any kind of regular basis?: Bemsha Swing? Black Garterbelt? Cahiers de Corey? Conversational Reading, and its adjunct, The Quarterly Conversation? Culture Industry? Harriet? Isola di Rifiuti? Ready Steady Book? Jacob Russell's Barking Dog? Novel Readings? Reginald Shepherd? Silliman? The Books of My Numberless Dreams? Tales from the Reading Room? The Little Professor? The Existence Machine? The Millions? The Mumpsimus? The Valve? This Space? Waggish? Amardeep Singh? David Bordwell? Girish? Jabberwock? One-Way Street? Post Classic? Quiet Bubble? Rodney Welch? Spurious? The Arts Fuse? The Pinocchio Theory? Things I'd Rather Be Doing? Where the Stress Falls?

If not, then I'd strongly suggest you do read them before again claiming there's no "decent criticism" to be found on blogs. If you have, and don't think such criticism is to be found in any of these, then, yes, we do have different standards.

Links to all of these blogs can be found on my blogrolls. And to all the bloggers I didn't name: Please forgive me for not mentioning you, but I assure you your blog wouldn't be on my blogroll if I didn't think it had something valuable to offer.

[Steven Augustine]

"It would seem, Daniel, that, like Skidelsky, you're quite willing to make sweeping pronouncements without having put in the effort to make sure you know what you're talking about."

Did I miss the part where Daniel confessed that he hadn't read those blogs?

[Dan Green]

"If you have, and don't think such criticism is to be found in any of these, then, yes, we do have different standards."

If he has read them (and he did avoid clarifying whether he had or not), then we do have simply a difference of critical judgment. I find plenty of interesting stuff in all of those blogs.

[Steven Augustine]

A few of them, without a doubt.

[Daniel]

Yes, I do read many of them. As I read quite a few print review sections and critical publications. And I would say without much hesitation most of the work I encounter is mediocre, some smaller portion is decent, some quite terrible, a few good, and fewer still are exceptional.

I'm not saying they're all worthless; why is everything so black and white? I also find a lot of them interesting, at times. But our judgments ought to be exacting – I'll not call a thing good if it is only passable. It is hard to be good. It takes extended concentration, time, insight, and knowledge. But as I said, you find something 'interesting' and that is good enough to hold up; I am really looking for developed, extensive, insightful thought – we have different standards.

[Dan Green]

"I am really looking for developed, extensive, insightful thought"

Good luck--not because there aren't critics capable of it, but because there are few publications willing to publish it. Eventually most such "insightful thought" is going to gravitate to blogs and other online sources.

[Richard]

I've been feeling this is more an issue of category than standards. "Decent critical writing" is not necessarily "developed" (depending on what one means by "developed" of course) or "extensive". But I'd say that much of the writing that appears on the blogs Dan Green has in mind fulfills a variety of different kinds of decent critical writing--and I find a lot more of it online as opposed to in print (and we're really comparing blogs to print reviews--as in newspapers and magazines; we're not talking about truly lengthy essays or books, can we mostly agree on that? though even the effect of those might be achieved over the course of multiple entries). I tend to be allergic to technological triumphalism, and for the most part, frankly, I'd rather read items on paper, but the blogs I read--from the personal essay that deals with the author's reading, to intelligent book discussion, to thoughtful reviews, and finally to actual critical engagement of varying lengths--on balance "win" over their print counterparts hands down.

On the other hand, it's long been a mystery to me why bloggers care so much what the print folks say in their sweeping statements. My first paragraph notwithstanding, I agree with much of Steven Augustine's first couple of comments. I've seen much boring circling of the wagons.

[brewdog]

I step away for a pint or two and it's like an explosion in a matchstick factory up in here. First off, I probably should have qualified my "better" comment above with an amended "possibly," in order to satisfy SA's exacting standards (I had considered saying "it depends on what your definition of 'better' is").

Indeed, it seems to me, perhaps ameliorated by the several pints, that we're nitpicking here, in 20-some-odd comment posts, about something which is so oblique and abstruse that of the five or eight writers extant who are worth reading, two or three are right here in this thread. I have not read a lot of Dan's blogroll, I'll admit, because I click through and see random, nonlit-blogging when I just want to read some really keen insight on something worthwhile.

And this is the crux of the issue, perhaps. What is worthwhile to me is not to you and vice versa. I have enjoyed reading Our Friend The Rake over the years, but when he gets off on a tangent and I'm not interested, I might not visit again for months. Same goes for just about anyone else (unless they have an RSS feed, in which case I can browse more effectively). This Internets of ours allows for infinite niche-ability and it's hard to find someone who can satisfy our every litwhim. Back in the day, we were stuck with a handful of print mags and whatever zines we could scrape up and we were happy (reading them uphill both ways! in the snow!).

I guess I'm more disappointed than anything. We should have better stuff to read, or we should write stuff and have more readers or we should more better writers and stuff. Or something. I wish litblogging were more like music blogging and people come to a blog I created and download really hot illicit paragraphs and spread them P2P. Or something.

[Steven Augustine]

I'm just gratified that this discussion has gone beyond the usual limits of people clamming up... or having their heads explode.

[Rake]

Thanks for the nod, Mr. Green, but try as you might I don't think you're going to convince them I'm not rubbish.

Let me just make my handy generalization here: Blog backlash articles are fundamentally obnoxious, as they are responding not to blogs, per se, but to the previous round of blog overhype trend pieces. Hence the lack of specific examples; you need only apply a bit of elbow grease at the crank of conventional wisdom (Blogs Are Now!) and you can complete this particular turn of the wheel (Come Back, Print, All Is Forgiven).

And we wade through all this muck for what? The insight that 99.9% of blogs are crap? The revelation that few, if any, book bloggers are as polished and brilliant as James Wood?

You don't say.

Still, if you spend a fair amount of time and effort on your blog, as some do, in your more sensitive moments it might irk you to be called an intellectual parasite and a gossip monger.

Yes, all involved should ignore these trend piece journos and pour the effort into writing something worth reading. More and better litblogs, yes. Is this part of what I'm trying to do? Yes. Will I end up turning out stuff that's *interesting* at best? Perhaps.

But more rubbish, perhaps?

Perhaps.

[Rohan Maitzen]

I agree with those who have said or implied that the categories are simply too coarse in many of these exchanges. People use blogs for many different purposes, not all of them to produce "developed, extensive" pieces--or not all of the time. For many bloggers I read, their online writing is often a kind of warm-up or prelude to some longer project, or preliminary thoughts appear in advance of a longer, more detailed and developed post. Some blog readers also are not looking for lengthy excurses but enjoy the intellectual stimulation of a variety of ideas and voices coming into some kind of relationship with their own thinking. Some litblogs aspire to the status of online literary journalism and criticism; some are reading diaries; some are miscellanies. Many academics' blogs (including literary academics) include both lengthy posts on specialist topics and briefer posts in the spirit of a working notebook. It seems to me to run contrary to the form and possibilities of blogging to insist that the material in blogs is good only insofar as it looks like traditional serious criticism. In this discussion, as so often, the question 'good for what?' seems like it would helpfully focus the apples and oranges comparisons that go on.

[theinternet]

These posts all seem to relate to critical literary blogs. Does anybody know of any particularly good creative writing blogs? I'm new to this, but generally looking for experimental writing / fun stuff...

[Lloyd Mintern]

I see no categorical distinction between lit blogs and print criticism, whatsoever. A difference in media has not caused any revolution in content, whatsoever. Both sides are merely defensive about which side of the artificial fence they are on at the moment, and individuals (including Dan Green, and the vociferous Steven Augustive, and most of all myself) are quite willing to jump the fence if a perceived advantage arises.

[Steven Augustine]

Lloyd:

A minor correction: I'm no form of literary critic and have never even fleetingly aspired to be one. My interest/investment in literary criticism is purely as a consumer of it. When I roll my eyes at, say, the quasi-scientific pretensions of an otherwise excellent (though, inferior to the wonderfully hypo-careerist Mr. Pritchett, I'd say) practitioner like James Wood, it's not as a self-deluded pretended to the throne. It's as someone who reads and enjoys (good) books and (careful) critiques of books and has his own opinions on both.

I'm on neither side of the "fence" you posit. I'm on the side of talent and craftsmanship. Poorly-done stuff bugs me.

[Lloyd Mintern]

Okay, Steven, you are excused. Close the door on your way out.

[Steven Augustine]

Lloyd, if only you'd waited another thirty or forty (or ninety) minutes before responding, you might've come up with something moderately witty, instead of that chat-roomish non sequitur.

[Lloyd Mintern]

What? You still here? I told you to close the door. This is not our space to muddy up, and I cannot debate you here--particularly as you have such bad manners. I think I will go and read your website. That will be surely make you nervous.

[Dan Green]

"are quite willing to jump the fence if a perceived advantage arises."

I'm not quite sure what this means. What (or where) exactly is the fence, and in what way have I jumped it (or not)?

[Lloyd Mintern]

The "fence" is the distinction between literary critics who write blogs and literary critics who publish in print. I am saying the distinction/fence is artificial, ie doesn't really exist, because these are just two forms of media and there is no difference in the content of the literary criticsm.Lit bloggers are not as a group tuned in to anything; many of them are totally mainstream in their thinking. Certain published critics are very prescient and avant-guard. Whatever--surely this distinction is obvious.

What I mean by "jumping the fence if a perceived advantage arises" should also be rather obvious". It just means you would gladly work for a print journal if they paid you very well--and this would not be some kind of conflict of interest, or blot on your career. I really don't know what you have been through, so I don't mean to make it personal; but I don't think one can't pretend to be heroic just because they are a blogger. Which is what some of your complaining about established critics implies--to me. On the other hand, I value your blog, and read it all the time. Perhaps it is some of your readers who think blogs are a category unto themselves. I myself am just a writer in an ivory tower. (Wishing someone would storm my castle.)

[Dan Green]

I have published critical essays in print journals, before I started this blog. Since then, my desire to see my name "in print" has considerably waned. No print journal would "pay well" for the sort of thing I do, so I have never envisioned myself working for one.

[MikeM]

Why is it that perfectly sane, educated, and normally rational men and women turn into rabid dogs when their territory is 'threatened.'
The conflict between bloggers and print critics is silly, and I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that I don't want to hear about this feud anymore. There are good bloggers and there are bad bloggers (and there are terrible bloggers who don't seem to have much command over written English, but I digress) just as there are good print critics and bad print critics (probably fewer atrocious print critics, but no editorial filter is perfect).
Bloggers seem to be swept up with the idea of the internet as a new medium that will revolutionize literature, and even if that hasn't happened yet, many of them are sure it will. Print journalists are sure that newspapers, magazines, etc; are the only reliable source of information and opinion left in a world where "anyone with an internet connection can be a critic," even though that was probably never true.
Ideas are what's important when it comes to literature, not the medium. Bloggers and critics should be arguing over books, not legitimacy. If a critic wants to be taken seriously he (or she) can only do it by producing good criticism. If a critic wants to engage in a childish fight over who's better, they can go back grade school and tell their friends that "my Dad's better than your Dad" or "Your schools a safety school, mines better," or any other such argument.
Yes, the majority of blogs are terrible. Bloggers should admit that. Then they should say, "but look at Quarterly Conversation, or This Space and you will find writers engaging with ideas." To find a good blog you have to look. It's a similar process to finding a good magazine journal, and there is no need to distinguish them.

Perhaps this is the computers fault. Too many writers sitting at home, becoming grumpy and anti-social, failing to see anything beyond what they want to see. (This applies to both print journalists and writers).

[MikeM]

Also, I'm always curious why there is such dismay over the inclusion of "current events" into review sections. Was there a time where Politics and Literature were segregated into different magazines? Was the standard of writing better?
I'm asking these questions seriously, because as long as I've been reading the Times book review (for example, and no, I haven't been reading for very long) politics was just important as fiction. So, to me, the incorporation of politics seems to be more of the rule than the exception.

[Dan Green]

"Then they should say, 'but look at Quarterly Conversation, or This Space and you will find writers engaging with ideas.'"

I think I said that.

"Was there a time where Politics and Literature were segregated into different magazines?"

Yes, over the past several years when Bookforum did it by focusing mostly on literature.

[Nenpreagmeme]

Something about exceeding a lost arrangemeng after consisting for a vital culprit in the wilderness, and the jump that their famous nude fakes sainted her.