Why Great Critics Make Disastrous Judgments

> "How a human being could have attempted such a book as [Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights] without committing suicide before he [sic] had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery. It is a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors. …"

Just from that excerpt I can't tell if that critic liked or disliked the book. I greatly enjoyed "Wuthering Height", but I'd also say that excerpt is pretty accurate.

That's what makes it an interesting story--it takes a level of depravity and horror that would be appropriate for big villains in expansive settings with free reign to exercise their evil--Darth Vader in Episode IV, for instance--and squeezes it into a couple families in a couple estates on the moors of England in a time when strongly ingrained social conventions for politeness prevented them from even being overtly hostile when all they wanted to do was utterly destroy each other.

Much more interesting is the other way. Contemporary highly respected artists, lauded by critics, who couldn't stand the test of time. Rightfully though. Critics often have their darlings for whatever reasons, only remotely concerning their actual work. If it's political criticism, contemporary humor or other events.

There's another factor which the article misses: being a great critic isn't at all the same as being a correct critic. Great critics take risks, flirt with contrarianism, point out flaws that other observers miss or gloss over. Not only are they not "neutral"--no one can really look at art neutrally, anyway--but they are particularly likely to take eccentric views. A negative view of a well-regarded classic can do a lot more to spark the imagination, to make the work exciting, than a boring list of the work's obvious virtues.

> "Scott Fitzgerald’s new novel, The Great Gatsby, is in form no more than a glorified anecdote, and not too probable at that."

That remark is from a highly favourable review, but you have to actually read it: http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-great-...

That's the great thing about opinions: everyone can have one, and no two people need to share one. I actually find scathing criticism of things I like (or even consider "great") refreshing, and an opportunity for reflection.

One thing I liked about Roger Ebert is that he was willing to change his mind, and admit it

"I changed my mind on Unforgiven; I gave it only two-and-a-half stars. I wasn't thinking very well when I reviewed that."

https://rogersworst.blogspot.ca/2011/01/2-unforgiven-1992.ht...

Great books aren't beyond criticism. I love gatsby, but the criticism about the thinness of the plot is totally fair.

H.L. Mencken's critique of Gatsby is actually really on-point in a lot of ways. It's also fantastically written. He loves Fitzgerald's writing and takes issue with the plot, which particularly at the time was a valid criticism.

I've always assumed classical critics are searching for archetypical qualities which they tend to "over-fit" to over time. It helps them become good at what they do, but then when the inevitable disruptive new expression occurs, the are unable to fit it into their model and reject it.

The modern version of this has seem to evolve into genre-level criticism which insulates the critic from that level of disruption. At the extreme, it just becomes fanboy-ism.

The author misses what I think is a very important point -- that critiques must also entertain. And poison pens entertain with much more certainty than saccharine paeans.

Well. Shakespeare could never get staged today. Nor could "Wuthering Heights" get published. "Leaves of Grass" might get published given Whitman's ability to schmooze, and it might even sell as many as 100 copies (pretty good for poetry).

The vast bulk of great literature isn't. Gatsy and "Catcher in the Rye" in particular are just mystifyingly dull. There's nothing strange about such opinions now, or then.

> "It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of Grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards."

Damn.

It's not just in the humanities. Plenty of scientific theories, technology, and other developments were originally panned by many experts and critics.

A few startup founders might recognize that experience.

Opinions and arseholes, eh.

To build on the point made by the author - while it can be a useful label to describe what appeals to a majority of people within a certain group, there is ultimately no such thing as good art and consequently no such thing as a critic getting it right.

We could of course try to define "a critic getting it right" as predicting and matching the majority opinion within a certain culture/time period, which I suppose the article does and it's certainly a valid approach, but then we come dangerously close to implying that that is equivalent to recognizing the intrinsic value of some work.

As astutely observed in the quote by Terry Eagleton, "value" is by its very definition a subjective and transitive term, completely meaningless without context.

Critics (so I guess pretty much everyone, this being the internet) tend to shine all light on the subject of their criticism, while themselves trying to stay in the shadows, as if keeping their personal context out of it somehow makes their opinion more objective. I'd argue that the only people this doesn't do a disservice to, are people eager to find a solid, reliable opinion they can subscribe to in order to join in the pretense of knowing what is good art and what isn't.

A more honest reader turning to critiques to help answer the question "What is valuable to me?" in an infinite sea of content is much better served by a critic openly exposing their biases, their personal framework and context, clearly showing where they are coming from and how it flows into the image they paint of their subject. When it comes to talking art, any attempt at objectivity is doomed to fail, so I say do away with it altogether.

Not only does this make it easier for a reader to better place potentially interesting works within his context by comparing it with the critic's, it would also provide more value to the authors/artists themselves. It's okay being disliked by people you're not trying to reach.

The other thing that really gets me is the disrespect of suggesting something is so bad it shouldn't have been created in the first place.

It takes passion and courage to put a personal creation out there. It takes a great and exhausting amount of bad work to finally create something good, as anyone who's ever build anything worthwhile can confirm. All it takes to take a dump on it and feel powerful in the act is an internet connection.

Then again, maybe destructive criticism creates a necessary hostile environment, testing an author's/artist's resolve and allowing truly great art to emerge, similar to how children need to be exposed to germs in order to develop healthy immune systems.

I do not like critics.